1. The wisest Heathens, and best Philosophers, who were so ravished but even with a dim glimpse of this knowledge, that in comparison thereof they have contemned all the riches, pleasures, and preferments of the world.
⟨p. 142⟩2. That wise saying: A learned man doth as far excel an illiterate, as a reasonable creature a brute.
3. The extraordinarily exulting and triumphant cry of the famous Mathematician, hitting after long and laborious disquisition upon some abstruse excellency of his Art: *I have found it, I have found it.
4. That passage in an Epistle of Aeneas Silvius to Sigism. D. of Austria: *If the face of humane learning could be seen, it is fairer and more beautiful than the Morning and Evening Star.
5. For the pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning (saith *another) it far surpasseth all other in nature: for shall the pleasures of the affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire and victory exceedeth a song or dinner? And must not (of consequence) the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections? We see in all other pleasures, there is a satiety; and after they be used, their verdour departeth; which showeth well, they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality. And therefore we see, that voluptuous men turn Friars; and ambitious Princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety: But satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; and therefore appeareth to be good in it self simply, without fallacy or accident.
1. The wisest Heathens, and best Philosophers, who were so ravished but even with a dimme glimpse of this knowledge, that in comparison thereof they have contemned all the riches, pleasures, and preferments of the world.
⟨p. 142⟩2. That wise saying: A learned man doth as farre excell an illiterate, as a reasonable creature a brute.
3. The extraordinarily exulting and triumphant cry of the famous Mathematician, hitting after long and laborious disquisition upon some abstruse excellency of his Art: *I have found it, I have found it.
4. That passage in an Epistle of Aeneas Silvius to Sigism. D. of Austria: *If the face of humane learning could be seene, it is fairer and more beautifull than the Morning and Evening Starre.
5. For the pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning (saith *another) it farre surpasseth all other in nature: for shall the pleasures of the affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire and victory exceedeth a song or dinner? And must not (of consequence) the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections? We see in all other pleasures, there is a saetiety; and after they be used, their verdour departeth; which sheweth well, they be but deceipts of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality. And therefore we see, that voluptuous men turne Friers; and ambitious Princes turne melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety: But satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; and therefore appeareth to be good in it selfe simply, without fallacy or accident.
- *[Greek or Hebrew].〈non-Latin alphabet〉.
- *Cujus facies, si videri possit, pulchrior est quàm Luciser, & Vesperus.
- *Advancement of Learn. Lib. 1. pag. 44.
