only spoiled all that the others had done. And yet this
is what posterity like, because it makes the work short and easy, and
saves further inquiry, of which they are weary and impatient. And if
any one take this general acquiescence and consent for an argument
of weight, as being the judgment of Time, let me tell him that the
reasoning on which he relies is most fallacious and weak. For, first,
we are far from knowing all that in the matter of sciences and arts
has in various ages and places been brought to light and published;
much less, all that has been by private persons secretly attempted
and stirred, so neither the births nor the miscarriages of Time are
entered in our records. Nor, secondly, is the consent itself and
the time it has continued a consideration of much worth. For however
various are the forms of civil politics, there is but one form of
polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be
popular. Now the doctrines which find most favour with the populace
are those which are either contentious and pugnacious, or specious
and empty; such, I say, as either entangle assent or tickle it. And
therefore no doubt the greatest wits in each successive age have been
forced out of their own course, men of capacity and intellect above
the vulgar having been fain, for reputation's sake, to bow to the
judgment of the time and the multitude; and thus if any contemplations
of a higher order took light anywhere, they were presently blown out
by the winds of vulgar opinions. So that Time is like a river, which
has brought down to us things light and puffed up, while those which
are weighty and solid have sunk. Nay, those very authors who have
usurped a kind of dictatorship in the sciences and taken upon them to
lay down the law with such confidence, yet when from time to time they
come to themselves again, they fall to complaints of the subtlety
of nature, the hiding-places of truth, the obscurity of things,
the entanglement of causes, the weakness of the human mind; wherein
nevertheless they show themselves never the more modest, seeing that
they will rather lay the blame upon the common condition of man
and nature than upon themselves. And then whatever any art fails to
attain, they ever set it down upon the authority of that art itself as
impossible of attainment; and how can art be found guilty when it is
judge in its own cause? So it is but a device for exempting ignorance
from ignominy. Now for t