INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 95 



the unquiet agitation of their own ingenuity, the manifold 

 sweepings of the schools. But this their dictator is so much 

 the more to blame than they, since even when engaged in 

 the evident things of history, he brought back the darkest 

 idols of some subterranean den ; and erected even upon the 

 history itself of particular things certain works as of spiders, 

 which he wished to seem causes, whereas they are utterly 

 without strength or value. Such also in our times hath 

 Geronimo Cardano constructed, both at variance with things 

 and with himself. Yet augur not, my son, that while I 

 entertain this opinion against Aristotle, I have conspired 

 with his rebel, a certain Pierre Ramus. No commerce 

 have I with this nest of ignorance, most pernicious moth of 

 letters, who twists and presses things with the chains of 

 his method and compendium, till the things indeed, if any 

 there be, escape altogether and leap out; but he himself 

 grasps the arid and most deserted trifles. And Aquinas, 

 indeed, with Scotus and his fellows, contrived a variety of 

 things, even when their subjects were non-entities ; but this 

 man hath, even on subjects having real existence, produced 

 the vacuity of non-entity. And although he is such a man, 

 yet doth he impudently talk of uses to mankind, so that 

 even when compared with the sophists he seems to prevari 

 cate. But let us dismiss these. And now let Plato be sum 

 moned, that polite caviller, tumid poet, insane theologian. 

 And surely when thou wast filing and putting together 

 I know not what philosophic rumours, and simulating 

 knowledge by dissembling it, and tempting and loosening 

 men s minds with vague inductions, thou mightest either 

 have ministered discourses to the feasts of literate and 

 polite men, or also grace and love to ordinary discourses. 

 But when thou didst counterfeit truth, which is as it were 

 the indigenous inhabitant of the human mind, migrating 

 from nowhere else, and didst turn aside our minds, which 

 are never sufficiently applied and brought back to history 

 and to things themselves, and teach them to enter into 

 themselves, and under the name of contemplation to wallow 

 amid their blind and most confused idols, thou didst then 

 commit a capital offence. And afterwards, with scarcely 

 less naughtiness, didst thou introduce an apotheosis of 

 folly, and dare to defend with religion thy meanest cogita 

 tions. For it is a slighter evil that thou hast been the 

 parent of philologers, and that under thy guidance, and the 

 auspices of thy manifold genius, ensnared and satisfied with 

 fame and the popular and smooth jucundity of the know- 



