38 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. 

 For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two 

 ways of action, commonly spoken of by the ancients ; the 

 one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end 

 impassable ; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, 

 but after a while fair and even : so it is in contemplation ; 

 if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts ; 

 but if lie will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end 

 in certainties.^ 



10 Another error is in the manner of the tradition and 

 delivery of knowledge, which is for the most part magistral 

 and peremptory, and not ingenuous and faithful ; in a sort as 

 may be soonest believed, and not easiliest examined. It is 

 true, that in compendious treatises for practice, that form is 

 not to be disallowed : but in the true handling of knowledge, 

 men ought not to fall either, on the one side, into the vein of 

 Velleius the Epicurean, Nil tarn metuens, quam ne dubitare 

 aliqua de re videretur: [Fearing nothing so much as that he 

 might seem to be in doubt about anything :] nor, on the other 



20 side, into Socrates hisjrontcal doubting of all things ; but to 

 propound things sincerely, with more or less asseveration, as 

 they stand in a man's own judgment proved more or less. 



Other errors there are in the scope that men propound 

 to themselves, whereunto they bend their endeavours ; for 

 whereas the more constant and devoted kind of professors 

 of any science ought to propound to themselves to make some 

 additions to their science, they convert their labours to 

 aspire to certain second prizes ; as to be a profound interpreter 

 or commenter, to be a sharp champion or defender, to be a 



30 methodical compounder or abridger, and so the patrimony of 

 knowledge cometh to be sometimes improved, but seldom 

 augmented. 



But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking 



or misplacing of the last or furthest end of "knowledge : for 



r men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, 



sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; 



