THE SECOND BOOK 293 



their manner was to use but as lictores and viatores, for 

 sergeants and whifflers, ad summovendam turbam, to make 

 way and make room for their opinions, rather than in their 

 true use and service. Certainly it is a thing may touch 

 a man with a religious wonder, to see how the footsteps of 

 seducement are the very same in divine and human truth : 

 for as in divine truth man cannot endure to become as a 

 child ; so in human, they reputed the attending the Induc- 

 tions (whereof we speak) as if it were a second infancy 

 or childhood. 



Thirdly, allow some Principles or Axioms were rightly 

 induced, yet nevertheless certain it is that Middle Propo- 

 sitions cannot be deduced from them in subject of nature 

 by Syllogism, that is, by touch and reduction of them to 

 principles in a middle term. It is true that in sciences 

 popular, as moralities, laws, and the like, yea and divinity 

 (because it pleaseth God to apply himself to the capacity of 

 the simplest), that form may have use; and in natural 

 philosophy likewise, by way of argument or satisfactory 

 reason, quae assensum parit^ opens effoeta est, but the subtlety 

 of nature and operations will not be enchained in those 

 bonds: for Arguments consist of Propositions, and Pro- 

 positions of Words ; and Words are but the current tokens 

 or marks of Popular Notions of things ; which notions, if 

 they be grossly and variably collected out of particulars, it 

 is not the laborious examination either of consequences of 

 arguments or of the truth of propositions, that can ever 

 correct that error ; being (as the physicians speak) in the 

 first digestion : and therefore it was not without cause, 

 that so many excellent philosophers became Sceptics and 

 Academics, and denied any certainty of knowledge or 

 comprehension, and held opinion that the knowledge of 

 man extended only to appearances and probabilities. It is 

 true that in Socrates it was supposed to be but a form of 

 irony, Scientiam dissimulando simulavit, for he used to dis- 

 able his knowledge, to the end to enhance his knowledge ; 

 like the humour of Tiberius in his beginnings, that would 

 reign, but would not acknowledge so much; and in the 

 later Academy, which Cicero embraced, this opinion also 



