(2) The part of human philosophy which is rational is of all
knowledges, to the most wits, the least delightful, and seemeth but
a net of subtlety and spinosity. For as it was truly said, that
knowledge is pabulum animi; so in the nature of men's appetite to
this food most men are of the taste and stomach of the Israelites in
the desert, that would fain have returned ad ollas carnium, and were
weary of manna; which, though it were celestial, yet seemed less
nutritive and comfortable. So generally men taste well knowledges
that are drenched in flesh and blood, civil history, morality,
policy, about the which men's affections, praises, fortunes do turn
and are conversant. But this same lumen siccum doth parch and
offend most men's watery and soft natures. But to speak truly of
things as they are in worth, rational knowledges are the keys of all
other arts, for as Aristotle saith aptly and elegantly, "That the
hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of
forms;" so these be truly said to be the art of arts.
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