noteth well, “That particulars are infinite, and the higher generalities give no sufficient direction; and that the pith of all sciences, which maketh the artsman differ from the inexpert, is in the middle propositions, which in every particular knowledge are taken from tradition and experience.”  And therefore we see, that they which discourse of the inventions and originals of things refer them rather to chance than to art, and rather to beasts, birds, fishes, serpents, than to men.

“Dictamnum genetrix Cretaea carpit ab Ida,
Puberibus caulem foliis et flore camantem
Purpureo; non illa feris incognita capris
Gramina, cum tergo volucres haesere sagittae.”

So that it was no marvel (the manner of antiquity being to consecrate inventors) that the Egyptians had so few human idols in their temples, but almost all brute: 

“Omnigenumque Deum monstra, et latrator Anubis, Contra Neptunum, et Venerem, contraque Minervam, &c.”

And if you like better the tradition of the Grecians, and ascribe the first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe that Prometheus first stroke the flints, and marvelled at the spark, than that when he first stroke the flints he expected the spark; and therefore we see the West Indian Prometheus had no intelligence with the European, because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the first occasion.  So as it should seem, that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat for surgery, or to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for some part of physic, or to the pot-lid that flew open for artillery, or generally to chance or anything else than to logic for the invention of arts and sciences.  Neither is the form of invention which Virgil describeth much other: 

“Ut varias usus meditande extunderet artes Paulatim.”

For if you observe the words well, it is no other method than that which brute beasts are capable of, and do put in ure; which is a perpetual intending or practising some one thing, urged and imposed by an absolute necessity of conservation of being.  For so Cicero saith very truly, Usus uni rei deditus et naturam et artem saepe vincit.  And therefore if it be said of men,

“Labor omnia vincit
Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas,”

it is likewise said of beasts, Quis psittaco docuit suum ?a??e?  Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree, where she spied water, that the water might rise so as she might come to it?  Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea or air, and to find the way from a field in a flower a great way off to her hive?  Who taught the ant to bite every grain of corn that she burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow?  Add then the word extundere, which importeth the extreme difficulty, and the word paulatim, which importeth the extreme slowness, and we are where we were, even amongst the Egyptians’ gods; there being little left to the faculty of reason, and nothing to the duty or art, for matter of invention.