THE FIRST BOOK. 29 



property of good and sound knowledge, to putrefy and 

 dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, 

 as I may term them, vermiculate questions, which have 

 indeed a kind of quickness, and life of spirit, but no 

 soundness of matter, or goodness of quality. TJjis kind of 

 degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen . 

 who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, 

 and small variety of reading, (but their wits being shut up 

 in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator, 

 as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and 10 

 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 contem 

 plation 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. 20 



This same unprofitable subtilty 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 1 

 no small number both in divinity and philosophy, or in the 

 manner or method of handling of a knowledge, which 

 amongst them was this ; upon every particular position or 

 assertion to frame objections, and to those objections, 

 solutions ; which solutions were for the most part not con 

 futations, but distinctions : whereas indeed the strength of 

 all sciences is, as the strength of the old man's faggot, in the 30 

 band. 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 



