The invention of speech or argument

(1) Invention is of 2 kinds, much differing:

The invention of arts and sciences

This is so deficient as if there was nothing ready.

Money will fetch all other commodities. Likewise, this knowledge should purchase all the rest. Its lack is like the lack of ready money.

The West Indies would had never been discovered if the mariner’s needle had not been discovered.

• The West Indies is so vast
• The needle is so small

The invention of speech and arguments

This part of knowledge is lacking for 2 reasons.

1. Logic does not pretend to invent sciences, or the axioms of sciences.

It merely passes it over with a cuique in sua arte credendum.

Celsus acknowledges it gravely, speaking of the empirical and dogmatical sects of physicians:

Plato in his “Theætetus” noted well:

Those who talk of the inventions and originals of things refer them rather to chance than to art, and rather to beasts, birds, fishes, serpents, than to men.

So that it was no marvel (the manner of antiquity being to consecrate inventors) that the Egyptians had so few human idols in their temples, but almost all brute..

And if you like better the tradition of the Grecians, and ascribe the first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe that Prometheus first stroke the flints, and marvelled at the spark, than that when he first stroke the flints he expected the spark.

Therefore we see the West Indian Prometheus had no intelligence with the European, because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the first occasion.

Thus men seem to be rather beholden to:

• a wild goat for surgery, or
• a nightingale for music,
• the ibis for some part of physic
• the pot-lid that flew open for artillery
• generally to chance or anything else

They prefer these to logic for the invention of arts and sciences. Neither is the form of invention which Virgil described different.

His method is the same as that which brute beasts are capable of – a perpetual intending or practising some one thing, urged and imposed by an absolute necessity of conservation of being.

Cicero saith very truly: Usus uni rei deditus et naturam et artem sæpe vincit.

Therefore if it be said of men,

“Labor omnia vincit Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas,”

It is likewise said of beasts: Quis psittaco docuit suum χαιρε?

• Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree, where she spied water, that the water might rise so as she might come to it?
• Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea or air, and to find the way from a field in a flower a great way off to her hive?
• Who taught the ant to bite every grain of corn that she burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow?

Add then the word extundere, which importeth the extreme difficulty, and the word paulatim, which importeth the extreme slowness, and we are where we were, even amongst the Egyptians’ gods; there being little left to the faculty of reason, and nothing to the duty or art, for matter of invention.

2. Logicians use induction which was familiar with Plato.

whereby the principles of sciences may be pretended to be invented, and so the middle propositions by derivation from the principles;

Their form of induction is utterly vicious and incompetent. Their error is the fouler, because it is the duty of art to perfect and exalt nature; but they contrariwise have wronged, abused, and traduced nature.

For he that shall attentively observe how the mind doth gather this excellent dew of knowledge, like unto that which the poet speaketh of, Aërei mellis cælestia dona, distilling and contriving it out of particulars natural and artificial, as the flowers of the field and garden, shall find that the mind of herself by nature doth manage and act an induction much better than they describe it.

For to conclude upon an enumeration of particulars, without instance contradictory, is no conclusion, but a conjecture; for who can assure (in many subjects) upon those particulars which appear of a side, that there are not other on the contrary side which appear not?

As if Samuel should have rested upon those sons of Jesse which were brought before him, and failed of David which was in the field.

This form (to say truth), is so gross, as it had not been possible for wits so subtle as have managed these things to have offered it to the world, but that they hasted to their theories and dogmaticals, and were imperious and scornful toward particulars; which their manner was to use but as lictores and viatores, for sergeants and whifflers, ad summovendam turbam, to make way and make room for their opinions, rather than in their true use and service.

A man might have a religious wonder to see how the footsteps of seducement are the very same in divine and human truth.

• In divine truth, man cannot endure to become as a child
• In human truth, men reputed the attending the inductions (whereof we speak), as if it were a second infancy or childhood.

3. Principles or axioms were rightly induced, but middle propositions cannot be deduced from them in subject of nature by syllogism

—that is, by touch and reduction of them to principles in a middle term.

The popular sciences are:

• moralities
• laws, and the like
• divinity (because it pleaseth God to apply Himself to the capacity of the simplest), that form may have use;

and in natural philosophy likewise, by way of argument or satisfactory reason, Quæ assensum parit operis effæta est; but the subtlety of nature and operations will not be enchained in those bonds.

For arguments consist of propositions, and propositions of words, and words are but the current tokens or marks of popular notions of things; which notions, if they be grossly and variably collected out of particulars, it is not the laborious examination either of consequences of arguments, or of the truth of propositions, that can ever correct that error, being (as the physicians speak) in the first digestion.

Therefore, it was not without cause, that so many excellent philosophers became sceptics and academics, and denied any certainty of knowledge or comprehension; and held opinion that the knowledge of man extended only to appearances and probabilities.

Socrates supposed it to be but a form of irony, Scientiam dissimulando simulavit. He used to disable his knowledge, to the end to enhance his knowledge; like the humour of Tiberius in his beginnings, that would reign, but would not acknowledge so much.

In the later academy, which Cicero embraced, this opinion also of acatalepsia (I doubt) was not held sincerely; for that all those which excelled in copy of speech seem to have chosen that sect, as that which was fittest to give glory to their eloquence and variable discourses; being rather like progresses of pleasure than journeys to an end. But assuredly many scattered in both academies did hold it in subtlety and integrity.

But their chief error was in charging the deceit on the senses. But I think that our senses are very sufficient to certify and report truth, though not always immediately.

Our senses get the truth:

• by comparison
• by help of instrument
• by producing and urging such things as are too subtle for the sense to some effect comprehensible by the sense, and other like assistance.

But they should have charged the deceit on:

• the weakness of the intellectual powers, and
• the manner of collecting and concluding upon the reports of the senses.

The mind of man should stir up the senses to seek help. No one can draw a straight line or perfect circle by steadiness of hand. We need the help of a ruler or compass.