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 BtTRKE. Section I. Prefaee, Contents, and pages . . 113-218. 
 
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 PUBLISHED BY GINK, IJEATH, & CO. 
 
 1882. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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TEXT-BOOK OF PROSE; 
 
 DIJT7TrF,, WEBSTEB^ :^!^S^ BAOO]^, 
 
 kotes, and sketches of the 
 authors' lives. 
 
 FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND CLASSES. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. henry N. HUDSON, LL.D. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO. 
 
 1882. 
 
 5. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1876. 
 
 By HENET N. HUDSOJT, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at ■W»sbi«<{toii 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Text-Book of Peose here offered to the public is 
 intended as a sort of companion-Tolume to the Text-Booh 
 of Poetry published a few months ago. Both volumes have 
 originated in the same experiences, and the contents of 
 both are ordered on the same principle, namely, that of 
 teaching English literature by authors, and not by mere 
 literary chips and splinters. Both the method of the work 
 and the reasons for that method are set forth with some 
 fulness in the Preface to the former volume. I have seen 
 no cause to recede at all from the statement there made of 
 them ; and as a repetition of them here would be something 
 ungraceful, I must be content with referring the reader to 
 that Preface, merely remarking withal, that the matter was 
 no recent or sudden thing with me, but the slow result of 
 the experience and reflection of many years. And I am 
 moved to renew my protest, if that be the right name for 
 it, against putting young students through a course of 
 mere nibbles and snatches from a multitude of authors, 
 where they cannot stay long enough with any one to de- 
 velop any real taste for him, or derive any solid benefit 
 from him. 
 
 I shall hope to be excused for observing, further, that 
 the miscellaneous selections now so commonly in use in- 
 volve one error of so gross a character, that it ought not to 
 be left unnoticed. Those selections make a merit, appar- 
 ently, of ranging over as wide a field of authorship as may 
 be, and value themselves in proportion to the number of 
 authors included. So their method is to treat the giants 
 and the pigmies, the big guns and the popguns of litera- 
 ture on a footing of equality : nay, you shall often find the 
 
 iii 
 
iV PREFACE. 
 
 Bmaller made even more promment than the greater ; per- 
 haps because the former are more apt to be popular than 
 the latter. For instance, two pages will be given to Mac- 
 aulay, or to a writer of still lower grade, where one is given 
 to Jeremy Taylor or Addison or Burke. So, again, some 
 flfth-rate or sixth-rate author, whose name is hardly known 
 out of Boston, comes in for a larger space than is accorded 
 to Daniel Webster. Or, once more, Edgar A. Poe's vapid 
 inanities done into verse, where all is mere jugglery of 
 words, or an exercise in verbal legerdemain, are made quite 
 as much of as the choice workmanship of our best Ameri- 
 can poets, Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier. This is an 
 application of the levelling principle so unjust and so 
 inexpedient, that we may well marvel how it should be 
 tolerated in any walks of liberal learning and culture. 
 
 No thoughtful person, I take it, will have any difficulty 
 in gathering that this volume is made up, like its prede- 
 cessor, with a special view to the oldest and ripest pupils 
 in our high-schools and seminaries and academies. These 
 pupils, it may well- be supposed, are old enough and ripe 
 enough to unfold at least the beginnings of literary and 
 intellectual taste, so as to be at home and find delight in 
 tasteful and elegant authorship, where the graces may do 
 something towards making the ways of learning ways of 
 pleasantness to them. 
 
 Of the three authors here drawn upon, two are, by gen- 
 eral suffrage, the very greatest in the prose literature of 
 the English-speaking world, while the third is, I believe, 
 generally and justly held to be, by all odds, the first in the 
 prose literature of our own country. In the case of Burke 
 and Webster, the works from which I had to select are 
 somewhat voluminous, and it is quite likely that my selec- 
 tions are not in all cases the most judicious that might 
 have been made. On this point I can but plead that, after 
 an acquaintance of many years with those authors, I have 
 used my best care and diligence in looking out such por- 
 tions as seemed to me to combine, in the greatest degree, 
 the two qualities of literary excellence and of fitness to the 
 
PKEFAO£. V 
 
 purposes of this volume. Nor, perhaps, will it be amiss to 
 add, in reference to Burke and Webster, that I often found 
 it not easy to choose between several pieces, and that I was 
 compelled by lack of room to omit a considerable number 
 of pieces which I would have liked to retain : an embarrass- 
 ment naturally springing from a redundancy of wealth. 
 
