Chapter 3

CAP. 4.

OF THE IMPEDIMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE, BEING THE 4TH CHAPTER, THE PREFACE ONLY OF IT.

In some things it is more hard to attempt than to achieve, which falleth out when the difficulty is not so much in the matter or subject, as it is in the crossness and indisposition of the mind of man to think of any such thing, to will or to resolve it. And therefore Titus Livius in his declamatory digression wherein he doth depress and extenuate the honour of Alexander's conquests saith, NIHIL ALIUD QUAM BENE AUSUS VANA CONTEMNERE: in which sort of things it is the manner of men first to wonder that any such thing should be possible, and after it is found out to wonder again how the world should miss it so long. Of this nature I take to be the invention and discovery of knowledge, etc.

THE IMPEDIMENTS WHICH HAVE BEEN IN THE TIMES, AND IN DIVERSION OF WITS, BEING THE 5TH CHAPTER, A SMALL FRAGMENT IN THE BEGINNING OF THAT CHAPTER.

The encounters of the times have been nothing favourable and prosperous for the invention of knowledge; so as it is not only the daintiness of the seed to take, and the ill mixture and unliking of the ground to nourish or raise this plant, but the ill season also of the weather by which it hath been checked and blasted. Especially in that the seasons have been proper to bring up and set forward other more hasty and indifferent plants, whereby this of knowledge bath been starved and overgrown; for in the descent of times always there hath been somewhat else in reign and reputation, which hath generally aliened and diverted wits and labours from that employment.

For as for the uttermost antiquity which is like fame that muffles her head and tells tales, I cannot presume much of it; for I would not willingly imitate the manner of those that describe maps, which when they come to some far countries whereof they have no knowledge, set down how there be great wastes and deserts there: so I am not apt to affirm that they knew little, because what they knew is little known to us. But if you will judge of them by the last traces that remain to us, you will conclude, though not so scornfully as Aristotle doth, that saith our ancestors were extreme gross, as those that came newly from being moulded out of the clay or some earthly substance; yet reasonably and probably thus, that it was with them in matter of knowledge but as the dawning or break of day. For at that time the world was altogether home-bred, every nation looked little beyond their own confines or territories, and the world had no through lights then, as it hath had since by commerce and navigation, whereby there could neither be that contribution of wits one to help another, nor that variety of particulars for the correcting of customary conceits.

And as there could be no great collection of wits of several parts or nations, so neither could there be any succession of wits of several times, whereby one might refine the other, in regard they had not history to any purpose. And the manner of their traditions was utterly unfit and unproper for amplification of knowledge. And again the studies of those times, you shall find, besides wars, incursions, and rapines, which were then almost every where betwixt states adjoining (the use of leagues and confederacies being not then known), were to populate by multitude of wives and generation, a thing at this day in the waster part of the West-Indies principally affected; and to build sometimes for habitation towns and cities, sometimes for fame and memory monuments, pyramids, colosses, and the like. And if there happened to rise up any more civil wits; then would he found and erect some new laws, customs, and usages, such as now of late years, when the world was revolute almost to the like rudeness and obscurity, we see both in our own nation and abroad many examples of, as well in a number of tenures reserved upon men's lands, as in divers customs of towns and manors, being the devices that such wits wrought upon in such times of deep ignorance, etc.

THE IMPEDIMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE FOR WANT OF A TRUE SUCCESSION OF WITS, AND THAT HITHERTO THE LENGTH OF ONE MAN'S LIFE HATH BEEN THE GREATEST MEASURE OF KNOWLEDGE, BEING THE 6TH CHAPTER, THE WHOLE CHAPTER.

In arts mechanical the first device comes shortest and time addeth and perfecteth. But in sciences of conceit the first author goeth furthest and time leeseth and corrupteth. Painting, artillery, sailing, and the like, grossly managed at first, by time accommodate and refined. The philosophies and sciences of Aristotle, Plato, Democritus, Hippocrates, of most vigour at first, by time degenerated and imbased. In the former many wits and industries contributed in one: In the latter many men's wits spent to deprave the wit of one.

The error is both in the deliverer and in the receiver. He that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such form as may be soonest believed, and not as may be easiliest examined. He that receiveth knowledge desireth rather present satisfaction than expectant search, and so rather not to doubt than not to err. Glory maketh the author not to lay open his weakness, and sloth maketh the disciple not to know his strength.

