Curiosity of the Sciences
Table of Contents
You have learned all these beautiful things in Greek and Latin books.
If I had devoted as much time as you to these studies, I would be as different from what I am now as angels are from you.
The best thing you could learn there is that the desire to know, which is common to all men, is an evil that cannot be cured.
For curiosity increases with knowledge; and just as our faults only trouble us insofar as we know them, you have this kind of advantage over us, of not seeing as clearly all that you lack.
Do you believe that there is in nature an evil so universal that no remedy can be brought to it?
I believe that there are enough truths that one can know in every subject to satisfy the curiosity of healthy minds.
This is the same as country has enough fruits and streams to appease the hunger and thirst of all men.
I have heard it said in the past that:
- our desires could not extend to seemingly impossible things
- one can know so many things that are within our reach, which are honorable, agreeable, and useful for life
I no longer feel any desire to learn anything.
I am as content with my little knowledge as Diogenes was of his barrel.
The knowledge of my neighbors is not the limit of mine, like their fields which surround on all sides this little piece of land that I possess here.
My mind uses all the truths it has found. It does not think of discovering others.It enjoys the same rest as the king of an isolated country.
If another man told me what you told me, I would think of him as proud or insufficiently curious
You are entirely content that your knowledge is truly superior to that of others.
Thank you for your good opinion of me.
I would like to show you a part of the things I know.
I will have great pleasure in attending this conversation, although I am not convinced that I can draw any benefit from it.
What I will say is useful.
There is a difference between the sciences and the simple knowledge that is acquired without the aid of reasoning [i.e. only intuition], such as languages, history, geography, and everything that depends only on experience.
The life of a man would not suffice to acquire the experience of all that the world contains.
But it would be folly to want to experience all.
I think that we should only devote our leisure to good and useful things, and fill our memory only with the most necessary.
The sciences are merely judgments based on some previously acquired knowledge.
Some are deduced from common and universally known objects. Others are from rarer and deliberately made experiments.
It is impossible for us to deal with each of these latter. For we would first have to examine all the herbs and all the stones that are brought here from the Indies.
We would have to have seen the phoenix, in a word, to be ignorant of none of the most marvelous secrets of nature.
I believe that is all we can desire.
I am a little more curious.
Please explain particular difficulties in each science, and principally in what concerns the secrets of the arts, apparitions, illusions, and all the admirable effects that are attributed to magic.
I think it is useful to know all this, not to make use of it, but so as not to let one’s judgment be surprised by the admiration of an unknown thing.
I will try to satisfy both of you.
We will first speak of all the things that the world contains, considering them in themselves and on condition that Epistemon interrupts our discourse as little as possible, because his objections would often force us to abandon our subject.
Afterwards, we will consider all these things again, but from another angle, insofar as they relate to us, and as they can be called true or false, good or bad.
It is there that Epistemon will find the opportunity to expound all the difficulties that will remain for him from the preceding discussions.