The First Book 29 



10. So in natural history, we see there hath not been that 

 choice and judgment used as ought to have been; as may 

 appear in the writings of Plinius, Cardanus/ Albertus,^ and 

 divers of the Arabians, being fraught with much fabulous 

 matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously un- 

 true, to the great derogation of the credit of natural philo- 

 sophy with the grave and sober kind of wits: wherein the 

 wisdom and integrity of Aristotle is worthy to be observed ; 

 that, having made so diligent and exquisite a history of 

 living creatures, hath mingled it sparingly with any vain or 

 feigned matter: and yet on the other sake,^ hath cast all 

 prodigious narrations, which he thought worthy the record- 

 ing, into one book : * excellently discerning that matter of 

 manifest truth (such whereupon observation and rule were 

 to be built), was not to be mingled or weakened with matter 

 of doubtful credit ; and yet again, that rarities and reports 

 that seem incredible are not to be suppressed or denied to 

 the memory of men. 



11. And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts 

 and opinions, it is likewise of two kinds; either when too 

 much belief is attributed to the arts themselves, or to 

 certain authors in any art. The sciences themselves, 

 which have had better intelligence and confederacy with 

 the imagination of man than with his reason, are three in 

 number ; astrology, natural magic, and alchemy : of which 

 sciences, nevertheless, the ends or pretences are noble. For 

 astrology pretendeth to discover that correspondence or 

 concatenation which is between the superior globe and the 

 inferior : natural magic pretendeth to call and reduce natural 

 philosophy from variety of speculations to the magnitude of 

 works: and alchemy pretendeth to make separation of all 

 the unlike parts of bodies which in mixtures of nature are 

 incorporate. But the derivations and prosecutions to these 

 ends, both in the theories and in the practices, are full of 

 error and vanity; which the great professors themselves 



^ Cardan — born in Pavia, 1501 — wrote about 122 works on 

 Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrology, Medicine, Ethics, 

 Music, etc. 



* Albertus Magnus — bom in Swabia, about 11 98 — the most 

 learned man of his a^e. 



^ So in all the early editions; side has been suggested. 



* Oavfidcria ^AKova/xaTa — a treatise now recognised as spurious. 



