THE INVENTORY, OR AN ENUMERATION AND VIEW OF INVENTIONS ALREADY
DISCOVERED AND IN USE, TOGETHER WITH A NOTE OF THE WANTS AND THE
NATURE OF THE SUPPLIES, BEING THE 10TH CHAPTER; AND THIS A SMALL
FRAGMENT THEREOF, BEING THE PREFACE TO THE INVENTORY.
The plainest method and most directly pertinent to this intention,
will be to make distribution of sciences, arts, inventions, works,
and their portions, according to the use and tribute which they yield
and render to the conditions of man's life, and under those several
uses, being as several offices of provisions, to charge and tax what
may be reasonably exacted or demanded; not guiding ourselves neither
by the poverty of experiences and probations, nor according to the
vanity of credulous imaginations; and then upon those charges and
taxations to distinguish and present, as it were in several columns,
what is extant and already found, and what is defective and further
to be provided. Of which provisions, because in many of them after
the manner of slothful and faulty officers and accomptants it will be
returned (by way of excuse) that no such are to be had, it will be
fit to give some light of the nature of the supplies, whereby it will
evidently appear that they are to be compassed and procured. And yet
nevertheless on the other side again it will be as fit to check and
control the vain and void assignations and gifts whereby certain
ignorant, extravagant, and abusing wits have pretended to indue the
state of man with wonders, differing as much from truth in nature as
Caesar's Commentaries differeth from the acts of King Arthur or Huon
of Bourdeaux in story. For it is true that Caesar did greater things
than those idle wits had the audacity to feign their supposed
worthies to have done; but he did them not in that monstrous and
fabulous manner.