OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



But yet, notwithstanding, it is a thing not hastily to 

 be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of 

 philosophy itself, with sensible and plausible elocution ; 

 for hereof we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, 

 Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree; and 

 hereof likewise there is great use : for surely, to the severe 

 inquisition of truth, and the deep progress into philosophy, 

 it is some hindrance ; because it is too early satisfactory to 

 the mind of man, and quencheth the desire of further 



10 search, before we come to a just period : but then if a man 

 be to have any use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of 

 conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like ; then 

 shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors which 

 write in that manner. But the excess of this is so justly 

 contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the image of 

 Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain, Nil sacri 

 es ; [Y^u are no divinity ;] so there is none of Hercules' 

 followers in learning, that is, the more severe and laborious 

 sort of inquirers into truth, but will despise those delicacies 



20 and affectations, as indeed capable of no divineness. And 

 thus much of the first disease or distemper of learning. 



The second, which followeth, is in nature worse than 

 the former : for as substance of matter is better than beauty 

 of words, so, contrariwise, vain master is worse than vain 

 words : wherein it seemeth the reprehension of Saint Paul 

 was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the 

 times following ; and not only respective to divinity, but 

 extensive to all knowledge : Devita profanas vocum novitates, 

 et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae; [Avoid profane novel- 



30 ties of term*, and oppositions of science falsely so called]. 

 For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and 

 falsified science : the one, the novelty and strangeness of 

 terms ; the other, the strictness of positions, which of neces 

 sity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and alterca 

 tions. Surely, like as many substances in nature, which are 

 solid, do putrefy and corrupt into worms; so it is the 



