ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 267 



to York. The best rules may well be compared to a metal 

 line speculum, which represents the images of things, but 

 not before it is polished; for so rules and precepts are useful 

 after having undergone the file of experience. But if these 

 rules could be made exact and clear from the first, it were 

 better, because they would then stand in less need of ex 

 perience. 



We must not omit that some men, rather ostentatious 

 than learned, have labored about a certain method not de 

 serving the name of a true method, as being rather a kind 

 of imposture, which may nevertheless be acceptable to some 

 busy minds. This art so scatters the drops of the sciences, 

 that any pretender may misapply it for ostentation, with 

 some appearance of learning. Such was the art of Lully, 

 and such the typocosmia cultivated by some; for these are 

 only a collection of terms of art heaped together, to the end 

 that those who have them in readiness may seem to under 

 stand the arts whereto the terms belong. Collections of 

 this kind are like a piece-broker s shop, where there are 

 many slips, but nothing of great value. And thus much 

 for the science which we call traditive prudence. 8 



8 Concio, who preceded Bacon, anticipates, in his treatise &quot;De Methodo,&quot; 

 many of the fundamental principles of the inductive logicians, and discriminates 

 many branches of analysis, which they confound. Descartes, in his book on 

 the same subject, has endeavored to reduce the whole business of method to 

 four rules, which, however, are found in the precepts of Aristotle. Johan. 

 Beyer undertook to write upon this subject, in his &quot;Filum Labyrinthi,&quot; accord 

 ing to the design of Bacon, but appears not to have understood the author, and 

 has rather obscured his doctrine than improved it. M. Tschirnhaus, however, 

 has treated the subject more suitably to its merit, in his &quot;Medicina Mentis,&quot; 

 mentioned above, in the note to 2. A great variety of methods have been 

 advanced by different authors, an ample catalogue of whom may be found in 

 Morhof s &quot;Polyhist.&quot; torn. L lib. ii. cap. 7,&quot; &quot;De Methodis Variis.&quot; Ed. 



