Chapter X

Second Division of Special Civil History into Pure and Mixed

THE last division of civil history is into pure and mixed. Of the mixed there are two eminent kinds—the one principally civil, and the other principally natural: for a kind of writing has been introduced that does not give particular narrations in the continued thread of a history, but where the writer collects and culls them, with choice, out of an author, then reviewing and as it were ruminating upon them, takes occasion to treat of political subjects; and this kind of ruminated history we highly esteem, provided the writers keep close to it professedly, for it is both unseasonable and irksome to have an author profess he will write a proper history, yet at every turn introduce politics, and thereby break the thread of his narration. All wise history is indeed pregnant with political rules and precepts, but the writer is not to take all opportunities of delivering himself of them.

Cosmographical history is also mixed many ways—as taking the descriptions of countries, their situations and fruits, from natural history; the accounts of cities, governments, and manners, from civil history; the climates and astronomical phenomena, from mathematics: in which kind of history the present age seems to excel, as having a full view of the world in this light. The ancients had some knowledge of the zones and antipodes—

though rather by abstract demonstration than fact. But that little vessels, like the celestial bodies, should sail round the whole globe, is the happiness of our age. These times, moreover, may justly use not only plus ultra where the ancients used non plus ultra, but also imitabile fulmen where the ancients said non imitabile fulmen—

“Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen.”

This improvement of navigation may give us great hopes of extending and improving the sciences, especially as it seems agreeable to the Divine will that they should be coeval. Thus the prophet Daniel foretells, that “Many shall go to and fro on the earth, and knowledge shall be increased,” as if the openness and thorough passage of the world and the increase of knowledge were allotted to the same age, which indeed we find already true in part: for the learning of these times scarce yields to the former periods or returns of learning—the one among the Greeks and the other among the Romans, and in many particulars far exceeds them.