182 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Book 



So that it was no marvel, the manner of antiquity being to con 

 secrate inventors, that the ./Egyptians had so few human idols in their 

 temples, but almost all brute ; 



| Omnigenumqtie Deum monstra, et latrator Anubis, 



Contra Neptunum, et Venerem, contraque Minervam, etc. 



And if you like better the tradition of the Grecians, and ascribe the 

 first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe that Prometheus 

 first struck the flints, and marvelled at the spark, than that when he 

 first struck the flints he expected the spark; and therefore we see the 

 West Indian Prometheus had no intelligence with the European, 

 because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the first occasion : 

 so as it should seem, that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild 

 goat for surgery, or to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for some 

 part of physic, or to the potlid that fled open for artillery, or generally 

 to chance, or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and 

 sciences. Neither is the form of invention which Virgil describcth 

 much other. 



Ut varias usus mcditando cxtunderet artcs 

 Paulatim. 



For if you observe the words well, it is no other method than that 

 which brute beasts are capable of and do put in use : which is a per 

 petual intending or practising some one thing, urged and imposed by 

 an absolute necessity of conservation of being ; for so Cicero saith very 

 truly, &quot; Usus uni rei deditus, et naturam et artcm sa?pe vincit,&quot; And 

 therefore if it be said of men, 



Labor omnia vincit 

 Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas ; 



it is likewise said of beasts, &quot;Quis psittaco docuit suum xa?pe; w 

 &quot;Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into an hollow 

 tree, where she espied water, that the water might rise so as she might 

 come to it ? Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea of 

 air, and to find the way from a field in flower, a great way off, to her 

 hive? Who taught the ant to bite every grain of corn that she 

 burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow? Add then the 

 word cxtundere, which importeth the extreme difficulty ; and the word 

 paulatim^ which importeth the extreme slowness ; and we are where 

 we were, even amongst the ^Egyptian gods ; there being little left to 

 the faculty of reason, and nothing to the duty of art, for matter of 

 invention. 



Secondly, the induction which the logicians speak of, and which 

 secmeth familiar with Plato, whereby the principles of sciences may be 

 pretended to be invented, and so the middle propositions by derivation 

 from the principles ; their form of induction, I say, is utterly vicious 

 and incompetent ; wherein their errand is the fouler, because it is the 

 duty of art to perfect and exalt nature ; but they contrariwise have 

 wronged, abused, and traduced nature. For he that shall atten- 



