i c ;6 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Book 



tainly there must be somewhat left to practice ; buthowmuch is worthy 

 the inquiry. We see remote and superficial generalities do but offer 

 knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice, 

 than an Ortelius s universal map is to direct the way between London 

 and York. The better sort of rules have been not unfitly compared to 

 glasses of steel unpolished ; where you may see the images of things, 

 but first they must be filed : so the rules will help, if they be laboured 

 and polished by practice. But how crystalline they may be made at 

 the first, and how far forth they|may be polished aforehand, is the ques 

 tion ; the inquiry whereof scemeth to me deficient. 



There hath been also laboured, and put in practice, a method, 

 which is not a lawful method, but a method of imposture, which is, to 

 deliver knowledges in such a manner as men may speedily come to 

 make a show of learning, who have it not : such was the travel of Ray- 

 mundus Lullius in making that art, which bears his name, not unlike 

 to some books of typocosmy which have been made since, being no 

 thing but a mass of words of all arts, to give men countenance, that 

 those which use the terms might be thought to understand the art ; 

 which collections are much like a fripper s or broker s shop, that hath 

 ends of everything, but nothing of worth. 



Now we descend to that part which concerneth the illustration of 

 tradition, comprehended in that science which we call Rhetoric, or 

 art of eloquence ; a science excellent, and excellently well laboured. 

 For although in true value it is inferior to wisdom, as it is said by God 

 to Moses, when he disabled himself for want of this faculty, &quot; Aaron 

 shall be thy speaker, and thou shalt be to him as God :&quot; Yet with 

 people it is the more mighty : for so Solomon saith, &quot; Sapiens corde 

 appellabitur prudens, sed dulcis eloquio majora reperiet ;&quot; signifying, 

 that profoundness of wisdom will help a man to a name or admira 

 tion, but that it is eloquence that prevailed! in an active life ; and as to 

 the labouring of it, the emulation of Aristotle with the rhetoricians of 

 his time, and the experience of Cicero, hath made them in their works 

 of rhetorics exceed themselves. Again, the excellency of examples of 

 eloquence in the orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, added to the 

 perfection of the precepts of eloquence, hath doubled the progression 

 in this art : and therefore the deficiencies which I shall note, will rather 

 be in some collections, which may as handmaids attend the art, than 

 in the rules or use of the art itself. 



^ Notwithstanding, to stir the earth a little about the roots of this 

 science, as we have done of the rest ; the duty and office of rhetoric is 

 to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will : for 

 we sec reason is disturbed in the administration thereof by three 

 means : by illaqueation or sophism, which pertains to logic ; by 

 imagination or impression, which pertains to rhetoric ; and by passion 

 or alfection, which pertains to morality. And as in negociation with 

 others, men are wrought by cunning, by importunity, and by vehe- 

 mency ; so in this negociation within ourselves, men are undermined 



nconscquences, solicited and importuned by impressions or obser 

 vations, and transported by passions. Neither is the nature of man SQ 



