10. Again, it passes for a notable piece of learning to understand chronology: to be able to adjust the intervals and distances of time, when such a man flourished, when such an action was done, and the like. Now I deny not, but it may concern some to know these things, who have any interest depending upon it. It may concern some to know, for instance, that there is a twofold date of the victory at _Actium_, the one reckoned from the fight there, the other from the taking of _Alexandria_. But however useful it may be to know this, yet certainly as to any intellectual perfection that accrues by it, it must needs be a very unedifying stuffage of the head; altho’ ’tis so generally accounted a great accomplishment and enrichment of it. *11. There are many other things which the humour of the world has turned up for learning, which ignorance will never be the better for, and which wisdom does not need. Thus ’tis counted learning to have tumbled over a multitude of books, especially if great ones, and old ones, and obscure ones; but most of all, if manuscripts, the recovery of one of which is reckoned so much added to _the common-wealth of learning_, as they call it. Hence a _well-read_ man signifies the very same as a _learned_ man in most men’s dictionaries: and by _well-read_ they don’t mean one that has _read well_, that has cleared and improved his understanding by his reading, but only one that has _read much_, tho’ perhaps he has puzzled and confounded his notions by doing so. Thus again, it goes for learning, to be acquainted with men’s opinions, especially of the ancients; to know what this or that philosopher held, what this or that author says, tho’ perhaps he says nothing but what is either absurd, or obviously true. What, for instance, can be more absurd; than that fancy of _Empedocles_, that there are two semicircles compassing the earth betwixt them, one of fire, the other of air; and that the former makes day, and the latter night? And yet to know this is learning! What can be more obviously true, than that grave doctrine of _Aristotle_, that privation must go before the introduction of the form in all generation? Or, that a thing must lose one form, before it can take another? And yet ’tis learning to know that he taught this! To know the thing is nothing: but to know that _Aristotle_ taught it, that is learning! Nay farther, tho’ I am able to demonstrate the circulation of the blood, or the motion of the earth, yet I shall not be admitted into the order of the learned, unless I am able to tell, that _Copernicus_ discovered the one, and _Harvey_ the other. So much more learned an atchievment it is, to know opinions than things! And accordingly those are reckoned the most learned authors, who have given the greatest specimens of this kind of knowledge. Thus _Picus Mirandula_ is more admired for his examination of the doctrine of the Pagans, than any of them were for what they delivered.