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The Advancement of Learning

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(3) Another error, that hath also some affinity with the former, is
a conceit that of former opinions or sects after variety and
examination the best hath still prevailed and suppressed the rest;
so as if a man should begin the labour of a new search, he were but
like to light upon somewhat formerly rejected, and by rejection
brought into oblivion; as if the multitude, or the wisest for the
multitude's sake, were not ready to give passage rather to that
which is popular and superficial than to that which is substantial
and profound for the truth is, that time seemeth to be of the nature
of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light
and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and
solid.

(4) Another error, of a diverse nature from all the former, is the
over-early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and
methods; from which time commonly sciences receive small or no
augmentation. But as young men, when they knit and shape perfectly,
do seldom grow to a further stature, so knowledge, while it is in
aphorisms and observations, it is in growth; but when it once is
comprehended in exact methods, it may, perchance, be further
polished, and illustrate and accommodated for use and practice, but
it increaseth no more in bulk and substance.

(5) Another error which doth succeed that which we last mentioned
is, that after the distribution of particular arts and sciences, men
have abandoned universality, or philosophia prima, which cannot but
cease and stop all progression. For no perfect discovery can be
made upon a flat or a level; neither is it possible to discover the
more remote and deeper parts of any science if you stand but upon
the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.

(6) Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence, and a
kind of adoration of the mind and understanding of man; by means
whereof, men have withdrawn themselves too much from the
contemplation of nature, and the observations of experience, and
have tumbled up and down in their own reason and conceits. Upon
these intellectualists, which are notwithstanding commonly taken for
the most sublime and divine philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just
censure, saying: --"Men sought truth in their own little worlds, and
not in the great and common world;" for they disdain to spell, and
so by degrees to read in the volume of God's works; and contrariwise
by continual meditation and agitation of wit do urge and, as it
were, invocate their own spirits to divine and give oracles unto
them, whereby they are deservedly deluded.

(7) Another error that hath some connection with this latter is,
that men have used to infect their meditations, opinions, and
doctrines with some conceits which they have most admired, or some
sciences which they have most applied, and given all things else a
tincture according to them, utterly untrue and improper. So hath
Plato intermingled his philosophy with theology, and Aristotle with
logic; and the second school of Plato, Proclus and the rest, with
the mathematics; for these were the arts which had a kind of
primogeniture with them severally. So have the alchemists made a
philosophy out of a few experiments of the furnace; and Gilbertus
our countryman hath made a philosophy out of the observations of a
loadstone. So Cicero, when reciting the several opinions of the
nature of the soul, he found a musician that held the soul was but a
harmony, saith pleasantly, Hic ab arte sua non recessit, &c. But of
these conceits Aristotle speaketh seriously and wisely when he
saith, Qui respiciunt ad pauca de facili pronunciant.

(8) Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion
without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of
contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken
of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and
in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the
entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in
contemplation: if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end
in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall
end in certainties.

(9) Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery of
knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and
not ingenuous and faithful; in a sort as may be soonest believed,
and not easiest examined. It is true, that in compendious treatises
for practice that form is not to be disallowed; but in the true
handling of knowledge men ought not to fall either on the one side
into the vein of Velleius the Epicurean, Nil tam metuens quam ne
dubitare aliqua de revideretur: nor, on the other side, into
Socrates, his ironical doubting of all things; but to propound
things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as they stand in a
man's own judgment proved more or less.

(10) Other errors there are in the scope that men propound to
themselves, whereunto they bend their endeavours; for, whereas the
more constant and devote kind of professors of any science ought to
propound to themselves to make some additions to their science, they
convert their labours to aspire to certain second prizes: as to be
a profound interpreter or commentor, to be a sharp champion or
defender, to be a methodical compounder or abridger, and so the
patrimony of knowledge cometh to be sometimes improved, but seldom
augmented.

(11) But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or
misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge. For men have
entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a
natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain
their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and
reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and
contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom
sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason to the
benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a
couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a
terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a
fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself
upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or
a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory
of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. But this is that
which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and
action may be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together
than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the two
highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation; and
Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action, howbeit, I do not
mean, when I speak of use and action, that end before-mentioned of
the applying of knowledge to lucre and profession; for I am not
ignorant how much that diverteth and interrupteth the prosecution
and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown
before Atalanta, which, while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take
up, the race is hindered,


"Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit." {1}


Neither is my meaning, as was spoken of Socrates, to call philosophy
down from heaven to converse upon the earth--that is, to leave
natural philosophy aside, and to apply knowledge only to manners and
policy. But as both heaven and earth do conspire and contribute to
the use and benefit of man, so the end ought to be, from both
philosophies to separate and reject vain speculations, and
whatsoever is empty and void, and to preserve and augment whatsoever
is solid and fruitful; that knowledge may not be as a courtesan, for
pleasure and vanity only, or as a bond-woman, to acquire and gain to
her master's use; but as a spouse, for generation, fruit, and
comfort.

