10. Again, it passes for a notable piece of learning to understand chronology: to be able to adjust the intervals and distances of time, when such a man flourished, when such an action was done, and the like. Now I deny not, but it may concern some to know these things, who have any interest depending upon it. It may concern some to know, for instance, that there is a twofold date of the victory at _Actium_, the one reckoned from the fight there, the other from the taking of _Alexandria_. But however useful it may be to know this, yet certainly as to any intellectual perfection that accrues by it, it must needs be a very unedifying stuffage of the head; altho’ ’tis so generally accounted a great accomplishment and enrichment of it.
*11. There are many other things which the humour of the world has turned up for learning, which ignorance will never be the better for, and which wisdom does not need. Thus ’tis counted learning to have tumbled over a multitude of books, especially if great ones, and old ones, and obscure ones; but most of all, if manuscripts, the recovery of one of which is reckoned so much added to _the common-wealth of learning_, as they call it. Hence a _well-read_ man signifies the very same as a _learned_ man in most men’s dictionaries: and by _well-read_ they don’t mean one that has _read well_, that has cleared and improved his understanding by his reading, but only one that has _read much_, tho’ perhaps he has puzzled and confounded his notions by doing so. Thus again, it goes for learning, to be acquainted with men’s opinions, especially of the ancients; to know what this or that philosopher held, what this or that author says, tho’ perhaps he says nothing but what is either absurd, or obviously true. What, for instance, can be more absurd; than that fancy of _Empedocles_, that there are two semicircles compassing the earth betwixt them, one of fire, the other of air; and that the former makes day, and the latter night? And yet to know this is learning! What can be more obviously true, than that grave doctrine of _Aristotle_, that privation must go before the introduction of the form in all generation? Or, that a thing must lose one form, before it can take another? And yet ’tis learning to know that he taught this! To know the thing is nothing: but to know that _Aristotle_ taught it, that is learning! Nay farther, tho’ I am able to demonstrate the circulation of the blood, or the motion of the earth, yet I shall not be admitted into the order of the learned, unless I am able to tell, that _Copernicus_ discovered the one, and _Harvey_ the other. So much more learned an atchievment it is, to know opinions than things! And accordingly those are reckoned the most learned authors, who have given the greatest specimens of this kind of knowledge. Thus _Picus Mirandula_ is more admired for his examination of the doctrine of the Pagans, than any of them were for what they delivered.
12. Now what an unreasonable imposition is this, that tho’ a man can think and write like an angel himself, yet he must not be accounted a man of learning, unless he can tell what every whimsical writer hath said before him? And how hard will it fall upon those, whose lot is to breathe in the last ages of the world, who must be accountable for all the whims and extravagancies of so many centuries? And yet this is made so great a part of learning, that the learning of most men lies in books rather than in things. And among authors, where one writes upon things, there are twenty write upon books. Nay, some carry this humour so far, that ’tis thought learning to know the very title of books and their editions, with the time and place when and where they were printed. And many there are who value themselves not a little on this mechanical faculty, tho’ they know no more of what is in them, than they do of what is written in the rolls of destiny.
13. From this placing of learning in the knowledge of books, proceeds that ridiculous vanity of multiplying quotations, which is also reckoned another piece of learning, tho’ they are used so impertinently, that there can be no other end in them, but to shew, that the author has read such a book. And yet it is no such convincing evidence of that neither. It being neither new nor difficult, for a man that is resolved upon it, to quote such authors as he never read nor saw. And were it not too odious a truth, I could name several of those author-mongers who pass for men of shrewd learning.
14. These and many other such things (for ’twere endless to reckon up all) are by the majority of the world voted for learning, and in these we spend our education, our study and our time, tho’ they are no way perfective of our understanding. So that in short, the charge of this reflection amounts to thus much, that learning is generally placed in the knowledge of such things, as the intellectual perfection of man is little or nothing concerned in.
The Second REFLECTION.