78 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [BOOK IX. 



imagination, and philosophy to the reason. By poetry we 

 understand no more than feigned history or fable, without 

 regard at present to the poetical style. History is properly 

 concerned about individuals, circumscribed by time and 

 place ; so likewise is poetry, with this difference, that its 

 individuals are feigned, with a resemblance to true history, 

 yet like painting, so as frequently to exceed it. But philo 

 sophy, forsaking individuals, fixes upon notions abstracted 

 from them, and is employed in compounding and separating 

 these notions according to the laws of nature and the evi 

 dence of things themselves. 



Any one will easily perceive the justness of this division 

 that recurs to the origin of our ideas. Individuals first 

 strike the sense, which is as it were the port or entrance of 

 the understanding. Then the understanding ruminates upon 

 these images or impressions received from the sense, either 

 simply reviewing them, or wantonly counterfeiting and imi 

 tating them, or forming them into certain classes by com 

 position or separation. Thus it is clearly manifest that 

 history, poetry, and philosophy flow from the three distinct 

 fountains of the mind, viz., the memory, the imagination, 

 and the reason ; without any possibility of increasing their 

 number. For history and experience are one and the same 

 thing ; so are philosophy and the sciences. 



Nor does divine learning require any other division ; for 

 though revelation and sense may differ both in matter and 

 manner, yet the spirit of man and its cells are the same ; 

 and in this case receive, as it were, different liquors through 

 different conduits. Theology, therefore, consists 1. of sacred 

 history ; 2. parable, or divine poesy ; and 3. of holy doctrine 

 or precept, as its fixed philosophy. As for prophecy, which 

 seems a part redundant, it is no more than a species of 

 history ; divine history having this prerogative over human, 

 hat the narration may precede, as well us succeed the fact, 



