THE FIRST BOOK 37 



may perchance be further polished and illustrate and 

 accommodated for use and practice ; but it increaseth 

 no more in bulk and substance. 



5. Another error which doth succeed that which we 

 last mentioned, is, that after the distribution of par- 

 ticular arts and sciences, men have abandoned univers- 

 ality, or philosojihia prima : which cannot but cease' 

 and stop all progression. For no perfect discovery 

 can be made upon a flat or a level : neither is it possible 

 to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any 

 science, if you stand but upon the level of the same 

 science, and ascend not to a higher science. 



6. Another error hath proceeded from too great 

 a reverence, and a kind of adoration of the mind and 

 understanding of man ; by means whereof, men have 

 withdrawn themselves too much from the contempla- 

 tion of nature, and the observations of experience, and 

 have tumbled up and down in their own reason and 

 conceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are not- 

 withstanding 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 to spell, and so by degrees to read in the volume 

 of God's works : and contrariwise by continual medita- 

 tion 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. 



7. Another error that hath some connexion with thiaX 

 latter is, that men have used to infect their medita- ', 

 tions, 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 them, utterly untrue and unproper. Soi 

 hath Plato intermingled his philosophy with theology, j 

 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 primo- 

 geniture with them severally. So have the alchemists 

 made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the 



