

II.] ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. 169 



untruth, that man s knowledge be not weakened nor embascd by such 

 dross and vanity. 



As for the doubts or iwn liquets general or in total, I understand 

 these differences of opinions touching the principles of nature, and the 

 fundamental points of the same, which have caused the diversity 

 of sects, schools, and philosophies, as that of Empcdocles, Pytha 

 goras, Democritus. Parmenides, and the rest. For although Aristotle, 

 as though he had been of the race of the Ottomans, thought he could 

 not reign, except the first thing he did he killed all his brethren ; yet 

 to those that seek truth and not magistrality, it cannot but seem a 

 matter of great profit, to see before them the several opinions touching 

 the foundations of nature : not for any exact truth that can be expected 

 in those theories : for as the same phenomena in astronomy arc satis 

 fied by the received astronomy of the diurnal motion and the proper 

 ir.otions of the planets, with their eccentrics, and epicycles ; and like 

 wise by the theory of Copernicus, who supposed the earth to move, 

 and liic calculations are indifferently agreeable to both : so the ordin 

 ary face and view of experience is many times satisfied by several 

 theories and philosophies ; whereas to find the real truth requircth 

 another manner of severity and attention. For, as Aristotle saith, 

 th dt children at the first will call every woman mother, but afterwards 

 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 understandingly 

 de antiquis philosophiis, out of all the possible light which remaincth 

 to us of them: which kind of work I find deficient. But here I must 

 give warning, that it be done distinctly and severally, the philosophies 

 of every one throughout by themselves, and not by titles packed and 

 fagotted up together, as hath been done by Plutarch. For it is the 

 harmony of a philosophy itself, which givcth 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, inducements and occasions, I 

 find them not so strange ; but when I read them in Suetonius Tran- 

 quillus, gathered into titles and bundles, and not in order of time 

 they seem more monstrous and incredible ; so it is of any philosophy 

 jceportcd entire, and dismembered by articles. Neither do I exclude 

 opinions of latter times to be likewise represented in this kalcndar cf 

 sects of philosophy, as that of Thcophrastus Paracelsus, eloquently 

 reduced into an harmony by the pen of Scvcrinus the Dane, and thai 

 of Tilesius, and his scholar Donius, being as a pastoral philosophy, 

 full of sense, but of no great depth : and that of Fracastorius, who 

 though he pretended not to make any new philosophy, yet did use the 

 absoluteness of his own sense upon the old : and that of Gilbcrtus, our 

 countryman, who revived, with some alterations and demonstrations, the 

 Opinions of Xenophanes : and any other worthy to be admitted. 



