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THE SECOND BOOKE 351
Visarotunda: tamen prcestat rationis egentem
Reddere mendose causas vtnusque figuroe,
Quam manibus manifesto suis emtttere quoquam,
Et violarejidem primam, et convellere tota
Fundamenta, quibus nixatur vita salusque.
Non modo enim ratio mat omnis, vita quoque ipsa
Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus amis,
Prcecipitesque tocos vitare, et cceteia qua sint
In genere hoc fugienda. 1
What by the eyes is seene at any time, is true,
Though the cause Reason could not render of the view,
Why, what was square at hand, a farre off seemed round,
Yet it much better were, that wanting reasons ground
The causes of both formes we harp-on, but not hit,
Then let slip from our hands things cleare, and them omit,
And violate our first beliefe, and rashly rend
All those ground-workes, whereon both life and health depend,
For not alone all reason falls, life likewise must
Faile out of hand, unlesse your senses you dare trust,
And breake-necke places, and all other errours shunne,
From which we in this kinde most carefully should runne.
This desperate and so little Philosophicall counsell,
represents no other thing but that humane science cannot
be maintained but by unreasonable, fond and mad
reason ; yet is it better that man use it to prevaile, yea
and of all other remedies else how phantasticall soever
they be, rather than avow his necessarie foolishnesse :
So prejudiciall and disadvantageous a veritie he cannot
avoide, but senses must necessarily be the Soveraigne
maisters of his knowledge ; but they are uncertaine and
falsifiable to all circumstances. There must a man
strike to the utmost of his power, and if his just
forces faile him (as they are wont) to use and employ
obstinacie, temeritie and impudencie. If that which
the Epicurians affirme, be true, that is to say, we have
no science, if the apparances of the senses be false, and
that which the Stoicks say, if it is also true that the
senses apparences are so false as they can produce us no
science; we will conclude at the charges of these two
great Dogmatist Sects, that there is no science. Touching
1 LUCR. 1. iv. 502.