The 3 Diseases in Learning

Contentious learning

⁵ This is worse than Delicate Learning.

As substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words.

It seems the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times following; and not only respective to divinity, but extensive to all knowledge:

He assigned 2 badges of suspected and falsified science:

• the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms
• the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations.

Many solid substances in nature putrefy and corrupt into worms.

• Likewise, good and sound knowledge putrefies and dissolves into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and vermiculate questions.
  • These have a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality.

This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen. They had:

• sharp and strong wits
• abundance of leisure
• small variety of reading.

But their wits were shut in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator), just as their persons were shut in the cells of monasteries and colleges.

They:

• know little history, either of nature or time
• produced a little of matter and infinite agitation of wit, giving us those laborious webs of learning in their books

The wit and mind of man works on matter as the contemplation of the creatures of God.

• If done this way, it works according to the stuff and is limited thereby.

But if it works on itself, then it is endless, as the spider works his web

• It brings forth cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no use or substance.

⁶ This same unprofitable subtility or curiosity is of 2 sorts either:

1. In the subject itself that they handle, when it is a fruitless speculation or controversy (whereof there are no small number both in divinity and philosophy), or

2. In the manner or method of handling of a knowledge, which amongst them was this—upon every particular position or assertion to frame objections, and to those objections, solutions; which solutions were for the most part not confutations, but distinctions: whereas indeed the strength of all sciences is, as the strength of the old man’s faggot, in the bond.

For the harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is and ought to be the true and brief confutation and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections.

But, on the other side, if you take out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one by one, you may quarrel with them and bend them and break them at your pleasure: so that, as was said of Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera, so a man may truly say of the schoolmen, Quæstionum minutiis scientiarum frangunt soliditatem.

For were it not better for a man in fair room to set up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small watch-candle into every corner?

Such is their method. It rests not so much on evidence proved by arguments, authorities, similarities, examples, as upon particular confutations and solutions of every scruple, cavillation, and objection;

Breeding for the most part one question as fast as it solveth another; even as in the former resemblance, when you carry the light into one corner, you darken the rest; so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris:

So the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and proportionable;

But then when you descend into their distinctions and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit of man’s life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking questions.

So as it is not possible but this quality of knowledge must fall under popular contempt, the people being apt to contemn truths upon occasion of controversies and altercations, and to think they are all out of their way which never meet; and when they see such digladiation about subtleties, and matters of no use or moment, they easily fall upon that judgment of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba ista sunt senum otiosorum.

⁷ Those schoolmen, to their great thirst of truth, had joined variety and universality of reading and contemplation.

But as they are, they are great undertakers and fierce with dark keeping.

But as in the inquiry of the divine truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of God’s word, and to vanish in the mixture of their own inventions.

In the inquisition of nature, they ever left the oracle of God’s works, and adored the deceiving and deformed images which the unequal mirror of their own minds, or a few received authors or principles, did represent unto them.

Fantastical learning

⁸ This is the foulest.

It destroys the essential form of knowledge – the representation of truth.

This is because the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one. They differ as the direct beam and the beam reflected.

This vice branched itself into 2 sorts:

1. Delight in deceiving, as imposture
2. Aptness to be deceived, as credulity

Although they appear to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most part concur: for, as the verse noteth—

“Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est,”

An inquisitive man is a prattler; so upon the like reason a credulous man is a deceiver:

As we see it in fame, that he that will easily believe rumours will as easily augment rumours and add somewhat to them of his own; which Tacitus wisely noteth, when he saith, Fingunt simul creduntque: so great an affinity hath fiction and belief.