it in order by some
distinctions. But all this is but a web of the wit, it can work nothing.
I do not doubt but that common notions, which we call reason, and the
knitting of them together, which we call logic, are the art of reason
and studies. But they rather cast obscurity than gain light to the
contemplation of nature. All the philosophy of nature which is now
received, is either the philosophy of the Grecians, or that other of the
Alchemists. That of the Grecians hath the foundations in words, in
ostentation, in confutation, in sects, in schools, in disputations. The
Grecians were (as one of themselves saith), "you Grecians, ever
children." They knew little antiquity; they knew (except fables) not
much above five hundred years before themselves; they knew but a small
portion of the world. That of the Alchemists hath the foundation in
imposture, in auricular traditions and obscurity; it was catching hold
of religion, but the principle of it is, "Populus vult decipi." So that
I know no great difference between these great philosophies, but that
the one is a loud-crying folly, and the other is a whispering folly. The
one is gathered out of a few vulgar observations, and the other out of a
few experiments of a furnace. The one never faileth to multiply words,
and the other ever faileth to multiply gold. Who would not smile at
Aristotle, when he admireth the eternity and invariableness of the
heavens, as there were not the like in the bowels of the earth? Those be
the confines and borders of these two kingdoms, where the continual
alteration and incursion are. The superficies and upper parts of the
earth are full of varieties. The superficies and lower part of the
heavens (which we call the middle region of the air) is full of variety.
There is much spirit in the one part that cannot be brought into mass.
There is much massy body in the other place that cannot be refined to
spirit. The common air is as the waste ground between the borders. Who
would not smile at the astronomers? I mean not these new carmen which
drive the earth about, but the ancient astronomers, which feign the moon
to be the swiftest of all planets in motion, and the rest in order, the
higher the slower; and so are compelled to imagine a double motion;
whereas how evident is it, that that which they call a contrary motion
is but an abatement of motion. The fixed stars overgo Saturn, and so in
them and the rest all is but one motion, and the nearer the