THE FIRST BOOK 37 



day perchance be further polished and illustrate and 

 accommodated for use and practice ; but it increaseth 

 no more in bulk and substance. 



5. Another error which doth succeed that which we 

 last mentioned, is, that after the distribution of par 

 ticular arts and sciences, men have abandoned univers 

 ality, or philosophia prima : which cannot but cease 

 and stop all progression. For no perfect discovery 

 can be made upon a fiat or a level : neither is it possible 

 to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any 

 science, if you stand but upon the level of the same 

 science, and ascend not to a higher science. 



6. Another error hath proceeded from too great 

 a reverence, and a kind of adoration of the mind and 

 understanding of man ; by means whereof, men have 

 withdrawn themselves too much from the contempla 

 tion of nature, and the observations of experience, and 

 have tumbled up and down in their own reason and 

 conceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are not- 

 withstanding commonly taken for the most sublime 

 and divine philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just censure, 

 Baying, Men sought truth in their own little worlds, 

 a,nd not in the great and common world ; for they 

 disdain to spell, and so by degrees to read in the volume ; 

 of God s works : and contrariwise by continual medita 

 tion and agitation of wit do urge and as it were invocate 

 their own spirits to divine and give oracles unto them, 

 whereby they are deservedly deluded. 



7. Another error that hath some connexion with this 

 latter is, that men have used to infect their medita 

 tions, opinions, and doctrines, with some conceits which 

 they have most admired, or some sciences which they 

 have most applied ; and given all things else a tincture 

 according to them, utterly untrue and unproper. So 

 hath Plato intermingled his philosophy with theology, 

 and Aristotle with logic ; and the second school of 

 Plato, Proclus and the rest, with the mathematics. 

 For these were the arts which had a kind of primo 

 geniture with them severally. So have the alchemists 

 made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the 