Then begin men to aspire to the second prizes; to be a profound interpreter and commenter, to be a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of all knowledge goeth not on husbanded or improved, but wasted and decayed. For knowledge is like a water that will never arise again higher than the level from which it fell; and therefore to go beyond Aristotle by the light of Aristotle is to think that a borrowed light can increase the original light from whom it is taken. So then no true succession of wits having been in the world, either we must conclude that knowledge is but a task for one man's life, and then vain was the complaint that LIFE IS SHORT, AND ART IS LONG: or else, that the knowledge that now is, is but a shrub, and not that tree which is never dangerous, but where it is to the purpose of knowing Good and Evil; which desire ever riseth upon an appetite to elect and not to obey, and so containeth in it a manifest defection.

CAP. 7.

THAT THE PRETENDED SUCCESSION OF WITS HATH BEEN EVIL PLACED, FOR ASMUCH AS AFTER VARIETY OF SECTS AND OPINIONS, THE MOST POPULAR AND NOT THE TRUEST PREVAILETH AND WEARETH OUT THE REST; BEING THE 7TH CHAPTER; A FRAGMENT.

It is sensible to think that when men enter first into search and inquiry, according to the several frames and compositions of their understanding they light upon different conceits, and so all opinions and doubts are beaten over, and then men having made a taste of all wax weary of variety, and so reject the worst and hold themselves to the best, either some one if it be eminent, or some two or three if they be in some equality, which afterwards are received and carried on, and the rest extinct.

But truth is contrary, and that time is like a river which carrieth down things which are light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is sad and weighty. For howsoever governments have several forms, sometimes one governing, sometimes few, sometimes the multitude; yet the state of knowledge is ever a DEMOCRATIE, and that prevaileth which is most agreeable to the senses and conceits of people. As for example there is no great doubt but he that did put the beginnings of things to be SOLID, VOID, AND MOTION TO THE CENTRE, was in better earnest than he that put MATTER, FORM, AND SHIFT; or he that put the MIND, MOTION, AND MATTER. For no man shall enter into inquisition of nature, but shall pass by that opinion of Democritus, whereas he shall never come near the other two opinions, but leave them aloof for the schools and table-talk. Yet those of Aristotle and Plato, because they be both agreeable to popular sense, and the one was uttered with subtilty and the spirit of contradiction, and the other with a stile of ornament and majesty, did hold out, and the other gave place, etc.

CAP. 8.

OF THE IMPEDIMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE IN HANDLING IT BY PARTS, AND IN SLIPPING OFF PARTICULAR SCIENCES FROM THE ROOT AND STOCK OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE, BEING THE 8TH CHAPTER, THE WHOLE CHAPTER.

Cicero, the orator, willing to magnify his own profession, and thereupon spending many words to maintain that eloquence was not a shop of good words and elegancies but a treasury and receipt of all knowledges, so far forth as may appertain to the handling and moving of the minds and affections of men by speech, maketh great complaint of the school of Socrates; that whereas before his time the same professors of wisdom in Greece did pretend to teach an universal SAPIENCE and knowledge both of matter and words, Socrates divorced them and withdrew philosophy and left rhetoric to itself, which by that destitution became but a barren and unnoble science. And in particular sciences we see that if men fall to subdivide their labours, as to be an oculist in physic, or to be perfect in some one title of the law, or the like, they may prove ready and subtile, but not deep or sufficient, no not in that subject which they do particularly attend, because of that consent which it hath with the rest. And it is a matter of common discourse of the chain of sciences how they are linked together, insomuch as the Grecians, who had terms at will, have fitted it of a name of CIRCLE LEARNING. Nevertheless I that hold it for a great impediment towards the advancement and further invention of knowledge, that particular arts and sciences have been disincorporated from general knowledge, do not understand one and the same thing which Cicero's discourse and the note and conceit of the Grecians in their word CIRCLE LEARNING do intend. For I mean not that use which one science hath of another for ornament or help in practice, as the orator hath of knowledge of affections for moving, or as military science may have use of geometry for fortifications; but I mean it directly of that use by way of supply of light and information which the particulars and instances of one science do yield and present for the framing or correcting of the axioms of another science in their very truth and notion. And therefore that example of OCULISTS and TITLE LAWYERS doth come nearer my conceit than the other two; for sciences distinguished have a dependence upon universal knowledge to be augmented and rectified by the superior light thereof, as well as the parts and members of a science have upon the MAXIMS of the same science, and the mutual light and consent which one part receiveth of another. And therefore the opinion of Copernicus in astronomy, which astronomy itself cannot correct because it is not repugnant to any of the appearances, yet natural philosophy doth correct. On the other side if some of the ancient philosophers had been perfect in the observations of astronomy, and had called them to counsel when they made their principles and first axioms, they would never have divided their philosophy as the Cosmographers do their descriptions by globes, making one philosophy for heaven and another for under heaven, as in effect they do.

