nature, and yet afterwards traces it to that which is real and practical; and the philosopher begins with body as it is really in nature, and afterwards wears it away with much handling into thin subtleties that are merely notional. The philosopher will not endure to hear of body without quantity, and yet afterwards gives it over, and has no consideration of it any further; and the mathematician will allow of being without quantity, and yet afterwards considers nothing else but quantity. All the figures he draws are no better for the most part than those in rhetoric, that serve only to call certain routines and manners of speech by insignificant names, but teach nothing. His art is only instrumental, and like others of the same kind, when it outgrows its use, becomes merely a curiosity; and the more it is so, the more impertinent it proves, for curiosities are impertinent to all men but the curious, and they to all the rest of the world. His forefathers passed among the ancients for conjurors, and carried the credit of all inventions, because they had the luck to stand by when they were found out, and cried "half's ours." For though the mechanics have found out more excellent things than they have wit enough to give names to, (though the greatest part of their wit lies that way,) yet they will boldly assume the reputation of all to themselves, though they had no relation at all to the inventions; as great persons use to claim kindred (though they cannot tell how it comes about) with their inferiors when they thrive in the world. For certainly geometry has no more right to lay claim to the inventions of the mechanics, than grammar has to the original of language that was in use long before it; and when that use and custom had prevailed, some men, by observing the construction, frame, and relations that words have to one another in speech, drew them into rules, and of these afterwards made an art; and just so, and no more, did geometry by the dimensions, figures, and proportions of things that were done long before it was in being; nor does the present use of one or the other extend further than this, to teach men to speak, and write, and proportion things regularly, but not to contrive or design at all. Mathematicians are the same things to mechanics, as markers in tennis-courts are to gamesters; and they that ascribe all inventions to mathematics, are as wise as those that say no man can play well that is not a good marker; as if all the skill of a goldsmith lay in his balance, or a draper in his yard; or that no man can play on a lute that is not a good fiddle-maker. When his art was in its infancy, and had by observation found out the course of the sun and moon and their eclipses, (though imperfectly,) and could predict them, which the rest of the world were ignorant of, he went further, and would undertake upon that account to foretell anything, as liars that will make one truth make way for a hundred lies. He believes his art, or rather science, to be wholly practical, when the greatest part of it, and, as he believes, the best, is merely contemplative, and passes only among friends to the mathematics, and no further, for which they flatter and aplaud one another most virtuously. AN ASTROLOGER Is one that expounds upon the planets, and teaches to construe the accidents by the due joining of stars in construction. He talks with them by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinkling and squinting upon one another, as well as they themselves. He is a spy upon the stars, and can tell what they are doing by the company they keep, and the houses they frequent. They have no power to do anything alone, until so many meet as will make a quorum. He is clerk of the committee to them, and draws up all their orders, that concern either public or private affairs. He keeps all their accompts for them, and sums them up, not by debtor, but creditor alone, a more compendious way. They do ill to make them have so much authority over the earth, which, perhaps, has as much as any one of them but the sun, and as much right to sit and vote in their councils, as any other but because there are but seven electors of the German empire, they will allow of no more to dispose of all other; and most foolishly and unnaturally depose their own parent of its inheritance, rather than acknowledge a defect in their own rules. These rules are all they have to shew for their title, and yet not one of them can tell whether those they had them from came honestly by them. Virgil's description of fame, that reaches from earth to the stars, "tam ficti pravique tenax," to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers without any sensible variation. He is a fortuneseller, a retailer of destiny, and petty chapman to the planets. He casts nativities as gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming "sextile, quartile," and "trine," like "size, quater, trois," can throw what chance he pleases. He sets a figure, as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away their money at it. He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie by authority. And as beggars, that have no money themselves, believe all others have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the ignorant rabble believe in him, though he has no more reason for what he professes than they. AN HERMETIC PHILOSOPHER. He is a kind of Hector in learning, that thinks to maintain himself in reputation by picking quarrels with his gentle readers, and compounding them to his own advantage; as if he meant to baffle their understandings, and fright them into a reverend opinion of his great abilities. He comes forth in public with his "concealed truths," as he calls them, like one that had stolen something under his cloak; and being afraid to be stopped falls foul on any man that has the ill hap to be in his way: for if you dislike him it is at your own peril, he is sure to put in a caveat beforehand against your understanding; and, like a malefactor in wit, is always furnished with exceptions against his judges. This puts him upon perpetual apologies, excuses, and defences, but still by way of defiance, in a kind of whiffling strain, without regard of any man that he thinks will stand in the way of his pageant. He shews as little respect to things as persons; for his constant method is to shuffle things of different kinds together, like a pack of cards, and then deal them out as they happen. He pretends to contemn the present age, and address his writings to posterity, to shew that he has a better opinion of his own prophecy than the knowledge of any man now living; and that he understands more of the ages to come than this does of him. Next to posterity he is in love with antiquity, of which he seems to be so fond, that he contemns Seth's pillars as modern, and derives the pedigree of magic from Adam's first green britches; because fig-leaves being the first clothes that mankind wore, were only used for covering, and therefore are the most ancient monuments of concealed mysteries. He controls his fellow-labourers in the fire with as much empire and authority as if he were sole overseer of the great work, to which he lights his reader like an ignis fatuus, which uses to mislead men into sloughs and ditches; for when he has mired him in the chaos, and told him that the philosopher's stone is water, or a powder, he leaves him in the dark. With this chaos he makes more work than the fellow that interprets to the show of it, and with no less astonishment to the ignorant. Such of his learned discoveries that signify anything, though it be vulgar and common, he calls "experimental truths," and those that mean nothing "mysteries," which with him is but another word for nonsense, though it be supported, like heraldry, with eagles, dragons, and lions; but, as the poet observes, "Canibus pigris, scabieque vetusta Nomen erit tigris, leo, pardus, siquid adhuc sit so the sense of these terrible terms is equally contemptible; for a maggot is of a higher form in nature than any production of metals. His war with the schoolmen is not amiss, but he persecutes it unmercifully, without giving quarter; though being a writer of fortune he might consider his own interest, and remember that they keep him in constant employment: for whensoever he has occasion to digress, that is, to write more than six lines, if the schoolmen, or the chaos, or the great work did not supply him, according as he is disposed either to rail or cant, I know not what would become of him. To this canting he is so constantly inclined, that he bestows no small pains in devising nicknames for himself and his patron, to whom he writes like one that whispers aloud, and says that in his ear that is meant for the hearing of others. The judgment of this |