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gistus of old, verum certè verum atque verissimum est,1 would sound arrogantly unto present ears in this strict enquiring age, wherein, for the most part, probably and perhaps, will hardly serve to mollify the spirit of captious contradictors. If Cardan saith that a parrot is a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits o' work to prove it a deformed animal.2 The compage of all physical truths is not so closely jointed, but opposition may find intrusion, nor always so closely maintained, as not to suffer attrition. Many positions seem quodlibetically constituted, and like a Delphian blade, will cut on both sides. Some truths seem almost falsehoods and some falsehoods almost truths; wherein falsehood and truth seem almost equilibriously stated, and but a few grains of distinction to bear down the balance. Some have digged deep, yet glanced by the royal vein, and a man may come unto the pericardium, but not the heart of truth. Besides, many things are known,

as

some are seen, that is by parallaxis, or at some distance from their true and proper beings, the superficial regard of things having a different aspect from their true and central natures. And this moves sober pens unto suspensory and timorous assertions, nor presently to obtrude them as sybils' leaves, which after considerations may find to be but folious apparances, and not the central and vital interiors of truth.

[LEARNING AND JUDGMENT]

(From Christian Morals, Part II, Section 4)

VALUE the judicious, and let not mere acquests in minor parts of learning gain thy preexistimation. 'Tis an unjust way of compute to magnify a weak head

1 In Tabula Smaragdina.-[It is true, assuredly true, and most indubitably true.]

2 De Subtilitate ad Cardanum Exerc. 236, § 1.

for some Latin abilities, and to undervalue a solid judgment, because he knows not the genealogy of Hector. When that notable king of France1 would have his son to know but one sentence in Latin, had it been a good one, perhaps it had been enough. Natural parts and good judgments rule the world. States are not governed by ergotisms. Many have ruled well who could not perhaps define a commonwealth, and they who understand not the globe of the earth, command a great part of it. Where natural logic prevails not, artificial too often faileth.

Where

nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on, and when judgment is the pilot, the insurance need not be high. When industry builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids: where that foundation is wanting, the structure must be low. They do most by books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial man.

[THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING]
(From Christian Morals, Part II, Section 5)

LET thy studies be free as thy thoughts and contemplations: but fly not only upon the wings of imagination; join sense unto reason, and experiment unto speculation, and so give life unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos. There is nothing more acceptable unto the ingenious world, than this noble eluctation of truth; wherein, against the tenacity of prejudice and prescription, this century now prevaileth. What libraries of new volumes after times will behold, and in what a new world of knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few ages may joyfully

1 Lewis the Eleventh. Qui nescit dissimulare nescit Regnare. [He who does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to rule.]

1

declare; and is but a cold thought unto those, who cannot hope to behold this exantlation of truth, or that obscured virgin half out of the pit. Which might make some content with a commutation of the time of their lives, and to commend the fancy of the Pythagorean metempsychosis; whereby they might hope to enjoy this happiness in their third or fourth selves, and behold that in Pythagoras, which they now but foresee in Euphorbus. The world, which took but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to make out: meanwhile old truths voted down begin to resume their places, and new ones arise upon us; wherein there is no comfort in the happiness of Tully's Elysium,2 or any satisfaction from the ghosts of the ancients, who knew so little of what is now well known. Men disparage not antiquity, who prudently exalt new enquiries, and make them the judges of truth, who were but fellow enquirers of it. Who can but magnify the endeavors of Aristotle, and the noble start which learning had under him; or less than pity the slender progression made upon such advantages, while many centuries were lost in repetitions and transcriptions sealing up the book of knowledge? And therefore, rather than to swell the leaves of learning by fruitless repetitions, to sing the same song in all ages, nor adventure at essays beyond the attempt of others, many would be content that some would write like Helmont or Paracelsus; and be willing to endure the monstrosity of some opinions, for divers singular notions requiting such aberrations.

Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli,

Panthoides Euphorbus eram.-OVID. [Metam. XV, 180.]

2 Who comforted himself that he should there converse with the old philosophers. [De Senectute, ch. 23.]

JAMES HOWELL

[MEDITATIONS DURING A WALK] (Epistola Ho-Eliana, Section 7, Letter 50)

TO MY HONORABLE FRIEND, SIR C. C.

I WAS upon point of going abroad to steal a solitary walk, when yours of the twelfth current came to hand; the high researches and choice abstracted notions I found therein, seemed to heighten my spirits and make my fancy fitter for my intended retirement and meditation; add hereunto that the countenance of the weather invited me, for it was a still evening, it was also a clear open sky, not a speck or the least wrinkle appeared in the whole face of heaven; 'twas such a pure deep azure of all the hemisphere over that I wondered what was become of the three regions of the air with their meteors. So having got into a close field, I cast my face upward, and fell to consider what a rare prerogative the optic virtue of the eye hath, much more the intuitive virtue of the thought, that the one in a moment can reach heaven and the other go beyond it. Therefore sure that philosopher was but a kind of frantic fool that would have plucked out both his eyes because they were a hindrance to his speculations. Moreover, I began to contemplate, as I was in this posture, the vast magnitude of the universe and what proportion this poor globe of earth might bear with it, for if those numberless bodies which stick in the vast roof

of heaven, though they appear to us but as spangles, be some of them thousands of times bigger than the earth-take the sea with it to boot, for they both make but one sphere-surely the astronomers had reason to term this sphere an indivisible point and a thing of no dimension at all being compared to the whole world. I fell then to think that at the second general destruction, it is no more for God Almighty to fire this earth than for us to blow up a small squib or rather one grain of gunpowder. As I was musing thus, I spied a swarm of gnats waving up and down the air about men which I knew to be part of the universe as well as I; and methought it was a strange opinion of our Aristotle to hold that the least of those small insected ephemerans should be more noble than the sun, because it had a sensitive soul in it. I fell to think that the same proportion which those animalillios bore with me in point of bigness, the same I held with those glorious spirits which are near the throne of the Almighty: what then should we think of the magnitude of the Creator himself: doubtless 'tis beyond the reach of any human imagination to conceive it. private devotions I presume to compare him to a great mountain of light, and my soul seems to discern some glorious form therein, but suddenly as she would fix her eyes upon the object, her sight is presently dazzled and disgregated with the refulgency and coruscations thereof.

In my

Walking a little further, I espied a young boisterous bull breaking over hedge and ditch to a herd of kine in the next pasture, which made me think that if that fierce, strong animal with others of that kind knew their own strength, they would never suffer man to be their master. Then looking upon them quietly grazing

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