OF THE IMPEDIMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE IN HANDLING IT BY PARTS, AND IN
SLIPPING OFF PARTICULAR SCIENCES FROM THE ROOT AND STOCK OF UNIVERSAL
KNOWLEDGE, BEING THE 8TH CHAPTER, THE WHOLE CHAPTER.
Cicero, the orator, willing to magnify his own profession, and
thereupon spending many words to maintain that eloquence was not a
shop of good words and elegancies but a treasury and receipt of all
knowledges, so far forth as may appertain to the handling and moving
of the minds and affections of men by speech, maketh great complaint
of the school of Socrates; that whereas before his time the same
professors of wisdom in Greece did pretend to teach an universal
SAPIENCE and knowledge both of matter and words, Socrates divorced
them and withdrew philosophy and left rhetoric to itself, which by
that destitution became but a barren and unnoble science. And in
particular sciences we see that if men fall to subdivide their
labours, as to be an oculist in physic, or to be perfect in some one
title of the law, or the like, they may prove ready and subtile, but
not deep or sufficient, no not in that subject which they do
particularly attend, because of that consent which it hath with the
rest. And it is a matter of common discourse of the chain of
sciences how they are linked together, insomuch as the Grecians, who
had terms at will, have fitted it of a name of CIRCLE LEARNING.
Nevertheless I that hold it for a great impediment towards the
advancement and further invention of knowledge, that particular arts
and sciences have been disincorporated from general knowledge, do not
understand one and the same thing which Cicero's discourse and the
note and conceit of the Grecians in their word CIRCLE LEARNING do
intend. For I mean not that use which one science hath of another
for ornament or help in practice, as the orator hath of knowledge of
affections for moving, or as military science may have use of
geometry for fortifications; but I mean it directly of that use by
way of supply of light and information which the particulars and
instances of one science do yield and present for the framing or
correcting of the axioms of another science in their very truth and
notion. And therefore that example of OCULISTS and TITLE LAWYERS
doth come nearer my conceit than the other two; for sciences
distinguished have a dependence upon universal knowledge to be
augmented and rectified by the superior light thereof, as well as the
parts and members of a science have upon the MAXIMS of the same
science, and the mutual light and consent which one part receiveth of
another. And therefore the opinion of Copernicus in astronomy, which
astronomy itself cannot correct because it is not repugnant to any of
the appearances, yet natural philosophy doth correct. On the other
side if some of the ancient philosophers had been perfect in the
observations of astronomy, and had called them to counsel when they
made their principles and first axioms, they would never have divided
their philosophy as the Cosmographers do their descriptions by globes,
making one philosophy for heaven and another for under heaven, as in
effect they do.
So if the moral philosophers that have spent such an infinite
quantity of debate touching Good and the highest good, had cast their
eye abroad upon nature and beheld the appetite that is in all things
to receive and to give; the one motion affecting preservation and the
other multiplication; which appetites are most evidently seen in
living creatures in the pleasure of nourishment and generation; and
in man do make the aptest and most natural division of all his
desires, being either of sense of pleasure or sense of power; and in
the universal frame of the world are figured, the one in the beams of
heaven which issue forth, and the other in the lap of the earth which
takes in: and again if they had observed the motion of congruity or
situation of the parts in respect of the whole, evident in so many
particulars; and lastly if they had considered the motion (familiar
in attraction of things) to approach to that which is higher in the
same kind; when by these observations so easy and concurring in
natural philosophy, they should have found out this quaternion of
good, in enjoying or fruition, effecting or operation, consenting or
proportion, and approach or assumption; they would have saved and
abridged much of their long and wandering discourses of pleasure,
virtue, duty, and religion. So likewise in this same logic and
rhetoric, or arts of argument and grace of speech, if the great
masters of them would but have gone a form lower, and looked but into
the observations of Grammar concerning the kinds of words, their
derivations, deflexions, and syntax; specially enriching the same
with the helps of several languages, with their differing proprieties
of words, phrases, and tropes; they might have found out more and
better footsteps of common reason, help of disputation, and
advantages of cavillation, than many of these which they have
propounded. So again a man should be thought to dally, if he did
note how the figures of rhetoric and music are many of them the same.
The repetitions and traductions in speech and the reports and
hauntings of sounds in music are the very same things. Plutarch hath
almost made a book of the Lacedaemonian kind of jesting, which joined
ever pleasure with distaste. SIR, (saith a man of art to Philip king
of Macedon when he controlled him in his faculty,) GOD FORBID YOUR
FORTUNE SHOULD BE SUCH AS TO KNOW THESE THINGS BETTER THAN I. In
taxing his ignorance in his art he represented to him the perpetual
greatness of his fortune, leaving him no vacant time for so mean a
skill. Now in music it is one of the ordinariest flowers to fall
from a discord or hard tune upon a sweet accord. The figure that
Cicero and the rest commend as one of the best points of elegancy,
which is the fine checking of expectation, is no less well known to
the musicians when they have a special grace in flying the close or
cadence. And these are no allusions but direct communities, the same
delights of the mind being to be found not only in music, rhetoric,
but in moral philosophy, policy, and other knowledges, and that
obscure in the one, which is more apparent in the other, yea and that
discovered in the one which is not found at all in the other, and so
one science greatly aiding to the invention and augmentation of
another. And therefore without this intercourse the axioms of
sciences will fall out to be neither full nor true; but will be such
opinions as Aristotle in some places doth wisely censure, when he
saith THESE ARE THE OPINIONS OF PERSONS THAT HAVE RESPECT BUT TO A
FEW THINGS. So then we see that this note leadeth us to an
administration of knowledge in some such order and policy as the king
of Spain in regard of his great dominions useth in state; who though
he hath particular councils for several countries and affairs, yet
hath one council of State or last resort, that receiveth the
advertisements and certificates from all the rest. Hitherto of the
diversion, succession, and conference of wits.