112 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



countervail an inconvenience, which will intrude itself 



if it be not debarred ; which is, that when a doubt is 



once received, men labour rather how to keep it a 



doubt still, than how to solve it ; and accordingly 



bend their wits. Of this we see the familiar example 



in lawyers and scholars, both which, if they have 



once admitted a doubt, it goeth ever after authorized 



for a doubt. But that use of wit and knowledge is 



to be allowed, which laboureth to make doubtful things 



certain, and not those which labour to make certain 



things doubtful. Therefore these kalendars of doubts 



I commend as excellent things ; so that there be this 



caution used, that when they be thoroughly sifted 



and brought to resolution, they be from thenceforth 



omitted, decarded, and not continued to cherish and 



encourage men in doubting. To which kalendar of 



doubts or problems, I advise be annexed 



Continuatio another kalendar, as much or more 



tumin ia &quot; material, which is a kalendar of popular 



natura. errors : I mean chiefly in natural history, 



Catalogue such as pass in speech and conceit, and 



^graswntium are nevertheless apparently detected and 



in kistoria convicted of un truth ; that man s know- 



naturae. ledge be not weakened nor imbased by 



such dross and vanity. As for the doubts 



or non liquets general or in total, I understand those 



differences of opinions touching the principles of nature, 



and the fundamental points of the same, which have 



caused the diversity of sects, schools, and philosophies, 



as that of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Democritus, Par- 



menides, and the rest. For although Aristotle, as 



though he had been of the race of the Ottomans, 



thought he could not reign except the first thing he did 



he killed all his brethren ; yet to those that seek truth 



and not magistrality, it cannot but seem a matter of 



great profit, to see before them the several opinions 



touching the foundations of nature. Not for any exact 



truth that can be expected in those theories ; for as 



the same phenomena in astronomy are satisfied by the 



received astronomy of the diurnal motion, and the 



