ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 213 



covered, if the use of the compass had not first been known, 

 it is no wonder that the discovery and advancement of arts 

 has made no greater progress, when the art of inventing 

 and discovering the sciences remains hitherto unknown. 

 That this part of knowledge is wanting, seems clear: for 

 logic professes not, nor pretends to invent, either mechanical 

 or liberal arts, nor to deduce the operations of the one, or 

 the axioms of the other; but only leaves us this instruction \ 

 in passage, to believe every artist in his own art. 1 Celsus, 

 a wise man, as well as a physician, speaking of the empirical 

 and dogmatical sects of physicians, gravely and ingenuously 

 acknowledges, that medicines and cures were first discov 

 ered, and the reasons and causes of them discoursed after 

 ward,* not that causes, first derived from the nature of 

 things, gave light to the invention of cures and remedies. 

 And Plato, more than once, observes, that particulars are 

 infinite, that the highest generalities give no certain direc- / 

 tions; and, therefore, that the marrow of all sciences,/ 

 whereby the artist is distinguished from the unskilM 

 workman, consists in middle propositions, which experij 

 ence has delivered and taught in each particular science.1 

 Hence those who write upon the first inventors of things,) 

 and the origin of the sciences, rather celebrate chance than 

 art, and bring in beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents, rather 

 than men, as the first teachers of arts. 



&quot;Dictamnum genitrix Cretsea carpit ab Ida, 

 Puberibus caulem foliis, et flore comantem 

 Purpureo: non ilia feris incognita capris 

 Gramina, cum tergo volucres hsesere sagitta3. &quot; 4 



No wonder, therefore, as the manner of antiquity was to 

 consecrate the inventors of useful things, that the Egyp 

 tians, an ancient nation, to which many arts owe their rise, 

 had their temples filled with the images of brutes, and but 

 a few human idols among them. 



1 See Whately s Intro. 5, b. iii. (on Fallacies) 2, and b. iv. ; also Arist. 

 Eth. Mag. i. 1.-17. 



2 Re Medica, i. 3. s The Timseus. 4 ^Eneid. xii. 412. 