 As to the principle on which the selections proceed, my 
 aim has been, throughout, to unite the culture of high and 
 pure literary tastes with the attainment of useful and lib- 
 eral knowledge. I think it will not be questioned that 
 there is something of special reason why our young people 
 of both sexes should be early and carefully instructed in 
 the principles of our federal Constitution, and in the 
 structure and working of our august national State. We 
 pride ourselves on the alleged competency of the American 
 people for self-government. Yet it is but too evident that, 
 in political matter|, a large majority of them have not 
 advanced beyond the "little learning" which is proverbially 
 "a dangerous thing." The degree of intelligence which 
 naturally issues in conceit and presumption is the utmost 
 that can be aflBrmed of them. Thus it comes about that, 
 for the seats of public trust, shallow, flashy demagogues are 
 very commonly preferred to solid, judicious, honest men. 
 At this day, our average voter certainly has not more 
 judgment of his own than he had. fifty years ago, and he 
 has far less respect for the judgment of wiser men. The 
 popular mind is indeed busy enough with the vulgar 
 politics of the hour ; but in the true grounds and forces of 
 social and political well-being it is discouragingly ignorant, 
 while it is more and more casting off those habits of mod- 
 esty and leverence which might do the work of knowledge. 
 
 This may explain why so much of the present volume is 
 occupied with discourses relating to government, and to 
 the duties and interests of men as stockholders in the 
 commonwealth. In the common principles of all social 
 and civil order, Burke is unquestionably our best and 
 wisest teacher. In handling the particular questions of his 
 tinie, he always involves those principles, and brings them 
 
vi PEEPACE. 
 
 to their practical bearings, where they most " come home 
 to the business and bosoms of men." And his pages are 
 e-verywhere bright with the highest and purest political 
 morality, while at the same time he is a consummate mas- 
 ter in the intellectual charms and graces of authorship. 
 Webster, also, is abundantly at home in those common 
 principles : his giant grasp wields them with the ease and 
 grace of habitual mastery: therewithal he is by far the 
 ablest and clearest expounder we hare of what may be 
 termed the specialties of our American political system. 
 So that you can hardly touch any point of our stupendous 
 National Fabric, but that he will approTe himself at once 
 your wisest and your pleasantest teacher. In fact, I hardly 
 know which to commend most, his political wisdom, his 
 ponderous logic, the perfect manliness of his style, or the 
 high-souled enthusiasm which generally animates and tones 
 his discourse ; the latter qualities being no less useful to 
 inspire the student with a noble patriotic ardour than the 
 former to arm him with sound and fruitful instruction. 
 And so, between Burke and Webster, if the selections are 
 made with but tolerable judgment, our youth may here 
 learn a good deal of what it highly concerns them to 
 know as citizens of a free republican State. 
 
 I am not unmindful that, in thus placing Webster along- 
 side of Burke, I may be inyiting upon him a trial some- 
 thing too scTere. I do not by any means regard him as the 
 peer of Burke ; but it is my deljljerate Judgment that he 
 comes nearer to Burke, and can better stand a fair com- 
 parison with him, than any other English-speaking states- 
 man of modern times. In pure force of intellect, Burke 
 was no doubt something ahead of him, and was far beyond 
 him in strength and richness of imagination ; for he was, 
 as Johnson described him, emphatically "a constellation ": 
 on the other hand, Burke's tempestuous sensibility some- 
 times whirled him into exorbitancies, where Webster's cooler 
 temperament and more balanced make-up would probably 
 have held him firm in his propriety. And Webster, though 
 far above imitating any man, abounds in marks of a very 
 
PEEFACE. Vll 
 
 close and diligent study of Burke. It seems speciiilly 
 noteworthy, that lie was thoroughly at one with Burke in 
 an intense aversion to political metaphysics, and to those 
 speculative abstractions which, if attempted to be carried 
 into the practical work of government, can never do any 
 thing but mischief. 
 
