It is true, that in two points the curse is peremptory, and not to be removed; the one, that vanity must be the end in all human effects; eternity be

may be delayed. The other, that the consent of the creature being now turned into reluctation, this power cannot otherwise be exercised and administered but with labour, as well in inventing as in executing; yet nevertheless chiefly that labour and travel which is described by the sweat of the brows, more than of the body; that is, such travel as is joined with the working and discursion of the spirits in the brain: for as Solomon saith excellently, "The fool putteth to more strength, but the wise man considereth which way;" signifying the election of the mean to be more material than the multiplication of endeavour. It is true also that there is a limitation rather potential than actual, which is when the effect is possible, but the time or place yieldeth not the matter or basis whereupon man should work. But notwithstanding these precincts and bounds, let it be believed, and appeal thereof made to time, with renunciation nevertheless to all the vain and abusing promises of alchemists and magicians, and such like light, idle, ignorant, eredulous, and fantastical wits and sects, that the newfound world of land was not greater addition to the ancient continent, than there remaineth at this day a world of inventions and sciences unknown, having respect to those that are known, with this difference, that the ancient regions of knowledge will seem as barbarous, compared with the new; as the new regions of people seem barbarous, compared to many of the old.

street in his shop. The other reason is, because it is a singular help and a preservative against unbelief and error; for, saith our Saviour, "You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God;" lay-ing resumed, though the revolutions and periods ing 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; for that latter book will certify us, that nothing which the first teacheth shall be thought impossible. And most sure it is, and a true conclusion of experience, that a little natural philosophy inclineth the mind to atheism, but a farther proceeding bringeth the mind back to religion. To conclude then: Let no man presume to check the liberality of God's gifts, who, as was said, "hath set the world in man's heart." So as whatsoever is not God, but parcel of the world, he hath fitted it to the comprehension of man's mind, if man will open and dilate the powers of his understanding as he may. But yet evermore it must be remembered, that the least part of knowledge passed to man by this so large a charter from God, must be subject to that use for which God hath granted it, which is the benefit and relief of the state and society of man ; for otherwise all manner of knowledge becometh malign and serpentine, and therefore, as carrying the quality of the serpent's sting and malice, it maketh the mind of man to swell; as the Scripture saith excellently, "Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up." And again, the same author doth notably disavow both power and knowledge, such as is not dedicated to goodness or love; for saith he, "If I have all faith, so as I could remove mountains," there is power active; "if I render my body to the fire," there is power passive; "if I speak with the tongues of men and angels," there is knowledge, for language is but the conveyance of knowledge, “ all were nothing."

And therefore it is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of honour or fame, or enablement for business, that are the true ends of knowledge; some of these being more worthy than other, though all inferior and degenerate: but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them, which he had in his first state of creation. And to speak plainly and clearly, it is a discovery of all operations and possibilities of operations from immortality, if it were possible, to the meanest mechanical practice. And therefore knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation. And knowledge that tendeth to profit, or profession, or glory, is but as the golden ball thrown before Atalanta; which while she goeth aside, and stoopeth to take up, she hindereth the race. And knowledge referred to some particular point of use, is but as Harmodius, which putteth down one tyrant; and not like Hercules, who did perambulate the world to suppress tyrants and giants and monsters in every part.

The dignity of this end, of endowment of man's life with new commodities, appeareth by the estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto; for whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honoured but with the titles of worthies or demi-gods, inventors were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves. And if the ordinary ambitions of men lead them to seek the amplification of their own power in their countries, and a better ambition than that hath moved men to seek the amplification of the power of their own countries amongst other nations; better again and more worthy must that aspiring be, which seeketh the amplification of the power and kingdom of mankind over the world: the rather, because the other two prosecutions are ever culpable of much perturbation and injustice; but this is a work truly divine, which cometh in aura leni, without noise or observation.

The access also to this work hath been by that port or passage, which the Divine Majesty, who is unchangeable in his ways, doth infallibly continue and observe; that is, the felicity wherewith he hath blessed an humility of mind, such as rather laboureth to spell, and so by degrees to read in the volumes of his creatures, than to solicit and urge, and as it were to invocate a man's own spirit to divine, and give oracles unto him. For as in the inquiry of divine truth, the pride of man hath ever inclined to leave the oracles of God's word, and to vanish in

the mixture of their own inventions; so in the self- | probably thus, that it was with them in matter of same manner, in inquisition of nature, they have knowledge, but as the dawning or break of day. ever left the oracles of God's works, and adorned For at that time the world was altogether homethe deceiving and deformed imagery, which the un- bred, every nation looked little beyond their own equal mirrors of their own minds have represented confines or territories, and the world had no thorough unto them. Nay, it is a point fit and necessary in lights then, as it hath had since by commerce and the front, and beginning of this work, without hesi- navigation, whereby there could neither be that tation or reservation to be professed, that it is no contribution of wits one to help another, nor that less true in this human kingdom of knowledge, than variety of particulars for the correcting the cusin God's kingdom of heaven, that no man shall tomary conceits. enter into it," except he become first as a little child."

