s it is but a
character of style, but in respect of its matter it is nothing else but
feigned history, which may as well be in prose as in verse. The use of
this feigned history is to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind
of man in those points wherein the nature of things denies it; poetry
serves magnanimity, morality, and delectation. It is divided into
narrative, representative, and allusive or parabolical poetry. In poetry
I can report no deficience; it has sprung up and spread abroad more than
any other kind of learning.

In philosophy, the contemplations of man either penetrate unto God, or
are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected upon himself; whence arise
three knowledges--divine philosophy, natural philosophy, and human
philosophy or humanity. But it is good to erect one universal science,
_Philosophia Prima,_ "primitive" or "summary philosophy," before we come
where the ways part and divide; and this universal philosophy is a
receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as do not
fall within the compass of any of the special parts of philosophy or
sciences, but are common and of a higher stage. Divine philosophy, or
natural theology, is that knowledge concerning God which may be obtained
by the contemplation of His creatures; and in this I note an excess
rather than a deficience, because of the extreme prejudice which both
religion and philosophy have received by being mixed together, making an
heretical religion and a fabulous philosophy.

Of natural philosophy there are two parts, the inquisition of causes and
the production of effects; speculative and operative; natural science
and natural prudence. Natural science is divided into physic and
metaphysic. But since I have already defined a summary philosophy, and,
again, a natural theology, both of which are commonly confounded with
metaphysic, what is there remaining for metaphysic? This, that physic
inquires concerning the material and efficient causes, but metaphysic
handles the formal and final causes. So physic is in a middle term
between natural history and metaphysic; for natural history describes
the variety of things, physic the variable or respective causes, and
metaphysic the fixed and constant causes. Of metaphysic I find that it
is partly omitted and partly misplaced. In mathematics, which I place as
a part of metaphysic, I can report no deficience. But natural prudence,
or the operative part of natural philosophy, is ve