 In regard to the selections from Bacon, I there had 
 nothing to distract my choice, or cause me any embarrass- 
 ment. The settled verdict of mankind points at once to 
 his Essays as a book which no liberally-educated person 
 can rightly afford to be unacquainted with. Other of hia 
 works may better illustrate the vast height and compass of 
 his genius ; but they are, for the most part, little suited, or 
 rather quite unsuited to the ends of this volume. But his 
 Essays everywhere touch the common interests and con- 
 cerns of human life ; they are freighted to the utmost with 
 solid practical sense; and as specimens of moral and civil 
 discourse it is hardly possible to overstate the wisdom and 
 beauty of them. Of the fifty-eight Essays, I here give 
 thirty ; and I was nowise at a loss which to select. Nor, 
 had my space been ever so large, should I have greatly 
 cared to include any more of them. 
 
 I have a good right to know that Bacon and Burke are 
 among our very best authors for the use to which this 
 volume looks. The Essays, the Letter to the Sheriffs of 
 Bristol, and the Speech to the Electors of Bristol, I have 
 been using several years, with good effect, in some of my 
 own classes. There are many other portions of Burke 
 equally good, and some still better, for such use; which, 
 however, were not to be had in a practicable shape. And I 
 have long been wishing to make a like use of "Webster, but 
 have never been able to do so, because none of his works 
 were at hand in a suitable form. I feel right well assured 
 that he will amply reward the same study, and that, if not 
 so good in himself as the other two, he has some obvious 
 points of preference in the education of American youth. 
 Nor can I think it fitting or just to be using only such 
 fragments of him as are commonly served up for mera 
 
TIU FBEFAOIi. 
 
 exercises in declamation and elocution ; in fact, I have littl 
 faith in such exercises, save in connection with the attair 
 ment of something higher and better. For manner, to l 
 really good, must he held subordinate to matter ; and tb 
 pursuit of manner for its own sake, or even as a paramour 
 aim, can hardly fail to result in a very bad manner, 
 submit that the art, or the habit, of pronouncing nothin 
 in such a way as to make it pass for something grand, i 
 not so little known among us as to call for special encoui 
 agement and aid by books and teachers. At present w 
 seem to be in no little danger of educating people into 
 good deal more tongue than mind. 
 
 In conclusion, it may not be amiss to say that this vol 
 ume is not designed for any "auction of popularity." Th 
 thought of popular favour has had no part or lot in th 
 preparation of it. For I know right well that, in prepare 
 tions of this sort, a great many people altogether prefe 
 something which may seem to teach a little of every thinj 
 while really giving no true instruction whatever. So th 
 most I venture to hope for is, that the book may commen 
 itself to the judicious; the number of whom, I fear, is no 
 large enough to make up any thing like a popularity. An^ 
 this leads me to remark that our young students, it seem 
 to me, can be better occupied than with the transient, shifi 
 ing literary fashions and popularities of the day. I ai 
 not myself a very aged man, yet I am old enough to hav 
 outlived two generations of "immortal" writers who hav 
 already sunk into oblivion; and of the popular author 
 now living probably very few will be heard of thirty year 
 hence. Surely, in forming the mind and taste of the younj 
 it is better to use authors who have already lived long enoug; 
 to afford some guaranty that they may survive the nes 
 twenty years. 
 
 Boston, January, 1878. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BUEKE. 
 
 P»ge. 
 