(12) Thus have I described and opened, as by a kind of dissection,
those peccant humours (the principal of them) which have not only
given impediment to the proficience of learning, but have given also
occasion to the traducement thereof: wherein, if I have been too
plain, it must be remembered, fidelia vulnera amantis, sed dolosa
oscula malignantis. This I think I have gained, that I ought to be
the better believed in that which I shall say pertaining to
commendation; because I have proceeded so freely in that which
concerneth censure. And yet I have no purpose to enter into a
laudative of learning, or to make a hymn to the Muses (though I am
of opinion that it is long since their rites were duly celebrated),
but my intent is, without varnish or amplification justly to weigh
the dignity of knowledge in the balance with other things, and to
take the true value thereof by testimonies and arguments, divine and
human.

VI. (1) First, therefore, let us seek the dignity of knowledge in
the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts
of God, as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with
sobriety; wherein we may not seek it by the name of learning, for
all learning is knowledge acquired, and all knowledge in God is
original, and therefore we must look for it by another name, that of
wisdom or sapience, as the Scriptures call it.

(2) It is so, then, that in the work of the creation we see a double
emanation of virtue from God; the one referring more properly to
power, the other to wisdom; the one expressed in making the
subsistence of the matter, and the other in disposing the beauty of
the form. This being supposed, it is to be observed that for
anything which appeareth in the history of the creation, the
confused mass and matter of heaven and earth was made in a moment,
and the order and disposition of that chaos or mass was the work of
six days; such a note of difference it pleased God to put upon the
works of power, and the works of wisdom; wherewith concurreth, that
in the former it is not set down that God said, "Let there be heaven
and earth," as it is set down of the works following; but actually,
that God made heaven and earth: the one carrying the style of a
manufacture, and the other of a law, decree, or counsel.

(3) To proceed, to that which is next in order from God, to spirits:
we find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy
of that supposed Dionysius, the senator of Athens, the first place
or degree is given to the angels of love, which are termed seraphim;
the second to the angels of light, which are termed cherubim; and
the third, and so following places, to thrones, principalities, and
the rest, which are all angels of power and ministry; so as this
angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of
office and domination.

(4) To descend from spirits and intellectual forms to sensible and
material forms, we read the first form that was created was light,
which hath a relation and correspondence in nature and corporal
things to knowledge in spirits and incorporal things.

(5) So in the distribution of days we see the day wherein God did
rest and contemplate His own works was blessed above all the days
wherein He did effect and accomplish them.

(6) After the creation was finished, it is set down unto us that man
was placed in the garden to work therein; which work, so appointed
to him, could be no other than work of contemplation; that is, when
the end of work is but for exercise and experiment, not for
necessity; for there being then no reluctation of the creature, nor
sweat of the brow, man's employment must of consequence have been
matter of delight in the experiment, and not matter of labour for
the use. Again, the first acts which man performed in Paradise
consisted of the two summary parts of knowledge; the view of
creatures, and the imposition of names. As for the knowledge which
induced the fall, it was, as was touched before, not the natural
knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowledge of good and evil;
wherein the supposition was, that God's commandments or prohibitions
were not the originals of good and evil, but that they had other
beginnings, which man aspired to know, to the end to make a total
defection from God and to depend wholly upon himself.

(7) To pass on: in the first event or occurrence after the fall of
man, we see (as the Scriptures have infinite mysteries, not
violating at all the truth of this story or letter) an image of the
two estates, the contemplative state and the active state, figured
in the two persons of Abel and Cain, and in the two simplest and
most primitive trades of life; that of the shepherd (who, by reason
of his leisure, rest in a place, and lying in view of heaven, is a
lively image of a contemplative life), and that of the husbandman,
where we see again the favour and election of God went to the
shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground.

(8) So in the age before the flood, the holy records within those
few memorials which are there entered and registered have vouchsafed
to mention and honour the name of the inventors and authors of music
and works in metal. In the age after the flood, the first great
judgment of God upon the ambition of man was the confusion of
tongues; whereby the open trade and intercourse of learning and
knowledge was chiefly imbarred.

