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Science is the Plague of Mankind
But again, the virtuosi may say that there was particularly added
to man the knowledge of sciences, by whose help he might recompense
himself in understanding for what nature cut him short in other
things. As if this had the least face of truth, that Nature that was
so solicitously watchful in the production of gnats, herbs, and
flowers should have so slept when she made man, that he should have
need to be helped by sciences, which that old devil Thoth, the evil
genius of mankind, first invented for his destruction, and are so
little conducive to happiness that they rather obstruct it; to which
purpose they are properly said to be first found out, as that wise
king in Plato argues touching the invention of letters.
Sciences therefore crept into the world with other the pests of
mankind, from the same head from whence all other mischiefs spring;
we'll suppose it devils, for so the name imports when you call them
demons, that is to say, knowing. For that simple people of the
golden age, being wholly ignorant of everything called learning, lived
only by the guidance and dictates of nature; for what use of
grammar, where every man spoke the same language and had no further
design than to understand one another? What use of logic, where
there was no bickering about the double-meaning words? What need of
rhetoric, where there were no lawsuits? Or to what purpose laws, where
there were no ill manners? from which without doubt good laws first
came. Besides, they were more religious than with an impious curiosity
to dive into the secrets of nature, the dimension of stars, the
motions, effects, and hidden causes of things; as believing it a crime
for any man to attempt to be wise beyond his condition. And as to
the inquiry of what was beyond heaven, that madness never came into
their heads. But the purity of the golden age declining by degrees,
first, as I said before, arts were invented by the evil genii; and yet
but few, and those too received by fewer. After that the Chaldean
superstition and Greek newfangledness, that had little to do, added
I know not how many more; mere torments of wit, and that so great that
even grammar alone is work enough for any man for his whole life.
Though yet among these sciences those only are in esteem that
come nearest to common sense, that is to say, folly. Divines are
half starved, naturalists out of heart, astrologers laughed at, and
logicians slighted; only the physician is worth all the rest. And
among them too, the more unlearned, impudent, or unadvised he is,
the more he is esteemed, even among princes. For physic, especially as
it is now professed by most men, is nothing but a branch of
flattery, no less than rhetoric. Next them, the second place is
given to our law-drivers, if not the first, whose profession, though I
say it myself, most men laugh at as the ass of philosophy; yet there's
scarce any business, either so great or so small, but is managed by
these asses. These purchase their great lordships, while in the
meantime the divine, having run through the whole body of divinity,
sits gnawing a radish and is in continual warfare with lice and fleas.
As therefore those arts are best that have the nearest affinity
with folly, so are they most happy of all others that have least
commerce with sciences and follow the guidance of Nature, who is in no
wise imperfect, unless perhaps we endeavor to leap over those bounds
she has appointed to us. Nature hates all false coloring and is ever
best where she is least adulterated with art.
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