ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 137 



THIRD BOOK 

 CHAPTER I 



Division of Learning into Theology and Philosophy. The latter divided 

 into the Knowledge of God, of Nature, and of Man. Construction of 

 Philosophia Prima as the Mother of all the Sciences 



TO THE KING 



ALL history, excellent king, treads the earth, perform 

 ing the office of a guide rather than of a light: and 

 poetry is, as it were, the stream of knowledge a 

 pleasing thing fall of variations, and affects to be inspired 

 with divine rapture, to which treasures also pretend. But 

 now it is time I should awake and raise myself from the 

 earth, and explore the liquid regions of philosophy and 

 the sciences. Knowledge is like waters; some descend from 

 the heavens, some spring from the earth. For all knowl 

 edge proceeds from a twofold source either from divine 

 inspiration or external sense. As for that knowledge which 

 is infused by instruction, that is cumulative, not original 

 as it is in waters, which, besides the headsprings, are in 

 creased by the reception of other rivers which fall into 

 them. We shall, therefore, divide sciences into theology 

 and philosophy. In the former we do not include natural 

 theology, of which we are to speak anon, but restrict our 

 selves to inspired divinity, the treatment of which we re 

 serve for the close of the work, as the fruit and sabbath of 

 all human contemplations. Philosophy has three objects; 

 viz., God, nature, and man; as also three kinds of rays 

 for nature strikes the human intellect with a direct ray, 

 God with a refracted ray, from the inequality of the medium 

 between the Creator and the creatures, and man, as ex- 



