58 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it works upon 

 itself, as the spider does, then it has no end; but produces 

 cobwebs of learning, admirable indeed for the fineness of 

 the thread, but of no substance or profit. 6 * 



This unprofitable subtilty is of two kinds, and appears 

 either in the subject, when that is fruitless speculation or 

 controversy, or in the manner of treating it, which among 

 them was this: Upon every particular position they framed 

 objections, and to those objections solutions; which solu 

 tions were generally not confutations, but distinctions; 

 whereas the strength of all sciences is like the strength of 

 a fagot bound. For the harmony of science, when each 

 part supports the other, is the true and short confutation 

 of all the smaller objections; on the contrary, to take out 

 every axiom, as the sticks of the fagot, one by one, you 

 may quarrel with them, and bend them, and break them 

 at pleasure: whence, as it was said of Seneca, that he 

 &quot;weakened the weight of things by trivial expression,&quot; 67 

 we may truly say of the schoolmen, &quot;That they broke the 

 solidity of the sciences by the minuteness of their ques 

 tions.&quot; For, were it not better to set up one large light 

 in a noble room, than to go about with a small one, to illu 

 minate every comer thereof? Yet such is the method of 

 schoolmen, that rests not so much upon the evidence of truth 

 from arguments, authorities, and examples, as upon particu 

 lar confutations and solutions of every scruple and objec 

 tion; which breeds one question, as fast as it solves another; 

 just as in the above example, when the light is carried into 

 one corner, it darkens the rest. Whence the fable of Scylla 

 seems a lively image of this kind of philosophy, who was 

 transformed into a beautiful virgin upward, while barking 

 monsters surrounded her below 



&quot;Candida succinctam latrantlbus inguina monstris.&quot; Virg. Bel. vi. 75 



So the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while fair and 



56 For the literary history of the schoolmen, see Morhof a &quot;Polyhist.&quot; torn, 

 ii. lib. i. cap. 14; and Camden s &quot;Remains. 



57 Quintilian, lib. x. cap. 1, 130. 



