ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 175 



fancy, and those conceptions which are now trite and vulgar 

 were new and unheard of, everything was full of parables and 

 similitudes, otherwise the things then proposed would either 

 have been passed over without due notice and attention, or else 

 have been rejected as paradoxes. For it is a rule in the doc- 

 trine of delivery, that every science which comports not with 

 anticipations and prejudices must seek the assistance of similes 

 and allusions. And thus much for the different kinds of 

 methods, which have not hitherto been observed ; but for the 

 others, as the analytic, systatic, diaeretic, cryptic, homeric, etc., 

 they are already justly discovered and ranged. 



Method has two parts, one regarding the disposition of a 

 whole work or the subject of a book, and the other the limita- 

 tion of propositions. For architecture not only regards the 

 fabric of the whole building, but also the figure of the columns, 

 arches, etc. ; for method is as it were the architecture of the 

 sciences. And herein Ramus has deserved better, by reviving 

 the ancient rules of method, than by obtruding his own dichot- 

 omies. But I know not by what fatality it happens that, as the 

 poets often feign, the most precious things have the most per- 

 nicious keepers. Doubtless the endeavors of Ramus about 

 the reduction of propositions threw him upon his epitomes, and 

 the flats and shallows of the sciences : for it must be a fortunate 

 and well-directed genius that shall attempt to make the axioms 

 of the sciences convertible, and not at the same time render them 

 circular, that is, keep them from returning into themselves. 

 And yet the attempt of Ramus in this way has not been useless. 



There are still two other limitations of propositions, besides 

 that for making them convertible the one for extending and 

 the other for producing them. For if it be just that the sciences 

 have two other dimensions, besides depth, viz. length and 

 breadth, their depth bearing relation to their truth and reality, 

 as these are what constitute their solidity ; their breadth may 

 be computed from one science to another, and their length from 

 the highest degree to the lowest in the same science the one 

 comprehends the ends and true boundaries of the sciences, 

 whence propositions may be treated distinctly, and not promis- 

 cuously, and all repetition, excursion, and confusion avoided; 

 the other prescribes a rule how far and to what particular de- 

 gree the propositions of the sciences are to be reduced. But 

 no doubt something must here be left to practice and experi- 



