II.] A D VA NCEMENT OF LEA RNING. \ $3 



lively observe how the mind doth gather this excellent dew of 

 knowledge, like unto that which the poet spcakcth of, &quot; A&amp;lt; : rci m. llis 

 coelcstia dona,&quot; distilling and contriving it out of particulars naturpJ 

 and artificial, as the flowers of the field and garden, shall find, thai 

 the mind of herself by nature doth manage and act an induction much 

 better than they describe it. For to conclude upon an enumeration 

 of particulars without instance contradictory, is no conclusion, but a 

 conjecture ; for who can assure, in many subjects, upon those par 

 ticulars which appear of a side, that there arc not other on the con 

 trary side which appear not. As if Samuel should have rested upon 

 those sons of Jesse, which were brought before him, and failed of 

 David which was in the field. And this form, to say truth, is so gross, 

 as it had not been possible for wits so subtile, as have managed 

 these things, to have offered it to the world, but that they hasted to 

 their theories and dogmaticals, and were imperious and scornful 

 toward particulars, which their manner was to use but as lictores and 

 viatorcS) for Serjeants and whifflcrs, ad suininovendam titrbatn, 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 sec how the footsteps of seduccment 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 attend 

 ing the inductions, 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 propositions 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 philsosophy likewise, 

 by way of argument or satisfactory reason, &quot; Quae assensum parit, 

 operis effocta est ; &quot; but the subtilty of nature and operations will no 

 be enchained in those bonds ; for arguments consist of propositions^ 

 and propositions of words, and words arc 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 exami 

 nation either of consequences of arguments, or of the truth of propo 

 sitions, 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, &quot; Scicntiam dissimulando simulavit :&quot; for he used to 

 disable 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 of acatalepsia^ I doubt, was not held 



