THE FIRST BOOK. 37 



Another error hath proceeded from too great a rever 

 ence, and a kind of adoration of the mind and understanding 

 of man ; by means whereof, men have withdrawn themselves 

 too much from the contemplation of nature, and the obser 

 vations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in 

 their own reason and conceits. Upon these intellectualists, 

 which are, notwithstanding, commonly taken for the most 

 sublime and divine philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just 

 censure, saying, Men sought truth in their own little worlds, 

 and not in the great and common world ; for they disdain 10 

 to spell, and so by degrees to read in the volume of God's 

 works : and contrariwise, by continual meditation, and 

 agitation of wit, do urge and as it were invocate their own 

 spirits to divine, and give oracles unto them, whereby 

 they are deservedly deluded. 



Another error that hath some connection with this 

 latter, is, that men have used to infect their meditations, 

 opinions, and doctrines, with some conceits which they have 

 most admired, or some sciences which they have most 

 applied ; and given all things else a tincture according to 20 

 them, utterly untrue and improper. So hath Plato inter 

 mingled his philosophy with theology, and Aristotle with 

 logic ; and the second school of Plato, Proclus and the rest, 

 with the mathematics. For these were the arts which had 

 a kind of primogeniture with them severally. So have 

 the alchemists made a philosophy out of a few experiments, 

 of the furnace ; and Gilbertus, our countryman, hath made a 

 philosophy out of the observations of a loadstone. So Cicero, 

 when, reciting the several opinions of the nature of the soul, 

 he found a musician that held the soul was but a harmony, 30 

 saith pleasantly, Hie ab arte sua non recessit, [This man 

 is faithful to his art,] etc. But of these conceits Aristotle 

 speaketh seriously and wisely, when he saith, Qui respiciunt 

 ad pauca de facili pronunciant : [Men, who only take a few 

 things into consideration, find it easy to give an opinion.] 



Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to 



