32 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



art and opinion. As to the former, we see the experience 

 and inconvenience of this error in ecclesiastical history ; 

 which hath too easily received and registered reports, and 

 narrations of miracles wrought by martyrs, hermits, or 

 monks of the desert, and other holy men, and their relics, 

 shrines, chapels, and images : which though they had a 

 passage for a time, by the ignorance of the people, the 

 superstitious simplicity of some, and the politic toleration 

 of others holding them but as divine poesies ; yet after a 



10 period of time, when the mist began to clear up, they grew 

 to be esteemed but as old wives' fables, impostures of the 

 clergy, illusions of spirits, and badges of Antichrist, to the 

 great scandal and detriment of religion. 



So in natural history, we see there hath not been that 

 choice and judgment used as ought to have been ; as may 

 appear in the writings of Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and 

 divers of the Arabians, being fraught with much fabulous 

 matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously 

 untrue, to the great derogation of the credit of natural 



20 philosophy with the grave and sober kind of wits : wherein 

 the wisdom and integrity of Aristotle is worthy to be 

 observed ; that, having made so diligent and exquisite a 

 history of living creatures, hath mingled it sparingly with 

 any vain or feigned matter : and yet, on the other side, 

 hath cast all prodigious narrations, which he thought 

 worthy the recording, into one book : excellently discerning 

 that matter of manifest truth, (such, whereupon observation 

 and rule were to be built,) was not to be mingled or weak 

 ened with matter of doubtful credit ; and yet again, that 



30 rarities and reports that seem incredible are not to be 

 suppressed or denied to the memory of men. 



And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to 

 arts and opinions, it is likewise of two kinds ; either when 

 too much belief is attributed to the arts themselves, or to 

 certain authors in any art. The sciences themselves, which 

 have had better intelligence and confederacy with the 



