ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 17 



babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called."* He 

 assigns two marks of suspected and falsified science : the one, 

 novelty and strangeness of terms ; the other, strictness of posi- 

 tions ; which necessarily induces oppositions, and thence ques- 

 tions and altercations. And indeed, as many solid substances 

 putrefy, and turn into worms, so does sound knowledge often 

 putrefy into a number of subtle, idle, and vermicular questions, 

 that have a certain quickness of life, and spirit, but no strength 

 of matter, or excellence of quality. This kind of degenerate 

 learning chiefly reigned among the schoolmen; who, having 

 subtle and strong capacities, abundance of leisure, and but small 

 variety of reading, their minds being shut up in a few authors, 

 as their bodies were in the cells of their monasteries, and thus 

 kept ignorant both of the history of nature and times ; they, with 

 infinite agitation of wit, spun out of a small quantity of matter, 

 those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their 

 books. For the human mind, if it acts upon matter, and con- 

 templates the nature of things, and the works of God, operates 

 according to the stuff, and is limited thereby ; but if it works up- 

 on itself, as the spider does, then it has no end ; but produces 

 cobwebs of learning, admirable indeed for the fineness of the 

 thread, but of no substance or profit.^ 



This unprofitable subtilty is of two kinds, and appears either 

 in the subject, when that is fruitless speculation or controversy, 

 or in the manner of treating it, which amongst them was this : 

 Upon every particular position they framed objections, and to 

 those objections solutions ; which solutions were generally not 

 confutations, but distinctions; whereas the strength of all 

 sciences is like the strength of a fagot bound. For the harmony 

 of science, when each part supports the other, is the true and 

 short confutation of all the smaller objections ; on the contrary, 

 to take out every axiom, as the sticks of the fagot, one by one, 

 you may quarrel with them, and bend them, and break them at 

 pleasure : whence, as it was said of Seneca, that he " weakened 

 the weight of things by trivial expression,"* we may truly say 

 of the schoolmen, " That they broke the solidity of the sciences 

 by the minuteness of their questions." For, were it not better 

 to set up one large light in a noble room, than to go about with 

 a small one, to illuminate every corner thereof? Yet such is 

 the method of schoolmen, that rests not so much upon the evi- 

 dence of truth from arguments, authorities, and examples, as 



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