(11) And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts and
opinions, it is likewise of two kinds; either when too much belief
is attributed to the arts themselves, or to certain authors in any
art. The sciences themselves, which have had better intelligence
and confederacy with the imagination of man than with his reason,
are three in number: astrology, natural magic, and alchemy; of
which sciences, nevertheless, the ends or pretences are noble. For
astrology pretendeth to discover that correspondence or
concatenation which is between the superior globe and the inferior;
natural magic pretendeth to call and reduce natural philosophy from
variety of speculations to the magnitude of works; and alchemy
pretendeth to make separation of all the unlike parts of bodies
which in mixtures of natures are incorporate. But the derivations
and prosecutions to these ends, both in the theories and in the
practices, are full of error and vanity; which the great professors
themselves have sought to veil over and conceal by enigmatical
writings, and referring themselves to auricular traditions and such
other devices, to save the credit of impostures.
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