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Query J.

Is the Love of knowledge a Motive for the Acquisition of knowledge?

How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools
But musical as is Apollo's lute,

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And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

COMUS.

1. As the eye rejoices to receive the light, the ear to hear sweet music: so the mind, which is the man, rejoices to discover the secret works, the varieties and beauties of nature.

2. The inquiry of truth, which is the love making or wooing it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying it, is the sovereign good of our nature.

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3. The unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, or the pleasure of that suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem.

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4. The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavour and extremely covet that it may not be pensile: but that it may light upon something fixed and immoveable, on which, as on a firmament, it may support self in its swift motions and disquisitions. Aristotle endeavours to prove that in all motions of bodies there is some point quiescent: and very elegantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed and bore up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the world whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like manner, men do earnestly seek to have some Atlas or axis of their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some measure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the understanding, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven.

5. The pleasure and delight of knowledge far sur

passeth all other in nature. We see in all other pleasures there is a satiety, and after they be used, their verdour departeth: which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures: and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; and therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply without fallacy or accident. Neither is that pleasure of small efficacy and contentment in the mind of man, which the poet Lucretius describeth elegantly, suave mari magno turbantibus aquora ventis, &c. "It is " a view of delight," saith he, "to stand or walk upon the shore, and to see a ship tost with tempest 66 upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window “of a castle, and to see two battles join upon a

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plain: but it is a pleasure incomparable for the "mind of man to be settled, landed, and fortified " in the certainty of truth, and from thence to de

a See note A at the end.

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and behold the errors, perturbations, labours, "and wanderings up and down of other men." So always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

6. God hath made all things beautiful or decent in the true return of their seasons; also he hath placed the world in man's heart: yet cannot man find out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end, declaring, not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light, and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things, and vicissitudes of times, but raised how to find out and discover the ordinances and decrees which throughout all these changes are infallibly observed.

7. The discovery of the different properties of

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