60 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



else matter of art and opinion. We see the inconvenience 

 of the former in ecclesiastical history, which has too easily 

 received and registered relations of miracles wrought by 

 martyrs, hermits, monks, and their relics, shrines, chapels, 

 and images. So in natural history, there has not been 

 much judgment employed, as appears from the writings 

 of Pliny, Carban, Albertus, and many of the Arabians; 

 which are full of fabulous matters; many of them not 

 only untried, but notoriously false, to the great discredit 

 of natural philosophy with grave and sober minds. But 

 the produce and integrity of Aristotle is here worthy our 

 observation, who, having compiled an exact history of ani 

 mals, dashed it very sparingly with fable or fiction, throw 

 ing all strange reports which he thought worth recording 

 in a book by themselves, 60 thus wisely intimating, that 

 matter of truth which is the basis of solid experience, 

 philosophy, and the sciences, should not be mixed with 

 matter of doubtful credit; and yet that curiosities or prod 

 igies, though seemingly incredible, are not to be suppressed 

 or denied the registering. 



Credulity in arts and opinions, is likewise of two kinds; 

 viz. , when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or 

 to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the 

 imagination more than the reason, are principally three; 

 viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy; the ends or 

 pretensions whereof are however noble. For astrology pre 

 tends to discover the influence of the superior upon the in 

 ferior bodies; natural magic pretends to reduce natural phi 

 losophy from speculation to works; and chemistry pretends 

 to separate the dissimilar parts, incorporated in natural mix 

 tures, and to cleanse such bodies as are impure, throw out 

 the heterogeneous parts, and perfect such as are immature. 

 But the means supposed to produce these effects are, both in 

 theory and practice, full of error and vanity, and besides, 

 are seldom delivered with candor, but generally concealed 

 by artifice and enigmatical expressions, referring to tradition, 



60 au/xacria A(coucr/xaTa. 



