The Proficience and Advancement of Learning | Page 4

no less

contention between the excellency of your Majesty's gifts of Nature and
the universality and perfection of your learning. For I am well assured
that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a positive and
measured truth; which is, that there hath not been since Christ's time
any king or temporal monarch which hath been so learned in all
literature and erudition, divine and human. For let a man seriously and
diligently revolve and peruse the succession of the Emperors of Rome,
of which Caesar the Dictator (who lived some years before Christ) and
Marcus Antoninus were the best learned, and so descend to the
Emperors of Graecia, or of the West, and then to the lines of France,
Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find this judgment
is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king if, by the compendious
extractions of other men's wits and labours, he can take hold of any
superficial ornaments and shows of learning, or if he countenance and
prefer learning and learned men; but to drink, indeed, of the true
fountains of learning--nay, to have such a fountain of learning in
himself, in a king, and in a king born--is almost a miracle. And the
more, because there is met in your Majesty a rare conjunction, as well
of divine and sacred literature as of profane and human; so as your
Majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, which in great veneration
was ascribed to the ancient Hermes: the power and fortune of a king,
the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and
universality of a philosopher. This propriety inherent and individual
attribute in your Majesty deserveth to be expressed not only in the fame
and admiration of the present time, nor in the history or tradition of the
ages succeeding, but also in some solid work, fixed memorial, and
immortal monument, bearing a character or signature both of the power
of a king and the difference and perfection of such a king.
Therefore I did conclude with myself that I could not make unto your
Majesty a better oblation than of some treatise tending to that end,
whereof the sum will consist of these two parts: the former concerning
the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the
merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof; the
latter, what the particular acts and works are which have been
embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning; and again,
what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts: to the end

that though I cannot positively or affirmatively advise your Majesty, or
propound unto you framed particulars, yet I may excite your princely
cogitations to visit the excellent treasure of your own mind, and thence
to extract particulars for this purpose agreeable to your magnanimity
and wisdom.
I. (1) In the entrance to the former of these--to clear the way and, as it
were, to make silence, to have the true testimonies concerning the
dignity of learning to be better heard, without the interruption of tacit
objections--I think good to deliver it from the discredits and disgraces
which it hath received, all from ignorance, but ignorance severally
disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines,
sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of politics, and sometimes in
the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.
(2) I hear the former sort say that knowledge is of those things which
are to be accepted of with great limitation and caution; that the aspiring
to overmuch knowledge was the original temptation and sin whereupon
ensued the fall of man; that knowledge hath in it somewhat of the
serpent, and, therefore, where it entereth into a man it makes him swell;
Scientia inflat; that Solomon gives a censure, "That there is no end of
making books, and that much reading is weariness of the flesh;" and
again in another place, "That in spacious knowledge there is much
contristation, and that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth anxiety;"
that Saint Paul gives a caveat, "That we be not spoiled through vain
philosophy;" that experience demonstrates how learned men have been
arch-heretics, how learned times have been inclined to atheism, and
how the contemplation of second causes doth derogate from our
dependence upon God, who is the first cause.
(3) To discover, then, the ignorance and error of this opinion, and the
misunderstanding in the grounds thereof, it may well appear these men
do not observe or consider that it was not the pure knowledge of Nature
and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give names
unto other creatures in Paradise as they were brought before him
according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall; but
it was