| |
The Inventory, or an enumeration and view of inventions
already discovered and in use, together with a note of the wants and the
nature of the supplies, being the 10th chapter; and this a small fragment
thereof, being the preface to the Inventory.
The plainest method and most directly pertinent to
this intention, will be to make distribution of sciences, arts, inventions,
works, and their portions, according to the use and tribute which they
yield and render to the conditions of man's life, and under those several
uses, being as several offices of provisions, to charge and tax what may be
reasonably exacted or demanded; not guiding ourselves neither by the
poverty of experiences and probations, nor according to the vanity of
credulous imaginations; and then upon those charges and taxations to
distinguish and present, as it were in several columns, what is extant and
already found, and what is defective and further to be provided. Of which
provisions, because in many of them after the manner of slothful and faulty
officers and accomptants it will be returned (by way of excuse) that no
such are to be had, it will be fit to give some light of the nature of the
supplies, whereby it will evidently appear that they are to be compassed
and procured. And yet nevertheless on the other side again it will be as
fit to check and control the vain and void assignations and gifts whereby
certain ignorant, extravagant, and abusing wits have pretended to indue the
state of man with wonders, differing as much from truth in nature as
Caesar's Commentaries differeth from the acts of King Arthur or Huon of
Bourdeaux in story. For it is true that Caesar did greater things than
those idle wits had the audacity to feign their supposed worthies to have
done; but he did them not in that monstrous and fabulous manner.
[@ Works III, 234]
| |
