...that language is but the instrument, etc. See Watson, Vives on Education, pp. 90, 163. Compare Bacon: 'Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter.' — Advancement of Learning, ed. by Wright, p. 30. 53.3 Babel. Genesis u. 9. Compare Milton's sentence...

...that language is but the instrument, etc. See Watson, Vives on Education, pp. 90, 163. Compare Bacon: 'Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter.' — Advancement of Learning, ed. by Wright, p. 30. 53.3 Babel. Genesis n. 9. Compare Milton's sentence...

...English prose has yet to be examined seriously by literary historians. When, for example, Bacon says: "Then grew the learning of the Schoolmen to be utterly despised as barabarous" he does not say that he himself despises it. He has no respect for the ornate and affected...

...barren philosophy. No one was more scathing of academic pedantry than Erasmus, not to say Paracelsus. "Then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised as barbarous," says Bacon, so that when he himself attacked the fine philosophic web of scholasticism—too many words...

...unambiguous description of the process through which conclusions have been reached. When he complains of 'the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter' [III, 284], it is the preoccupation with eloquence at the expense of content that he is objecting to....

...of judgment.' He quotes a gibe at the Ciceronians from one of Erasmus' colloquies 87 and concludes, ‘In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times was rather towards copie than weight.' 88 When thus identifying copia with preference for words over matter, Bacon ignores...

...most intractable impediment to any serious empirical enquiry into symbolic systems of representation: 'Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter; ... for words are but the images of matter; and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall...

...scoffing echo, "Decent annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone"; and the echo answered in Greek One, Asine. Then grew the learning of the Schoolmen to be utterly...inclination and bent of those times was rather towards copie than weight. Here therefore is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not...

...564. Bacon regularly attacks a reverence for linguistic forms as an impediment to empirical inquiry: 'Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter: . . .for words are but the images of matter: and except they have life of reason and invention, to...

...would accuse of paying more attention to 'copie' [ie copiousness] than 'weight', and then go on to say: 'Here therefore is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter'.1 Doctor Johnson was certainly of this opinion. Picking out the line 'Light, seeking light,...