So if the moral philosophers that have spent such an infinite quantity of debate touching Good and the highest good, had cast their eye abroad upon nature and beheld the appetite that is in all things to receive and to give; the one motion affecting preservation and the other multiplication; which appetites are most evidently seen in living creatures in the pleasure of nourishment and generation; and in man do make the aptest and most natural division of all his desires, being either of sense of pleasure or sense of power; and in the universal frame of the world are figured, the one in the beams of heaven which issue forth, and the other in the lap of the earth which takes in: and again if they had observed the motion of congruity or situation of the parts in respect of the whole, evident in so many particulars; and lastly if they had considered the motion (familiar in attraction of things) to approach to that which is higher in the same kind; when by these observations so easy and concurring in natural philosophy, they should have found out this quaternion of good, in enjoying or fruition, effecting or operation, consenting or proportion, and approach or assumption; they would have saved and abridged much of their long and wandering discourses of pleasure, virtue, duty, and religion. So likewise in this same logic and rhetoric, or arts of argument and grace of speech, if the great masters of them would but have gone a form lower, and looked but into the observations of Grammar concerning the kinds of words, their derivations, deflexions, and syntax; specially enriching the same with the helps of several languages, with their differing proprieties of words, phrases, and tropes; they might have found out more and better footsteps of common reason, help of disputation, and advantages of cavillation, than many of these which they have propounded. So again a man should be thought to dally, if he did note how the figures of rhetoric and music are many of them the same. The repetitions and traductions in speech and the reports and hauntings of sounds in music are the very same things. Plutarch hath almost made a book of the Lacedaemonian kind of jesting, which joined ever pleasure with distaste. SIR, (saith a man of art to Philip king of Macedon when he controlled him in his faculty,) GOD FORBID YOUR FORTUNE SHOULD BE SUCH AS TO KNOW THESE THINGS BETTER THAN I. In taxing his ignorance in his art he represented to him the perpetual greatness of his fortune, leaving him no vacant time for so mean a skill. Now in music it is one of the ordinariest flowers to fall from a discord or hard tune upon a sweet accord. The figure that Cicero and the rest commend as one of the best points of elegancy, which is the fine checking of expectation, is no less well known to the musicians when they have a special grace in flying the close or cadence. And these are no allusions but direct communities, the same delights of the mind being to be found not only in music, rhetoric, but in moral philosophy, policy, and other knowledges, and that obscure in the one, which is more apparent in the other, yea and that discovered in the one which is not found at all in the other, and so one science greatly aiding to the invention and augmentation of another. And therefore without this intercourse the axioms of sciences will fall out to be neither full nor true; but will be such opinions as Aristotle in some places doth wisely censure, when he saith THESE ARE THE OPINIONS OF PERSONS THAT HAVE RESPECT BUT TO A FEW THINGS. So then we see that this note leadeth us to an administration of knowledge in some such order and policy as the king of Spain in regard of his great dominions useth in state; who though he hath particular councils for several countries and affairs, yet hath one council of State or last resort, that receiveth the advertisements and certificates from all the rest. Hitherto of the diversion, succession, and conference of wits.

CAP. 9.

THAT THE END AND SCOPE OF KNOWLEDGE HATH BEEN GENERALLY MISTAKEN, AND THAT MEN WERE NEVER WELL ADVISED WHAT IT WAS THEY SOUGHT; BEING THE 9TH CHAPTER, WHEREOF A FRAGMENT (WHICH IS THE END OF THE SAME CHAPTER) IS BEFORE.

It appeareth then how rarely the wits and labours of men have been converted to the severe and original inquisition of knowledge; and in those who have pretended, what hurt hath been done by the affectation of professors and the distraction of such as were no professors; and how there was never in effect any conjunction or combination of wits in the first and inducing search, but that every man wrought apart, and would either have his own way or else would go no further than his guide, having in the one case the honour of a first, and in the other the ease of a second; and lastly how in the descent and continuance of wits and labours the succession hath been in the most popular and weak opinions, like unto the weakest natures which many times have most children, and in them also the condition of succession hath been rather to defend and to adorn than to add; and if to add, yet that addition to be rather a refining of a part than an increase of the whole. But the impediments of time and accidents, though they have wrought a general indisposition, yet are they not so peremptory and binding as the internal impediments and clouds in the mind and spirit of man, whereof it now followeth to speak.

