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objections, solutions; which solutions were for the most part not
confutations, but distinctions: whereas indeed the strength of all
sciences is, as the strength of the old man's faggot, in the bond.
For the harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is and
ought to be the true and brief confutation and suppression of all
the smaller sort of objections. But, on the other side, if you take
out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one by one, you may
quarrel with them and bend them and break them at your pleasure: so
that, as was said of Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit
pondera, so a man may truly say of the schoolmen, Quaestionum
minutiis scientiarum frangunt soliditatem. For were it not better
for a man in fair room to set up one great light, or branching
candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small watch-candle
into every corner? And such is their method, that rests not so much
upon evidence of truth proved by arguments, authorities,
similitudes, examples, as upon particular confutations and solutions
of every scruple, cavillation, and objection; breeding for the most
part one question as fast as it solveth another; even as in the
former resemblance, when you carry the light into one corner, you
darken the rest; so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to
be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was
transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris: so the
generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and
proportionable; but then when you descend into their distinctions
and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit of
man's life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking
questions. So as it is not possible but this quality of knowledge
must fall under popular contempt, the people being apt to contemn
truths upon occasion of controversies and altercations, and to think
they are all out of their way which never meet; and when they see
such digladiation about subtleties, and matters of no use or moment,
they easily fall upon that judgment of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba
ista sunt senum otiosorum.
(7) Notwithstanding, certain it is that if those schoolmen to their
great thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had joined
variety and universality of reading and contemplation, they had
proved excellent lights, to the great advancement of all learning
and knowledge; but as they are, they are great undertakers indeed,
and fierce with dark keeping. But as in the inquiry of the divine
truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of God's word, and
to vanish in the mixture of their own inventions; so in the
inquisition of nature, they ever left the oracle of God's works, and
adored the deceiving and deformed images which the unequal mirror of
their own minds, or a few received authors or principles, did
represent unto them. And thus much for the second disease of
learning.
(8) For the third vice or disease of learning, which concerneth
deceit or untruth, it is of all the rest the foulest; as that which
doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, which is nothing but a
representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of
knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam
reflected. This vice therefore brancheth itself into two sorts;
delight in deceiving and aptness to be deceived; imposture and
credulity; which, although they appear to be of a diverse nature,
the one seeming to proceed of cunning and the other of simplicity,
yet certainly they do for the most part concur: for, as the verse
noteth -
"Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est,"
an inquisitive man is a prattler; so upon the like reason a
credulous man is a deceiver: as we see it in fame, that he that
will easily believe rumours will as easily augment rumours and add
somewhat to them of his own; which Tacitus wisely noteth, when he
saith, Fingunt simul creduntque: so great an affinity hath fiction
and belief.
(9) This facility of credit and accepting or admitting things weakly
authorised or warranted is of two kinds according to the subject:
for it is either a belief of history, or, as the lawyers speak,
matter of fact; or else of matter of art and opinion. As to the
former, we see the experience and inconvenience of this error in
ecclesiastical history; which hath too easily received and
registered reports and narrations of miracles wrought by martyrs,
hermits, or monks of the desert, and other holy men, and their
relics, shrines, chapels and images: which though they had a
passage for a time by the ignorance of the people, the superstitious
simplicity of some and the politic toleration of others holding them
but as divine poesies, yet after a period of time, when the mist
began to clear up, they grew to be esteemed but as old wives'
fables, impostures of the clergy, illusions of spirits, and badges
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