THE FIRST BOOK. 25 



answered, It was not his fault, but it was the fault of 

 Dionysius, that had his ears in his feet Neither was it 

 accounted weakness, but discretion in him that would not 

 dispute his best with Adrianus Caesar ; excusing himself, 

 That it was reason to yield to him that commanded thirty 

 legions. These and the like applications, and stooping to 

 points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed ; 

 for though they may have some outward baseness, yet in a 

 judgment truly made they are to be accounted submissions 

 to the occasion and not to the person. 10 



Now I proceed to those errors and vanities which have 

 intervened amongst the studies themselves of the learned, 

 which is that which is principal and proper to the 

 present argument ; wherein my purpose is not to make a 

 justification of the errors, but, by a censure and separation 

 of the errors, to make a justification of that which is good 

 and sound, and to deliver that from the aspersion of the 

 other. For we see, that it is the manner of men to scandalize 

 and deprave that which retaineth the state and virtue, by 

 taking advantage upon that which is corrupt and degenerate : 20 

 as the heathens in the primitive church used to blemish and 

 taint the Christians with the faults and corruptions of 

 heretics. But nevertheless I have no meaning at this time 

 to make any exact animadversion of the errors and impedi-U*''^' 

 merits in matters of learning, which are more secret and 

 remote from vulgar opinion, but only to speak unto such as 

 do fall under or near unto a popular observation. 



There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, 

 whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those 

 things we do esteem vain, which are either false or frivolous, 30 

 those which either have no truth, or no use : and those 

 persons we esteem vain, which are either credulous orf 

 curious ; and curiosity is either in matter or words : so that 

 in reason, as well as in experience, there fall out to be these 

 three distempers, as I may term them, of learning ; the first, 



