ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 260 



viz., first to render what they deliver intelligible, and then 

 to prove it; whence they must of necessity have recourse to 

 simile and metaphor, the better to enter the human capac 

 ity. 6 Hence we find in the more ignorant ages, when learn 

 ing was in its infancy, and those conceptions which are now 

 trite and vulgar were new and unheard of, everything was 

 full of parables and similitudes, otherwise the things then 

 proposed would either have been passed over without due 

 notice and attention, or else have been rejected as para 

 doxes. For it is a rule in the doctrine of delivery, that 

 every science which comports not with anticipations and 

 prejudices must seek the assistance of similies and allu 

 sions. And thus much for the different kinds of methods, 

 which have not hitherto been observed; but for the others, 

 as the analytic, systatic, diaeretic, cryptic, homeric, etc., 

 they are already justly discovered and ranged. 



Method has two parts, one regarding the disposition of 

 a whole work or the subject of a book, and the other the 

 limitation of propositions. For architecture not only re 

 gards the fabric of the whole building, but also the figure 

 of the columns, arches, etc. ; for method is as it were the 

 architecture of the sciences. And herein Ramus has de 

 served better, by reviving the ancient rules of method, 6 

 than by obtruding his own dichotomies. But I know not 

 by what fatality it happens that, as the poets often feign, 

 the most precious things have the most pernicious keepers. 

 Doubtless the endeavors of Ramus about the reduction of 

 propositions threw him upon his epitomes, and the flats 

 and shallows of the sciences : for it must be a fortunate and 

 well-directed genius that shall attempt to make the axioms 

 of the sciences convertible, and not at the same time render 

 them circular, that is, keep them from returning into them- 



5 The reader will bear in mind that this was the situation of the author in 

 his time, and on that account dispense with his figurative style, though it may 

 not be altogether so necessary at present, when we are accustomed to the freest 

 range of philosophical inquiry. Ed. 



6 KafloA.of fl-pwTov, KOTO. PCWTOS, Ka0 aurb, *.T.\.: relation to the first principle, re 

 lation to all, and relation to one s self. 



SCIENCE Vol. 21 12 



