Nosce Teipsum: Reason I: Drawne from the Desire of Knowledge

First in Man's mind we find an appetite
To learne and know the truth of euery thing;
Which is co-naturall, and borne with it,
And from the essence of the soule doth spring.

With this desire, shee hath a natiue might
To find out euery truth, if she had time;
Th' innumerable effects to sort aright,
And by degrees, from cause to cause to clime.

But sith our life so fast away doth slide,
As doth a hungry eagle through the wind,
Or as a ship transported with the tide;
Which in their passage leaue no print behind;

Of which swift little time so much we spend,
While some few things we through the sense doe straine;
That our short race of life is at an end,
Ere we the principles of skill attaine.

Or God (which to vaine ends hath nothing done)
In vaine this appetite and power hath giuen;
Or else our knowledge, which is here begun,
Hereafter must bee perfected in heauen.

God neuer gaue a power to one whole kind,
But most part of that kind did vse the same;
Most eies haue perfect sight, though some be blind;
Most legs can nimbly run, though some be lame:

But in this life no soule the truth can know
So perfectly, as it hath power to doe;
If then perfection be not found below,
An higher place must make her mount thereto.