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extremities: the one antiquity, the other novelty; wherein it
seemeth the children of time do take after the nature and malice of
the father. For as he devoureth his children, so one of them
seeketh to devour and suppress the other; while antiquity envieth
there should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content to add
but it must deface; surely the advice of the prophet is the true
direction in this matter, State super vias antiquas, et videte
quaenam sit via recta et bona et ambulate in ea. Antiquity
deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon and
discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken,
then to make progression. And to speak truly, Antiquitas saeculi
juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world
is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine
retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.
(2) Another error induced by the former is a distrust that anything
should be now to be found out, which the world should have missed
and passed over so long time: as if the same objection were to be
made to time that Lucian maketh to Jupiter and other the heathen
gods; of which he wondereth that they begot so many children in old
time, and begot none in his time; and asketh whether they were
become septuagenary, or whether the law Papia, made against old
men's marriages, had restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt lest
time is become past children and generation; wherein contrariwise we
see commonly the levity and unconstancy of men's judgments, which,
till a matter be done, wonder that it can be done; and as soon as it
is done, wonder again that it was no sooner done: as we see in the
expedition of Alexander into Asia, which at first was prejudged as a
vast and impossible enterprise; and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy
to make no more of it than this, Nil aliud quam bene ausus vana
contemnere. And the same happened to Columbus in the western
navigation. But in intellectual matters it is much more common, as
may be seen in most of the propositions of Euclid; which till they
be demonstrate, they seem strange to our assent; but being
demonstrate, our mind accepteth of them by a kind of relation (as
the lawyers speak), as if we had known them before.
(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,
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