Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their
wit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows with flinging
salt upon their tails. Thus human life is best understood by the
wise man's rule of regarding the end. Thus are the sciences found,
like Hercules' oxen, by tracing them backwards. Thus are old
sciences unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
Besides all this, the army of the sciences hath been of late with a
world of martial discipline drawn into its close order, so that a
view or a muster may be taken of it with abundance of expedition.
For this great blessing we are wholly indebted to systems and
abstracts, in which the modern fathers of learning, like prudent
usurers, spent their sweat for the ease of us their children. For
labour is the seed of idleness, and it is the peculiar happiness of
our noble age to gather the fruit.
Now the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime having become
so regular an affair, and so established in all its forms, the
number of writers must needs have increased accordingly, and to a
pitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them to interfere
continually with each other.
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