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And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for their furred gowns and
starched beards that they look upon themselves as the only wise men and all others as
shadows. And yet how pleasantly do they dote while they frame in their heads innumerable
worlds; measure out the sun, the moon, the stars, nay and heaven itself, as it were, with a
pair of compasses; lay down the causes of lightning, winds, eclipses, and other the like
inexplicable matters; and all this too without the least doubting, as if they were Nature's
secretaries, or dropped down among us from the council of the gods; while in the
meantime Nature laughs at them and all their blind conjectures. For that they know nothing,
even this is a sufficient argument, that they don't agree among themselves and so are
incomprehensible touching every particular. These, though they have not the least degree
of knowledge, profess yet that they have mastered all; nay, though they neither know
themselves, nor perceive a ditch or block that lies in their way, for that perhaps most of
them are half blind, or their wits a wool-gathering, yet give out that they have discovered
ideas, universalities, separated forms, first matters, quiddities, haecceities, formalities, and
the like stuff; things so thin and bodiless that I believe even Lynceus himself was not able to
perceive them.