(9) To descend to Moses the lawgiver, and God's first pen: he is
adorned by the Scriptures with this addition and commendation, "That
he was seen in all the learning of the Egyptians," which nation we
know was one of the most ancient schools of the world: for so Plato
brings in the Egyptian priest saying unto Solon, "You Grecians are
ever children; you have no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of
knowledge." Take a view of the ceremonial law of Moses; you shall
find, besides the prefiguration of Christ, the badge or difference
of the people of God, the exercise and impression of obedience, and
other divine uses and fruits thereof, that some of the most learned
Rabbins have travailed profitably and profoundly to observe, some of
them a natural, some of them a moral sense, or reduction of many of
the ceremonies and ordinances. As in the law of the leprosy, where
it is said, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient
may pass abroad for clean; but if there be any whole flesh
remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean;" one of them noteth a
principle of nature, that putrefaction is more contagious before
maturity than after; and another noteth a position of moral
philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt
manners, as those that are half good and half evil. So in this and
very many other places in that law, there is to be found, besides
the theological sense, much aspersion of philosophy.

(10) So likewise in that excellent hook of Job, if it be revolved
with diligence, it will be found pregnant and swelling with natural
philosophy; as for example, cosmography, and the roundness of the
world, Qui extendit aquilonem super vacuum, et appendit terram super
nihilum; wherein the pensileness of the earth, the pole of the
north, and the finiteness or convexity of heaven are manifestly
touched. So again, matter of astronomy: Spiritus ejus ornavit
caelos, et obstetricante manu ejus eductus est Coluber tortuoses.
And in another place, Nunquid conjungere valebis micantes stellas
Pleiadas, aut gyrum Arcturi poteris dissipare? Where the fixing of
the stars, ever standing at equal distance, is with great elegancy
noted. And in another place, Qui facit Arcturum, et Oriona, et
Hyadas, et interiora Austri; where again he takes knowledge of the
depression of the southern pole, calling it the secrets of the
south, because the southern stars were in that climate unseen.
Matter of generation: Annon sicut lac mulsisti me, et sicut caseum
coagulasti me? &c. Matter of minerals: Habet argentum venarum
suarum principia; et auro locus est in quo conflatur, ferrum de
terra tollitur, et lapis solutus calore in aes vertitur; and so
forwards in that chapter.

(11) So likewise in the person of Solomon the king, we see the gift
or endowment of wisdom and learning, both in Solomon's petition and
in God's assent thereunto, preferred before all other terrene and
temporal felicity. By virtue of which grant or donative of God
Solomon became enabled not only to write those excellent parables or
aphorisms concerning divine and moral philosophy, but also to
compile a natural history of all verdure, from the cedar upon the
mountain to the moss upon the wall (which is but a rudiment between
putrefaction and an herb), and also of all things that breathe or
move. Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the
glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and
navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the
like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to
the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The
glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to
find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the
Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have
them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour
than to be God's playfellows in that game; considering the great
commandment of wits and means, whereby nothing needeth to be hidden
from them.

(12) Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times after our
Saviour came into the world; for our Saviour himself did first show
His power to subdue ignorance, by His conference with the priests
and doctors of the law, before He showed His power to subdue nature
by His miracles. And the coming of this Holy Spirit was chiefly
figured and expressed in the similitude and gift of tongues, which
are but vehicula scientiae.

(13) So in the election of those instruments, which it pleased God
to use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that at the
first He did employ persons altogether unlearned, otherwise than by
inspiration, more evidently to declare His immediate working, and to
abase all human wisdom or knowledge; yet nevertheless that counsel
of His was no sooner performed, but in the next vicissitude and
succession He did send His divine truth into the world, waited on
with other learnings, as with servants or handmaids: for so we see
St. Paul, who was only learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen
most used in the Scriptures of the New Testament.

(14) So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers
of the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learning
of this heathen; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor Julianus
(whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be admitted into
schools, lectures, or exercises of learning) was esteemed and
accounted a more pernicious engine and machination against the
Christian Faith than were all the sanguinary prosecutions of his
predecessors; neither could the emulation and jealousy of Gregory,
the first of that name, Bishop of Rome, ever obtain the opinion of
piety or devotion; but contrariwise received the censure of humour,
malignity, and pusillanimity, even amongst holy men; in that he
designed to obliterate and extinguish the memory of heathen
antiquity and authors. But contrariwise it was the Christian
Church, which, amidst the inundations of the Scythians on the one
side from the north-west, and the Saracens from the east, did
preserve in the sacred lap and bosom thereof the precious relics
even of heathen learning, which otherwise had been extinguished, as
if no such thing had ever been.

