Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/429

 T!1H WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. osrape his tyranny. Lastly, he taught his son Icarus to fly, but the novice, in ostentation of this art, soaring too high, fell into the sea, and was drowned. The parable seems to be thus: in the begin ning of it may be noted that kind of envy or emulation that lodgeth, and wonderfully sways and domineers amongst excellent artificers, there being no kind of people more reciprocally tor mented with bitter and deadly hatred than they. The banishment also of Daedalus, a punish ment inflicted on him against the rules of policy and providence, is worth the noting: for artificers have this prerogative to find entertainment and welcome in all countries, so that exile to an ex cellent workman can hardly be termed a punish ment, whereas other conditions, and states of life can scarce live out of their own country. The admiration of artificers is propagated and in creased in foreign and strange nations, seeing it is a natural and inbred disposition of men to value their own countrymen, in respect of me chanical works, less than strangers. Concerning the use of mechanical arts, that which follows is plain. The life of man is much beholden to them, seeing many things, conducing to the ornament of religion, to the grace of civil discipline, and to the beautifying of all human kind, extracted out of their treasuries : and yet not withstanding, from the same magazine or store house are produced instruments both of lust and death ; for to omit the&quot; wiles of bands, we well know how far exquisite poisons, warlike engines, and such like mischiefs, the effects of mechanical inventions, do exceed the Minotaur himself in malignity and savage cruelty. Moreover that of the labyrinth is an excellent allegory, whereby is shadowed the nature of me chanical sciences, for all such handicraft works as are more ingenious and accurate may be com pared to a labyrinth, in respect of subtilty and divers intricate passages, and in other plain resem blances, which hy the eye of judgment can hardly be guided and discerned, but only by the line of experience. Neither is it impertinently added, that he which invented the intricate nooks of the labyrinth, did also show the commodity of the clue: for me chanical arts are of ambiguous use, serving as well for hurt as for remedy, and they have in a manner power both to loose and bind themselves. | being destroyed by that will always abide in our city, though always forbidden. And yet notwithstanding unlawful and curious arts of what kind soever, in trad of time, when they cannot perform what they pro mise, do fall from the good opinion that was held of them, no otherwise than Icarus fell down from the skies, they grow to be contemned and scorned, and so perish by too much ostentation. And to say the truth, they are not so happily restrained by the reins of law as bewrayed by their own vanity. ERIOTHONIUS, OR IMPOSTURE. THE poets fable that Vulcan solicited Minerva for her virginity, and impatient of denial, with an inflamed desire, offered her violence, hut iu &trug- gling his seed fell upon the ground, whereof came Ericthonius, whose body from the middle upward was of a comely and apt proportion, but his thighs and legs like the tail of an eel, small and deformed. To which monstrosity, he being conscious, became the first inventor of the use of chariots, whereby that part of his body which was well proportioned might be seen, and the other which was ugly and uncomely might be hid. This strange and prodigious fiction may seem to show that art, which, for the great use it hath of fire, is shadowed by Vulcan, although it labour by much striving with corporeal substances to force nature, and to make her subject to it, she being for her industrious works rightly represented by Mi nerva, yet seldom or never attains the end it aims at, but with much ado and great pains, wrestling as it were with her, comes short of its purpose, and produceth certain imperfect births, and lame works, fair to the eye but weak and defective in use, which many impostors, with much subtilty and deceit, set to view, and carry about, as it were in triumph, as may for the most part be noted in chemical productions, and other mechanical sub- tilties and novelties, especially when, rather prose cuting their intent than reclining their errors, they rather strive to overcome nature by force ; than sue for her embracements by due obsequiousness and observance. DEUCALION, OR RESTITUTION. THE poets say that the people of the old world =ral deluge, Deucalion Unlawful trades, and so by consequence arts and Pyrrha were only left alive; who prayinji themselves, are often persecuted by Minos, that is with fervent and zealous devotion, that they by laws, which do condemn them, and prohibit, might know by what means to repair mankind, men to use them. Nevertheless they are hid and j had answer from an oracle that they should obtain retained everywhere, finding lurking holes and what they desired, if taking the bones of their mo- places of receipt, which was wellobserved by Ta- ther they cast them behind their backs; which at citus of the mathematicians and figure-flingers of j first struck them with great amazement and de- his time, in a thing not so much unlike ; &quot; Genus I spair, seeing, all things being defaced bv ihe flood, hominuin quod in eivitate nnstra semper et re- it would he an endless work to find theirmotber* tinebitur et vetabitur.&quot; There is a kind of men sepulchre, but at length they understood thai by ac