This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly
reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and
abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits
being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their
dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries
and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time,
did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit
spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant
in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon
matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh
according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon
itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and
brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness
of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
(6) This same unprofitable subtility or curiosity is of two sorts:
either in the subject itself that they handle, when it is a
fruitless speculation or controversy (whereof there are no small
number both in divinity and philosophy), or in the manner or method
of handling of a knowledge, which amongst them was this--upon every
particular position or assertion to frame objections, and to those
objections, solutions; which solutions were for the most part not
confutations, but distinctions: whereas indeed the strength of all
sciences is, as the strength of the old man's faggot, in the bond.
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