72 The Advancement of Learning 



rarities, and special subtilities ; which humour of vain and 

 supercilious arrogancy is justly derided in Plato; where 

 he brings in Hippias, a vaunting sophist, disputing with 

 Socrates, a true and unfeigned inquisitor of truth; where 

 the subject being touching beauty, Socrates, after his 

 wandering manner of inductions, put first an example of a 

 fair virgin, and then of a fair horse, and then of a fair pot 

 well glazed, whereat Hippias was offended, and said. More 

 than for courtesy's sake, he did think much to dispute with any 

 that did allege such base and sordid instances : whereunto 

 Socrates answered. You have reason, and it becomes you well, 

 being a man so trim in your vestments, etc., and so goeth on in 

 an irony.^ But the truth is, they be not the highest in- 

 stances that give the securest information ; as may be well 

 expressed in the tale so common of the philosopher,* that 

 while he gazed upwards to the stars fell into the water ; for 

 if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the 

 water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the 

 stars. So it cometh often to pass, that mean and small 

 things discover great, better than great can discover the 

 small : and therefore Aristotle noteth well. That the nature 

 of everything is best seen in its smallest portions. And for 

 that cause he inquireth the nature of a commonwealth, first 

 in a family, and the simple conjugations of man and wife, 

 parent and child, master and servant, which are in every 

 cottage.^ Even so likewise the nature of this great city of 

 the world, and the policy thereof, must be first sought in 

 mean concordances and small portions. So we see how 

 that secret of nature, of the turning of iron touched with the 

 loadstone towards the north, was found out in needles oi 

 iron, not in bars of iron. 



6. But if my judgment be of any weight, the use of history 

 mechanical is of all others the most radical and fundamental 

 towards natural philosophy; such natural philosophy as 

 shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable 

 speculation, but such as shall be operative to the endow- 

 ment and benefit of man's life: for it will not only minister 

 and suggest for the present many ingenious practices in all 

 trades, by a connection and transferring of the observations 



» Plato, Hipp. Maj. iii. 288 and 291. 

 •Thales. See Plat. ThecBt. i. 174. 

 • Aristot. Polit. I. iii. i, and Phvs. i. 