The impediments which have been in the times, and abroad many examples of, as well in a number of

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.

That the pretended succession of wits hath been evil placed, forasmuch as after variety of sects and opinions, the most popular and not the truest prevaileth and weareth out the rest.

Being the VIIth 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 differing 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.

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 VIIIth 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 farther 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 But truth is contrary: and that time is like a have use of geometry for fortifications; but I mean river, which carrieth down things which are light it directly of that use by way of supply of light and and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which information, which the particulars and instances of is sad and weighty. For howsoever governments one science do yield and present for the framing or have several forms, sometimes one governing, some-correcting of the axioms of another science in their times few, sometimes the multitude; yet the state of knowledge is ever a democracy, 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 style of ornament and majesty, did hold out, and the other give place, &c.

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 their 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.

another.

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 IXth chapter, immediately preceding the Inventory, and inducing the same.

So if the moral philosophers, that have spent | greatly aiding to the invention and augmentation of such an infinite quantity of debate touching good And therefore, without this intercourse, and the highest good, had cast their eye abroad the axioms of sciences will fall out to be neither full upon nature, and beheld the appetite that is in all nor true; but will be such opinions, as Aristotle in things to receive and to give; the one motion affect- some places doth wisely censure, when he saith, ing preservation, and the other multiplication; "These are the opinions of persons that have respect which appetites are most evidently seen in living but to a few things." So then we see, that this note creatures, in the pleasure of nourishment and genera- leadeth us to an administration of knowledge in some tion; and in man do make the aptest and most such order and policy, as the king of Spain, in renatural division of all his desires, being either of gard of his great dominions, useth in state who, sense of pleasure, or sense of power; and in the though he hath particular councils for several coununiversal frame of the world are figured, the one in tries and affairs, yet hath one council of state, or last the beams of heaven which issue forth, and the resort, that receiveth the advertisements and certifiother in the lap of the earth which takes in: and cates from all the rest. Hitherto of the diversion, again, if they had observed the motion of congruity, succession, and conference of wits. 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 acts 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 Lacedæmonian kind of jesting, which joined every pleasure with distaste. "Sir," said 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

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 farther 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 eos 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 vitæ 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, or 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 | tations new had need of some grossness and incul

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 courtesan-like, 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 upward 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.

:

cation 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.

The Inventory, or an enumeration and view of inventions already discovered in use, together with a note of the wants, and the nature of the supplies. Being the Xth 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; But yet, nevertheless, here I may be mistaken, and then upon those charges and taxations to disby reason of some which may have much in their tinguish and present, as it were, in several columns, pen the referring sciences to action and the use of what is extant and already found, and what is deman, which mean quite another matter than I do. fective and farther to be provided. Of which proFor they mean a contriving of directions, and pre- visions, because in many of them, after the manner cepts for readiness of practice, which I discommend of slothful and faulty officers and accomptants, it not, so it be not occasion that some quantity of the will be returned, by way of excuse, that no such are science be lost; for else it will be such a piece of to be had, it will be fit to give some light of the husbandry, as to put away a manor lying somewhat nature of the supplies, whereby it will evidently scattered, to buy in a close that lieth handsomely appear, that they are to be compassed and procured. about a dwelling. But my intention contrariwise is And yet nevertheless on the other side again, it will to increase and multiply the revenues and posses- be as fit to check and control the vain and void sions of man, and not to trim up only, or order with assignations and gifts, whereby certain ignorant, conveniency the grounds whereof he is already extravagant, and abusing wits have pretended to stated. Wherefore the better to make myself under-endue the state of man with wonders, differing as stood, 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 show any universality of sense or knowledge, and much less to make a satire of reprehension in respect of wants and errors, but partly because cogi

much from truth in nature, as Cæsar's Commentaries differeth from the acts of King Arthur, or Huon of Bourdeaux, in story. For it is true that Cæsar 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.

The chapter immediately following the Inventory.
Being the XIth in order, a part thereof.

It appeareth then, what is now in proposition, not by general circumlocution, but by particular note, no former philosophy varied in terms or method; no new placet or speculation upon particulars al