194 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



popular contempt, the people being apt to contemn truth 

 upon occasion of controversies and altercations, and to 

 think they are all out of their way which never meet : 

 and when they see such digladiation about subtleties and 

 matter of no use nor moment, they easily fall upon that 

 judgment of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verb a is fa sunf senum 

 otiosorum. 



Notwithstanding certain it is, that if those schoolmen to 

 their great thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had 

 joined variety and universality of reading and contempla- 

 tion, they had proved excellent lights, to the great 

 advancement of all learning and knowledge. But as they 

 are, they are great undertakers indeed, and fierce with dark 

 keeping ; but as in the inquiry of the divine truth their 

 pride inclined to leave the oracle of God's word and to 

 vanish in the mixture of their own inventions, so in the 

 inquisition of nature they ever left the oracle of God's 

 works and adored the deceiving and deformed images 

 which the unequal mirror of their own minds or a few 

 received authors or principles did represent unto them. 

 And thus much for the second disease of learning. 



For the third vice or disease of learning, which con- 

 cerneth deceit or untruth, it is of all the rest the foulest ; 

 as that which doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, 

 which is nothing but a representation of truth : for the 

 truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing 

 no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected. 

 This vice therefore brancheth itself into two sorts ; delight 

 in deceiving, and aptness to be deceived ; imposture and 

 credulity ; which, although they appear to be of a diverse 

 nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning, and the 

 other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most part 

 concur : for as the verse noteth, 



Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est^ 



an inquisitive man is a prattler, so upon the like reason a 

 credulous man is a deceiver : as we see it in fame, that he 

 that will easily believe rumours will as easily augment 

 rumours and add somewhat to them of his own ; which 



