30 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



(chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were 

 shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and 

 knowing little history, either of nature or time, did 

 out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation 

 of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning 

 which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind 

 of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contempla 

 tion of the creatures of God, worketh according to the 

 stuff and is limited thereby ; but if it work upon itself, 

 as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and 

 brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for 

 the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or 

 profit. 



6. This same unprofitable subtility or curiosity is of 

 two sorts ; either in the subject itself that they handle, 

 when it is a fruitless speculation or controversy (whereof 

 there are no small number both in divinity and philo 

 sophy), or in the manner or method of handling of 

 a knowledge, which amongst them was this ; upon 

 every particular position or assertion to frame objec 

 tions, and to those objections, solutions ; which solu 

 tions were for the most part not confutations, but 

 distinctions : whereas indeed the strength of all 

 sciences, is as the strength of the old man s faggot, in 

 the bond. For the harmony of a science, supporting 

 each part the other, is and ought to be the true and 

 brief confutation and suppression of all the smaller 

 sort of objections. But, on the other side, if you take 

 out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one by 

 one, you may quarrel with them and bend them and 

 break them at your pleasure : so that as was said of 

 Seneca, * Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera, 

 so a man may truly say of the schoolmen, Quaes- 

 tionum minutiis scientiarum frangunt soliditatem. 

 For were it not better for a man in a fair room to set 

 up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, 

 than to go about with a small watch candle into every 

 corner ? And such is their method, that rests not so 

 much upon evidence of truth proved by arguments, 

 authorities, similitudes, examples, as upon particular 



