The _Advancement_ is far from being a perfect book. As a
survey of the actual state of knowledge in his day, of its deficiencies,
and what was wanted to supply them, it is not even up to the materials
of the time. Even the improved _De Augmentis_ is inadequate; and there
is reason to think the _Advancement_ was a hurried book, at least in the
later part, and it is defective in arrangement and proportion of parts.
Two of the great divisions of knowledge--history and poetry--are
despatched in comparatively short chapters; while in the division on
"Civil Knowledge," human knowledge as it respects society, he inserts a
long essay, obviously complete in itself and clumsily thrust in here, on
the ways of getting on in the world, the means by which a man may be
"_Faber fortunae suae_"--the architect of his own success; too lively a
picture to be pleasant of the arts with which he had become acquainted
in the process of rising. The book, too, has the blemishes of its own
time; its want of simplicity, its inevitable though very often amusing
and curious pedantries.
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