124 -The Advancement of Learning 



because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the 

 first occasion. So as it should seem, that hitherto men are 

 rather beholding to a wild goat for surgery, or to a nightin- 

 gale for music, or to the ibis for some part of physic, or to tlie 

 pot-lid that flew open for artillery, or generally to chance,^ 

 or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and 

 sciences. Neither is the form of invention which Virgil 

 describeth much other : 



Ut varias usus meditando extunderet artes 

 Paulatim.* 



For if you observe the words well, it is no other method 

 than that which brute beasts are capable of, and do put in 

 ure ; which is a perpetual intending or practising some one 

 thing, urged and imposed by an absolute necessity of con- 

 servation of being; for so Cicero saith very truly, Usus uni 

 rei deditus et naturam et artem scBpe vincit} And therefore 

 if it be said of men, 



Labor omnia vincit 

 Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas ! • 



it is likewise said of beasts, 



Quis psittaco docuit suum x«'/>f ? * 



Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a 

 hollow tree, where she espied water, that the water might 

 rise so as she might come to it ; Who taught the bee to sail 

 through such a vast sea of air, and to find the way from a 

 field in flower a great way off to her hive ? Who taught the 

 ant to bite every grain of com that she burieth in her hill, 

 lest it should take root and grow? Add then the word 

 extundere, which importeth the extreme difficulty, and the 

 word paulatim, which importeth the extreme slowness, and 

 we are where we were, even amongst the Egyptians' gods; 

 there being little left to the faculty of reason, and nothing 

 to the duty of art, for matter of invention. 

 3. Secondly, the Induction which the Logicians speak of, 

 and which seemeth familiar with Plato (whereby the 

 Principles of Sciences may be pretended to be invented, and 



• T^X»''7 T'^ijv fcrep^ey xal rvxv rix^-qv. Arist. Eth. Nic. vi. 4. 

 *Georg. i. 133. 



• Cic. p. Corn. Balh. xx. 45. • Virg. Georg. i. 145. 



• Pers. Prol. 8, where it is expedivii. 



