Seats himself as spectator and critic on the great theatre of the world,
and gives sentence on the plots, language, and action of whatsoever he
sees represented, according to his own fancy. He will pretend to know
what is done behind the scene, but so seldom is in the right that he
discovers nothing more than his own mistakes. When his profession was in
credit in the world, and money was to be gotten by it, it divided itself
into multitudes of sects, that maintained themselves and their opinions
by fierce and hot contests with one another; but since the trade decayed
and would not turn to account, they all fell of themselves, and now the
world is so unconcerned in their controversies, that three Reformado
sects joined in one, like Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, will not serve
to maintain one pedant. He makes his hypotheses himself, as a tailor
does a doublet without measure; no matter whether they fit Nature, he
can make Nature fit them, and, whether they are too straight or wide,
pinch or stuff out the body accordingly. He judges of the works of
Nature just as the rabble do of State affairs; they see things done, and
every man according to his capacity guesses at the reasons of them, but
knowing nothing of the arcana or secret movements of either, they seldom
or never are in the right. Howsoever, they please themselves and some
others with their fancies, and the farther they are off truth, the more
confident they are they are near it, as those that are out of their way
believe the farther they have gone they are the nearer their journey's
end, when they are farthest of all from it. He is confident of
immaterial substances, and his reasons are very pertinent; that is,
substantial as he thinks, and immaterial as others do. Heretofore his
beard was the badge of his profession, and the length of that in all his
polemics was ever accounted the length of his weapon; but when the trade
fell, that fell too. In Lucius's time they were commonly called
beard-wearers, for all the strength of their wits lay in their beards,
as Samson's did in his locks; but since the world began to see the
vanity of that hare-brained cheat, they left it off to save
their credit.