BOOK I.] DISREGARD TO TRUTH, AlH) CREDULITY. i1 



judgment of Dionysius, " That it is old men's idle talk."™ 

 But if those schoolmen, to their great thirst of truth, and 

 unwearied exercise of wit, had joined variety of reading and 

 contemplation, they would have proved excellent lights to 

 the great advancement of all kinds of arts and sciences. 

 And thus much for the second disease of learning. 



The third disease, which regards deceit or falsehood, is the 

 foulest ; as destroying the essential form of knowledge, 

 which is nothing but a representation of truth ; for the 

 truth of existence and the truth of knowledge are the same 

 tiling, or differ no more than the direct and reflected ray. 

 This vice, therefore, branches into two ; viz., delight in 

 deceiving and aptness to be deceived ; imposture and credu- 

 lity, which, though apparently different, the one seeming to 

 proceed from cunning, and the other from simplicity, yet 

 they generally concur. Tor, as in the verse, 



" Percontatorem fugito ; nam garrulus Idem est/' 



Hor. lib. i. epis. xviii. v. 69. 



an inquisitive man is a prattler ; so a credulous man is a 

 deceiver ; for he who so easily believes rumours, will as 

 easily increase them. Tacitus has wisely expressed this law 

 of our nature in these words, " Fingunt simul creduntque."" 

 This easiness of belief, and admitting things upon weak 

 authority, is of two kinds, according to the subject ; being 

 cither a belief of history and matter of fact, or else matter 

 of art and opinion. We see the inconvenience of the formei 

 in ecclesiastical history, which has too easily received and 

 registered relations of miracles wrought by martyrs, hermits, 

 monks, and their relics, shrines, chapels, and images. So 

 in natural history, there has not been much judgment 

 employed, as appears from the writings of Pliny, Carban, 

 Albertus, and many of the Arabians; which are full of 

 fabulous matters : many of them not only untried, but 

 notoriously false, to the great discredit of natural philosophy 

 with grave and sober minds. But the produce and integrity 

 of Aristotle is here worthy our observation, who, having 

 compiled an exact history of animals, dashed it very sparingly 

 with fable or fiction, throwing all strange reports which he 



■ P*og. Laert. iii. 18, life of Plato. ■ Tacit. Hist. b. i. 51 



