300 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



beholding them in an example or two ; as first, in that 

 instance which is the root of all superstition, namely, That 

 to the nature of the mind of all men it is consonant for the 

 affirmative or active to affect more than the negative or 

 privative : so that a few times hitting or presence, counter- 

 vails oft-times failing or absence ; as was well answered by 

 Diagoras to him that shewed him in Neptune's temple the 

 great number of pictures of such as had scaped shipwrack 

 and had paid their vows to Neptune, saying, ' Advise now, 

 you that think it folly to invocate Neptune in tempest : 

 Yea but (saith Diagoras) where are they painted that are 

 drowned ? ' Let us behold it in another instance, namely, 

 4 That the spirit of man, being of an equal and uniform 

 substance, doth usually suppose and feign in nature a 

 greater equality and uniformity than is in truth.' Hence 

 it cometh that the mathematicians cannot satisfy themselves, 

 except they reduce the motions of the celestial bodies to 

 perfect circles, rejecting spiral lines, and labouring to be 

 discharged of eccentrics. Hence it cometh, that whereas 

 there are many things in nature as it were monodica, sui 

 juris, yet the cogitations of man do feign unto them 

 relatives, parallels, and conjugates, whereas no such thing 

 is ; as they have feigned an element of Fire, to keep square 

 with Earth, Water, and Air, and the like : nay, it is not 

 credible, till it be opened, what a number of fictions and 

 fancies the similitude of human actions and arts, together 

 with the making of man communis mensura^ have brought 

 into Natural Philosophy ; not much better than the heresy 

 of the Anthropomorphites, bred in the cells of gross and 

 solitary monks, and the opinion of Epicurus, answerable 

 to the same in heathenism, who supposed the gods to be of 

 human shape. And therefore Velleius the Epicurian 

 needed not to have asked, why God should have adorned 

 the heavens with stars, as if he had been an Aedilis, one 

 that should have set forth some magnificent shows or plays. 

 For if that great work-master had been of an human dis- 

 positioa, he would have cast the stars into some pleasant 

 and beautiful works and orders, like the frets in the roofs 

 of houses ; whereas one can scarce find a posture in square 



