THE FIRST BOOK. 35 



while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, and 

 novelty cannot be content to add, but it must deface : 

 surely, the advice of the prophet is the true direction in 

 this matter, State super via* antiquas, et videte qucenam sit, 

 via recta et bona, et ambulate in ea : [Stand upon the ancient 

 paths and see which is the straight and good road, and walk 

 in it.] Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should 

 make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way ; 

 but when the discovery is well taken, then to make pro 

 gression. And to speak truly, Antiquitas sceculi juventus 10 

 mundi : [Old times were the youth of the icorldJ] These times 

 are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not 

 those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a com 

 putation backward from ourselves. 



Another error, induced by the former, is a distrust that 

 any tiling should be now to be found out, which the 

 world should have missed and passed over so long time ; 

 as if the same objection were to be made to time, that 

 Jjucian maketh to Jupiter and other the heathen gods ; of 

 which he wondereth that they begot so many children in 20 

 old time, and begot none in his time ; and asketh whether 

 they were become septuagenary, or whether the law Papia, 

 made against old men's marriages, had restrained them. 

 So it seemeth men doubt lest time is become past children 

 and generation ; wherein, contrariwise, we see commonly 

 the levity and inconstancy of men's judgments, which, till 

 a matter be done, wonder that it can be done ; and, as soon 

 as it is done, wonder again that it was no sooner done : as 

 we see in the expedition of Alexander into Asia, which at 

 first was prejudged as a vast and impossible enterprise: 30 

 and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to make no more of it 

 than this, Nil aliud quam bene ausus vana contemnere: [He 

 simply ventured to despise idle fears:] and the same happened 

 to Columbus in the western navigation. But in intellectual 

 matters it is much more common ; as may be seen in most of 

 the propositions of Euclid : which till they be demonstrate, 



