The First Book 59 



and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most 2 

 aspire, which is, immortahty or continuance: for to this 

 tendeth generation, and raising of houses and f amihes ; to 

 this buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth 

 the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect 

 the strength of all other human desires. We see then how 

 far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable 

 than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have 

 not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred 

 years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; dur- 

 ing which time, infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have 

 been decayed and demohshed? It is not possible to have 

 the true pictiu-es or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar ; no, 

 nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; 

 for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but 

 leese of the hfe and truth. But the images of men's wits 

 and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong 

 of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are 

 they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, 

 and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and 

 causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages: 

 so that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, 

 which carrieth riches and conunodities from place to place, 

 and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of 

 their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, 

 which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make 

 ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, 

 and inventions, the one of the other ? Nay further, we see 

 some of the philosophers which were least divine, and most 

 immersed in the senses, and denied generally the immor- 

 tality of the soul, yet came to this point, that whatsoever 

 motions the spirit of man could act and perform without 

 the organs of the body, they thought might remain after 

 death, which were only those of the imderstanding, and not 

 of the affection : so immortal and incorruptible a thing did 

 knowledge seem irnto them to be. But we, that know by 

 divine revelation that not only the understanding but the 

 affections purified, not only the spirit but the body changed, 

 shall be advanced to immortality, do disclaim in^ these 



* So all three editions. The Latin has Nos autem . . . concul- 

 cantes hcBc rudimenta . . . novimus. Perhaps in should be omitted 

 — " do disclaim these rudiments of the senses." 



