served, are commonly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account of the time past; so that the oblivion is all one[1] as if none had been left. If you consider well of the people of the West Indies, it is very probable that they are a newer or a younger people than the people of the old world. And it is much more likely that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by earthquakes (as the Ægyptian priest told Solon concerning the island of Atlantis,[2] that it was swallowed by an earthquake), but rather that it was desolated by a particular deluge. For earthquakes are seldom in those parts. But on the other side, they have such pouring rivers, as[3] the rivers of Asia and Africk and Europe are but brooks to them. Their Andes likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with us; whereby it seems that the remnants of generation of men were in such a particular deluge saved. As for the observation that Machiavel hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much extinguish the memory of things;[4] traducing[5] Gregory the
- ↑ All one. One and the same; quite the same. "Aweel, sir, if ye think it wadna be again the law, it 's a' ane to Dandie." Scott. Guy Mannering. XXXVI.
- ↑ For the conversation between Solon and the Egyptian priest, "a man well stricken in years," see The Timaeus of Plato, III. 21–25, pp. 67–81, in edition of R. D. Archer-Hind, 1888.
- ↑ As. That.
- ↑ Bacon has in mind here Book II., Chapter V., of Machiavelli's Discourses upon the First Decad of Livy, "That Deluges, Pestilences, the change of Religion and Languages, and other accidents, in a manner extinguish the memory of many things." St. Gregory is the only individual Machiavelli charges with destroying "the monuments of antiquity, defacing images and statues, and demoralizing every thing that might in any wise contribute to keep the memory of paganism alive."
- ↑ Traduce. To misrepresent; censure.
