272 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



expected in those theories ; for as the same phaenomena in 

 astronomy are satisfied by the received astronomy of the 

 diurnal motion and the proper motions of the planets with 

 their eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of 

 Copernicus who supposed the earth to move ; and the 

 calculations are indifferently agreeable to both ; so the 

 ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied 

 by several theories and philosophies ; whereas to find the 

 real truth requireth another manner of severity and atten- 

 tion. For as Aristotle saith that children at the first will 

 call every woman mother, but afterward they come to 

 distinguish according to truth ; so experience, if it be in 

 childhood, will call every philosophy mother, but when it 

 cometh to ripeness it will discern the true mother. So as 

 in the mean time it is good to see the several glosses and 

 opinions upon nature, whereof it may be every one in 

 some one point hath seen clearer than his fellows. There- 

 fore I wish some collection to be made painfully and 

 De Anti- understandingly de antiquis philosophUs, out of all 

 q phiioso. t ^ ie P oss ible light which remaineth to us of them. 

 phHs. Which kind of work I find deficient. But here I 

 must give warning, that it be done distinctly and severely ; 

 the philosophies of every one throughout by themselves ; 

 and not by titles packed and faggoted up together, as hath 

 been done by Plutarch. For it is the harmony of a 

 "^ philosophy in itself which giveth it light and credence ; 

 whereas if it be singled and broken, it will seem more 

 foreign and dissonant. For as when I read in Tacitus the 

 actions of Nero or Claudius, with circumstances of times, in- 

 ducements, and occasions, I find them not so strange ; but 

 when I read them in Suetonius Tranquillus gathered into 

 titles and bundles, and not in order of time, they seem 

 more monstrous and incredible ; so is it of any philosophy 

 reported entire, and dismembered by articles. Neither do 

 I exclude opinions of latter times to be likewise represented 

 in this calendar of sects of philosophy, as that of Theo- 

 phrastus Paracelsus, eloquently reduced into an harmony 

 by the pen of Severinus the Dane ; and that of Telesius, 

 and his scholar Donius, being as a pastoral philosophy, full 



