friends or enemies, it matters not. Meanwhile the neighbouring
fields, trampled and beaten down, become barren and dry, affording
no sustenance but clouds of dust.

The whole course of things being thus entirely changed between us
and the ancients, and the moderns wisely sensible of it, we of this
age have discovered a shorter and more prudent method to become
scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold:
either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles
exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is
indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a
thorough insight into the index by which the whole book is governed
and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of
learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms,
therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get
in by the back-door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and
therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus
physicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting only
what comes from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their
wit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows with flinging
salt upon their tails. Thus human life is best understood by the
wise man's rule of regarding the end. Thus are the sciences found,
like Hercules' oxen, by tracing them backwards. Thus are old
sciences unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

Besides all this, the army of the sciences hath been of late with a
world of martial discipline drawn into its close order, so that a
view or a muster may be taken of it with abundance of expedition.
For this great blessing we are wholly indebted to systems and