The First Book 33 



sion. 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 rever- 

 ence, and a kind of adoration of the mind and understanding 

 of man ; by means whereof men have withdrawn themselves 

 too much from the contemplation of nature, and the 

 observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down 

 in their own reason and conceits. Upon these intellectual- 

 ists, which are notwithstanding 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 dis- 

 dain to spell, and so by degrees to read in the volume of 

 God's works : and contrariwise by continual meditation 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 connection with this 

 latter, is, that men have used to infect their meditations, 

 opinions, and doctrines, with some conceits which they have 

 most admired, or some sciences which they have most 

 appHed ; and given all things else a tincture according to them 

 utterly untrue and unproper. So hath Plato intermingled his 

 philosophy with theology, 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 primogeniture with them severally. So have the alchym- 

 ists made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the 

 furnace; and Gilbertus,^ our countryman, hath made a 

 philosophy out of the observations of a lodestone. So 

 Cicero, when reciting the several opinions of the nature of 

 the soul he found a musician that held the soul was but a 

 harmony, saith pleasantly. Hie ah arte sua non recessit, etc.* 

 But of these conceits Aristotle speaketh seriously and wisely, 

 when he saith. Qui respiciunt ad patica defacili pronunciant.^ 



^ Sext. Empir. adv. Math. vii. 133. 



* See Nov. Org. i. 63. ' See Nov. Org. i. 64. 



* Tuscul. Disp. i. x. 20. He is speaking of Aristoxenus. Plato, 

 in the Phcsdo, introduces the same analogy. 



' De Gener. et Corrupt, i. 2. v 



