The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1Browne, Thomas, Sir
Religion
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1
Browne, Thomas, Sir
Christianity; Ethics; Religion and medicine
singular Book of Physiognomy, hath made no mention of Chiromancy; yet I
believe the _Egyptians_, who were neerer addicted to those abstruse and
mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein; to which those vagabond and
counterfeit _Egyptians_ did after pretend, and perhaps retained a few
corrupted principles, which sometimes might verifie their prognosticks.
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces,
there should be none alike: Now contrary, I wonder as much how there
should be any. He that shall consider how many thousand several words
have been carelesly and without study composed out of 24 Letters;
withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the Fabrick of
one Man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary: And it will
be very hard that they shall so concur, as to make one portract like
another. Let a Painter carelesly limb out a million of Faces, and you
shall find them all different; yea let him have his Copy before him, yet
after all his art there will remain a sensible distinction; for the
pattern or example of every thing is the perfectest in that kind,
whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it,
because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto the Copy.
Nor doth the similitude of Creatures disparage the variety of Nature,
nor any way confound the Works of God. For even in things alike there is
diversity; and those that do seem to accord, do manifestly disagree. And
thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble him, we
are utterly different from him. There was never any thing so like
another, as in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved
difference slip in, to prevent the identity, without which, two several
things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
SECT. 3
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