(15) And we see before our eyes, that in the age of ourselves and
our fathers, when it pleased God to call the Church of Rome to
account for their degenerate manners and ceremonies, and sundry
doctrines obnoxious and framed to uphold the same abuses; at one and
the same time it was ordained by the Divine Providence that there
should attend withal a renovation and new spring of all other
knowledges. And on the other side we see the Jesuits, who partly in
themselves, and partly by the emulation and provocation of their
example, have much quickened and strengthened the state of learning;
we see (I say) what notable service and reparation they have done to
the Roman see.

(16) Wherefore, to conclude this part, let it be observed, that
there be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and
illustration, which philosophy and human learning do perform to
faith and religion. The one, because they are an effectual
inducement to the exaltation of the glory of God. For as the Psalms
and other Scriptures do often invite us to consider and magnify the
great and wonderful works of God, so if we should rest only in the
contemplation of the exterior of them as they first offer themselves
to our senses, we should do a like injury unto the majesty of God,
as if we should judge or construe of the store of some excellent
jeweller by that only which is set out toward the street in his
shop. The other, because they minister a singular help and
preservative against unbelief and error. For our Saviour saith,
"You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God;" laying
before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from
error: first the Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then
the creatures expressing His power; whereof the latter is a key unto
the former: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true
sense of the Scriptures by the general notions of reason and rules
of speech, but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due
meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and
engraven upon His works. Thus much therefore for divine testimony
and evidence concerning the true dignity and value of learning.

VII. (1) As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a
discourse of this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice
of those things which we shall produce, than to embrace the variety
of them. First, therefore, in the degrees of human honour amongst
the heathen, it was the highest to obtain to a veneration and
adoration as a God. This unto the Christians is as the forbidden
fruit. But we speak now separately of human testimony, according to
which--that which the Grecians call apotheosis, and the Latins
relatio inter divos--was the supreme honour which man could
attribute unto man, specially when it was given, not by a formal
decree or act of state (as it was used among the Roman Emperors),
but by an inward assent and belief. Which honour, being so high,
had also a degree or middle term; for there were reckoned above
human honours, honours heroical and divine: in the attribution and
distribution of which honours we see antiquity made this difference;
that whereas founders and uniters of states and cities, lawgivers,
extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent
persons in civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of
worthies or demigods, such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minus,
Romulus, and the like; on the other side, such as were inventors and
authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life,
were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves, as was Ceres,
Bacchus, Mercurius, Apollo, and others. And justly; for the merit
of the former is confined within the circle of an age or a nation,
and is like fruitful showers, which though they be profitable and
good, yet serve but for that season, and for a latitude of ground
where they fall; but the other is, indeed, like the benefits of
heaven, which are permanent and universal. The former again is
mixed with strife and perturbation, but the latter hath the true
character of Divine Presence, coming in aura leni, without noise or
agitation.

(2) Neither is certainly that other merit of learning, in repressing
the inconveniences which grow from man to man, much inferior to the
former, of relieving the necessities which arise from nature, which
merit was lively set forth by the ancients in that feigned relation
of Orpheus' theatre, where all beasts and birds assembled, and,
forgetting their several appetites--some of prey, some of game, some
of quarrel--stood all sociably together listening unto the airs and
accords of the harp, the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was
drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own
nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men,
who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires, of profit, of lust,
of revenge; which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to
religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of
sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but
if these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make
them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion.

(3) But this appeareth more manifestly when kings themselves, or
persons of authority under them, or other governors in commonwealths
and popular estates, are endued with learning. For although he
might be thought partial to his own profession that said "Then
should people and estates be happy when either kings were
philosophers, or philosophers kings;" yet so much is verified by
experience, that under learned princes and governors there have been
ever the best times: for howsoever kings may have their
imperfections in their passions and customs, yet, if they be
illuminate by learning, they have those notions of religion, policy,
and morality, which do preserve them and refrain them from all
ruinous and peremptory errors and excesses, whispering evermore in
their ears, when counsellors and servants stand mute and silent.
And senators or counsellors, likewise, which be learned, to proceed
upon more safe and substantial principles, than counsellors which
are only men of experience; the one sort keeping dangers afar off,
whereas the other discover them not till they come near hand, and
then trust to the agility of their wit to ward or avoid them.

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