observations, and the other out of a few experiments of a furnace.  The one never faileth to multiply words, and the other ever faileth to multiply gold.  Who would not smile at Aristotle, when he admireth the eternity and invariableness of the heavens, as there were not the like in the bowels of the earth?  Those be the confines and borders of these two kingdoms, where the continual alteration and incursion are.  The superficies and upper parts of the earth are full of varieties.  The superficies and lower part of the heavens (which we call the middle region of the air) is full of variety.  There is much spirit in the one part that cannot be brought into mass.  There is much massy body in the other place that cannot be refined to spirit.  The common air is as the waste ground between the borders.  Who would not smile at the astronomers?  I mean not these new carmen which drive the earth about, but the ancient astronomers, which feign the moon to be the swiftest of all planets in motion, and the rest in order, the higher the slower; and so are compelled to imagine a double motion; whereas how evident is it, that that which they call a contrary motion is but an abatement of motion.  The fixed stars overgo Saturn, and so in them and the rest all is but one motion, and the nearer the earth the slower; a motion also whereof air and water do participate, though much interrupted.

But why do I in a conference of pleasure enter into these great matters, in sort that pretending to know much, I should forget what is seasonable?  Pardon me, it was because all [other] things may be endowed and adorned with speeches, but knowledge itself is more beautiful than any apparel of words that can be put upon it.

And let not me seem arrogant, without respect to these great reputed authors.  Let me so give every man his due, as I give Time his due, which is to discover truth.  Many of these men had greater wits, far above mine own, and so are many in the universities of Europe at this day.  But alas, they learn nothing there but to believe:  first to believe that others know that which they know not; and after [that] themselves know that which they know not.  But indeed facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in part of nature; these, and the like, have been the things which have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments.  And what the posterity and issue of so honorable a match may be, it is not hard to consider.  Printing, a gross invention; artillery, a thing that lay not far out of the way; the needle, a thing partly known before; what a change have these three made in the world in these times; the one in state of learning, the other in state of the war, the third in the state of treasure, commodities, and navigation.  And