For the harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is and
ought to be the true and brief confutation and suppression of all
the smaller sort of objections. But, on the other side, if you take
out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one by one, you may
quarrel with them and bend them and break them at your pleasure: so
that, as was said of Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit
pondera, so a man may truly say of the schoolmen, Quaestionum
minutiis scientiarum frangunt soliditatem. For were it not better
for a man in fair room to set up one great light, or branching
candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small watch-candle
into every corner? And such is their method, that rests not so much
upon evidence of truth proved by arguments, authorities,
similitudes, examples, as upon particular confutations and solutions
of every scruple, cavillation, and objection; breeding for the most
part one question as fast as it solveth another; even as in the
former resemblance, when you carry the light into one corner, you
darken the rest; so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to
be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was
transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris: so the
generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and
proportionable; but then when you descend into their distinctions
and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit of
man's life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking
questions.
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