THE FIRST BOOK 195 



Tacitus wisely noteth, when he saith, Fingunt simul cre- 

 duntque : so great an affinity hath fiction and belief. 



This facility of credit, and accepting or admitting things 

 weakly authorized or warranted, is of two kinds, according 

 to the subject : for it is either a belief of history (as the 

 lawyers speak, matter of fact), or else of matter of art and 

 opinion. As to the former, we see the experience and 

 inconvenience of this error in ecclesiastical history ; which 

 hath too easily received and registered reports and narra- 

 tions of miracles wrought by martyrs, hermits, or monks 

 of the desert, and other holy men, and their relics, shrines, 

 chapels, and images : which though they had a passage for 

 a time, by the ignorance of the people, the superstitious 

 simplicity of some, and the politic toleration of others, 

 holding them but as divine poesies ; yet after a period of 

 time, when the mist began to clear up, they grew to be 

 esteemed but as old wives' fables, impostures of the clergy, 

 illusions of spirits, and badges of antichrist, to the great 

 scandal and detriment of religion. 



So in natural history, we see there hath not been that 

 choice and judgment used as ought to have been ; as may 

 appear in the writings of Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and 

 divers of the Arabians ; being fraught with much fabulous 

 matter, a great part not only untried but notoriously 

 untrue, to the great derogation of the credit of natural 

 philosophy with the grave and sober kind of wits. Wherein 

 the wisdom and integrity of Aristotle is worthy to be 

 observed ; that having made so diligent and exquisite a 

 history of living creatures, hath mingled it sparingly with 

 any vain or feigned matter ; and yet on the other side hath 

 cast all prodigious narrations which he thought worthy the 

 recording into one book ; excellently discerning that 

 matter of manifest truth, such whereupon observation and 

 rule was to be built, was not to be mingled or weakened 

 with matter of doubtful credit ; and yet again that rarities 

 and reports that seem uncredible are not to be suppressed 

 or denied to the memory of men. 



And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts 

 and opinions, it is likewise of two kinds : either when too 



