2 6 The Advancement of Learning 



many substances in nature which are soHd 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, vermiculate 

 questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life 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 (chiefly 

 Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the 

 cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing httle history, 

 either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of 

 matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto those 

 laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books.* 

 For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which 

 is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh 

 according to the stuff, and is limited thereby ; but if it work 

 upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, 

 and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for 

 the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or 

 profit. 

 6. This same unprofitable subtility or curiosity is of two 

 sorts; either in the subject itself that they handle, when 

 it is a fruitless speculation or controversy, (whereof there 

 are no small number both in Divinity and Philosophy,) or in 

 the manner or method of handling of a knowledge, which 

 amongst them was this; upon every particular position 

 or assertion to frame objections, and to those objections, 

 solutions ; which solutions were for the most part not con- 

 futations but distinctions: whereas indeed the strength of 

 all sciences is, as the strength of the old man's fagot, in the 

 band. For the harmony of a science, supporting each part 

 the other, is and ought to be the true and brief confutation 

 and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections. But, 

 on the other side, if you 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 your pleasure : so that, 

 as was said of Seneca, Verhorum minutiis rerum frangit 



* For his judgment — a harsh one — on the Schoolmen, see the 

 Nov. Org. i. 71. 



• See Hallam, Hist, of Lit. vol. i. init. § 18-23, 