The Scripture speaking of the worst sort of error saith, ERRARE FECIT COS IN INVIO ET NON IN VIA. For a man may wander in the way, by rounding up and down. But if men have failed in their very direction and address that error will never by good fortune correct itself. Now it hath fared with men in their contemplations as Seneca saith it fareth with them in their actions, DE PARTIBUS VITAE QUISQUE DELIBERAT, DE SUMMA NEMO. A course very ordinary with men who receive for the most part their final ends from the inclination of their nature, or from common example and opinion, never questioning or examining them, nor reducing them to any clear certainty; and use only to call themselves to account and deliberation touching the means and second ends, and thereby set themselves in the right way to the wrong place. So likewise upon the natural curiosity and desire to know, they have put themselves in way without foresight or consideration of their journey's end.

For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself, and not for benefit or ostentation or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely satisfaction (which men call truth) and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions. And this did Celsus note wisely and truly, how that the causes which are in use and whereof the knowledges now received do consist, were in time minors and subsequents to the knowledge of the particulars out of which they were induced and collected; and that it was not the light of those causes which discovered particulars, but only the particulars being first found, men did fall on glossing and discoursing of the causes; which is the reason why the learning that now is hath the curse of barrenness, and is courtesanlike, for pleasure, and not for fruit. Nay to compare it rightly, the strange fiction of the poets of the transformation of Scylla seemeth to be a lively emblem of this philosophy and knowledge; a fair woman upwards in the parts of show, but when you come to the parts of use and generation, Barking Monsters; for no better are the endless distorted questions, which ever have been, and of necessity must be, the end and womb of such knowledge.

But yet nevertheless here I may be mistaken, by reason of some which have much in their pen the referring sciences to action and the use of man, which mean quite another matter than I do. For they mean a contriving of directions and precepts for readiness of practice, which I discommend not, so it be not occasion that some quantity of the science be lost; for else it will be such a piece of husbandry as to put away a manor lying somewhat scattered, to buy in a close that lieth handsomely about a dwelling. But my intention contrariwise is to increase and multiply the revenues and possessions of man, and not to trim up only or order with conveniency the grounds whereof he is already stated. Wherefore the better to make myself understood that I mean nothing less than words, and directly to demonstrate the point which we are now upon, that is, what is the true end, scope, or office of knowledge, which I have set down to consist not in any plausible, delectable, reverend, or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not revealed before for the better endowment and help of man's life; I have thought good to make as it were a Kalendar or Inventory of the wealth, furniture, or means of man according to his present estate, as far as it is known; which I do not to shew any universality of sense or knowledge, and much less to make a satire of reprehension in respect of wants and errors, but partly because cogitations new had need of some grossness and inculcation to make them perceived; and chiefly to the end that for the time to come (upon the account and state now made and cast up) it may appear what increase this new manner of use and administration of the stock (if it be once planted) shall bring with it hereafter; and for the time present (in case I should be prevented by death to propound and reveal this new light as I purpose) yet I may at the least give some awaking note both of the wants in man's present condition and the nature of the supplies to be wished; though for mine own part neither do I much build upon my present anticipations, neither do I think ourselves yet learned or wise enough to wish reasonably: for as it asks some knowledge to demand a question not impertinent, so it asketh some sense to make a wish not absurd.

CAP. 10.

THE INVENTORY, OR AN ENUMERATION AND VIEW OF INVENTIONS ALREADY DISCOVERED AND IN USE, TOGETHER WITH A NOTE OF THE WANTS AND THE NATURE OF THE SUPPLIES, BEING THE 10TH CHAPTER; AND THIS A SMALL FRAGMENT THEREOF, BEING THE PREFACE TO THE INVENTORY.

The plainest method and most directly pertinent to this intention, will be to make distribution of sciences, arts, inventions, works, and their portions, according to the use and tribute which they yield and render to the conditions of man's life, and under those several uses, being as several offices of provisions, to charge and tax what may be reasonably exacted or demanded; not guiding ourselves neither by the poverty of experiences and probations, nor according to the vanity of credulous imaginations; and then upon those charges and taxations to distinguish and present, as it were in several columns, what is extant and already found, and what is defective and further to be provided. Of which provisions, because in many of them after the manner of slothful and faulty officers and accomptants it will be returned (by way of excuse) that no such are to be had, it will be fit to give some light of the nature of the supplies, whereby it will evidently appear that they are to be compassed and procured. And yet nevertheless on the other side again it will be as fit to check and control the vain and void assignations and gifts whereby certain ignorant, extravagant, and abusing wits have pretended to indue the state of man with wonders, differing as much from truth in nature as Caesar's Commentaries differeth from the acts of King Arthur or Huon of Bourdeaux in story. For it is true that Caesar did greater things than those idle wits had the audacity to feign their supposed worthies to have done; but he did them not in that monstrous and fabulous manner.

CAP. 11.

THE CHAPTER IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE INVENTORY; BEING THE 11TH IN ORDER; A PART THEREOF.