THE FIRST BOOK 29 



deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance ; 

 because it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, 

 and quencheth the desire of further search, before we 

 come to a just period. But then if a man be to have 

 any use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of con- 

 ference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, then 

 shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors 

 which write in that manner. But the excess of this is 

 so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw 

 the image of Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said 

 in disdain, ' Nil sacri es ' ; so there is none of Hercules' 

 followers in learning, that is, the more severe and 

 laborious sort of inquirers into truth, but will despise 

 those dehcacies and affectations, as indeed capable of 

 no divineness. " And thus much of the first disease or 

 distemper of learning. 



5. The second which followeth is in nature worse 

 than the former : for as substance of matter is better 

 than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is 

 worse than vain words : wherein it seemeth the re- 

 prehension of Saint Paul was not only proper for those 

 times, but prophetical for the times following ; and 

 not only respective to divinity, but extensive to all 

 knowledge : ' Devita profanas vocum novitates, et 

 oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae.' For ho assigneth 

 two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science : 

 the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms ; the 

 other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity 

 doth induce oppositions, and so questions and alterca- 

 tions. ^ Surely, like as many substances in nature which 

 are solid do putrify and corrupt into worms ; so it is the 

 property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and 

 dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, 

 and (as I may term them) vormiculate questions, which 

 have indeed a kind of quickness and hfe of spirit, but 

 no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This 

 kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst 

 the schoolmen : who having sharp and strong wits, and 

 abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but 

 their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors 



