116 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [BOOK 111. 



THIRD BOOK. 



CHAPTER I. 



Division of Learning into Theology and Philosophy. The latter divided 

 into the Knowledge of God, of Nature, and of Man. Construction 

 of Philosophia Prima as the Mother of all the Sciences. 



TO THE KING. 

 All history, excellent king, treads the earth, performing 

 the office of a guide rather than of a light : and poetry is, as 

 it were, the stream of knowledge, — a pleasing thing full of 

 variations, and affects to be inspired with divine rapture, to 

 which treasures also pretend. But now it is time I should 

 awake and raise myself from the earth, and explore the 

 liquid regions of philosophy and the sciences. Knowledge 

 is like waters ; some descend from the heavens, some spring 

 from the earth. For all knowledge proceeds from a twofold 

 source, — either from divine inspiration or external sense. As 

 for that knowledge which is infused by instruction, that is 

 cumulative, not original, as it is in waters, which, besides the 

 head-springs, are increased by the reception of other rivers 

 which fall into them. We shall, therefore, divide sciences into 

 theology and philosophy. In the former we do not include 

 natural theology, of which we are to speak anon, but 

 restrict ourselves to inspired divinity, the treatment of which 

 we reserve for the close of the work, as the fruit and sabbath 

 of all human contemplations. Philosophy has three objects ; 

 viz., God, nature, and man ; as also three kinds of rays — for 

 nature strikes the human intellect Avith a direct ray, God 

 ^'^» a refracted ray, from the inequality of the medium 

 .^t,w-txt the Creator and the creatures, and man, as exhibited 

 to himself, with a reflected ray : whence it is proper to 

 divide philosophy into the doctrine of the deity, the doctrine 

 of nature, and the doctrine of man. 



But as the divisions of the sciences are not like different 

 lines that meet in one angle, but rather like the branches of 

 liees that join in one trunk,'^ it is first necessary that we con- 



' - observation is the foundation of Father Castel's late piece T)% 

 wacffematique Uoiverselle, ^herein, by the help of sensible represeftta^ 



