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There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus.
He performed the suitable incantation, putting this and that together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian witches and sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if indecent charm from the old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had told him to say, without any mock-modest mincing of words: Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit, Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum Quod faciundum erat cognoscere.
The doctor redeemed his promise, by prefacing a panegyric, in English, with the following quotation from Virgil Hic jacet FELIX QUI Potuit Rerum cognoscere Causas QUI Que Metus omnes Et inexorabile Fatum Subjecit Pedibus Strepitumque Acherontis avari.
Thomas a Jesu, De Contemplatione Divina, lib. v. c. xiii.: "Quasi dicat: cum intellectus non possit Dei immensam illam claritatem et incomprehensibilem plenitudinem comprehendere, hoc ipsum est illam conspicere ac intelligere, intelligere se non posse intellectu cognoscere: quod quidem nihil aliud est quam Deum sub ratione incomprehensibilitatis videre ac cognoscere."
Or had even Bacon not entirely cleared his mind from the notion of the ancients, that “rerum cognoscere causas” was the sole object of philosophy, and that to inquire into the effects of things belonged to servile and mechanical arts?
For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough "acta parentum jam legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus."
The middle region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness: "Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari! Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"
It is then necessary to drop one's daily agnosticism and attempt rerum cognoscere causas. If your aeroplane has a slight indisposition, a handy man may mend it. But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil.
"Multum" inquis "tenuemque iubes me ferre laborem Cernere cum facili lucem ratione viderer." Quod quaeris, Deus est. Coneris scandere caelum Fataque fatali genitus cognoscere lege Et transire tuum pectus, mundoque potiri: Pro pretio labor est, nec sunt immunia tanta. Wherever one found this language used, in prose or verse, it would be memorable.
"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas," so wrote of him his great successor and admirer, yet added, with a tinge of pathos which touches us even now, "Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes."
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