Now, {24} therefore, it shall not be amiss, first, to weight this
latter sort of poetry by his WORKS, and then by his PARTS; and if in
neither of these anatomies he be commendable, I hope we shall
receive a more favourable sentence. This purifying of wit, this
enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit,
which commonly we call learning under what name soever it come
forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed; the final end
is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate
souls, made worse by, their clay lodgings, {25} can be capable of.
This, according to the inclination of man, bred many formed
impressions; for some that thought this felicity principally to be
gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be so high or heavenly as
to be acquainted with the stars, gave themselves to astronomy;
others, persuading themselves to be demi-gods, if they knew the
causes of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers.
Some an admirable delight drew to music, and some the certainty of
demonstrations to the mathematics; but all, one and other, having
this scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the
dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine essence. But
when, by the balance of experience, it was found that the
astronomer, looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch; that the
enquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; and the
mathematician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart;
then lo! did proof, the over-ruler of opinions, make manifest that
all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private
end in themselves, so yet are they all directed to the highest end
of the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called [Greek text], which
stands, as I think, in the knowledge of a man's self; in the ethic
and politic consideration, with the end of well doing, and not of
well knowing only; even as the saddler's next end is to make a good
saddle, but his farther end to serve a nobler faculty, which is
horsemanship; so the horseman's to soldiery; and the soldier not
only to have the skill, but to perform the practice of a soldier.
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