 Sketch of his Life 1 
 
 Letter to the SherifEs of Bristol .... 9 
 
 How to retain the Colonies 47 
 
 The People of New England 4i) 
 
 Speech on Economical Reform 50 
 
 Ohedience to Instructions 113 
 
 Speech to the Electors of Bristol 115 
 
 Growth of the American Trade 152 
 
 Character of George Grenville 154 
 
 Lord Chatham and Charles Townshend .... 155 
 
 State of Things in France 159 
 
 The Revolution in France 163 
 
 Uberty in the Abstract 190 
 
 Freedom as an Inheritance 192 
 
 The Eerolutionary Third Estate 198 
 
 The Eights of Men 204 
 
 Abuse of History 201 
 
 English Toleration 209 
 
 How a "Wise Statesman proceeds 211 
 
 True Principles of Reform 213 
 
 Fanaticism of Liberty 217 
 
 The Ethics of Yanity 219 
 
 The Old and the New Whigs 226 
 
 A Letter to a Noble Lord 248 
 
 France at "War with Humanity 285 
 
 Fanatical Atheism 298 
 
 How to deal with Jacobin France 298 
 
 ix 
 
X CONTBITTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Desolation of the Camatic 299 
 
 Unlawfulness of Arbitrary Power 307 
 
 Cruelties of Debi Sing 311 
 
 Impeachment of Hastings 315 
 
 Justice and Eevenge 818 
 
 Appeal for Judgment upon Hastings .... 321 
 
 "The Labouring Poor" 825 
 
 WEBSTER. 
 
 Ssetch of his Life 326 
 
 Speech in Keply to Hayne 835 
 
 Blessings of the Constitution 885 
 
 Presidential Nullification 395 
 
 The Spoils to the Victors 402 
 
 Fraudulent Party Outcries 407 
 
 The Position of Mr. Calhoun 411 
 
 South Carolina Nullification 412 
 
 The Presidential Protest 421 
 
 The Character of Washington 461 
 
 Alexander Hamilton 473 
 
 First Settlement of New England 475 
 
 The First Century of New England 483 
 
 The Second Century of New England .... 489 
 
 Appeal against the Slave-Trade 492 
 
 Bunker-Hill Monument begun 494 
 
 Bunker-Hill Monument finished 498 
 
 Adams in the Congress of 1776 500 
 
 Right Use of Learning 505 
 
 The Murder of Mr. White 508 
 
 Character of Lord Byron 511 
 
 Character of Judge Story 512 
 
 Religion as an Element of Greatness 515 
 
 Each to interpret the Law for himself .... 516 
 
 Irredeemable Paper 518 
 
 Benefits of the Credit System 521 
 
CONTENTS. Xi 
 
 Page. 
 
 Abuse of Executive Patronage 626 
 
 Philanthropic Love of Power 52t 
 
 The Spirit of Disunion 529 
 
 Importance of the Navy 532 
 
 The Log Cabin 533 
 
 Speaking for the Union 535 
 
 Obedience to Instructions 536 
 
 Peaceable Secession 537 
 
 Standing upon the Constitution 640 
 
 Appeal for the Union 543 
 
 BACON. 
 
 Sketch of his Life 553 
 
 From the Essays : 
 
 Of Truth 561 
 
 Of Death 563 
 
 Of Unity in Religion 565 
 
 Of Eevenge 569 
 
 Of Adversity 570 
 
 Of Parents and Children 572 
 
 Of Marriage and Single Life 673 
 
 Of Great Place 575 
 
 Of Boldness 578 
 
 Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature . . . 679 
 
 Of Atheism 681 
 
 Of Superstition 584 
 
 Of Travel 586 
 
 Of Wisdom for a Man's Self 587 
 
 Of Innovations 589 
 
 Of Seeming Wise 590 
 
 Of Priendship 691 
 
 Of Expense 597 
 
 Of Suspicion 598 
 
 Of Discourse 599 
 
 OfEiches 601 
 
xii ooiirrEifiTS. 
 
 From the Essays . Paj 
 
 Of Nature in Men 8 
 
 Of Custom and Education ... . . 6 
 
 Of Youth and Age 6 
 
 Of Beauty 6 
 
 Of Deformity 6 
 
 Of Studies . 6 
 
 Of Praise 6 
 
 Of Judicature 6 
 
 Of Anger 6 
 
 From the Advaitcement of Leabnikg : 
 
 Discredits of Learning 
 
 Dignity and Value of Knowledge . . ,6 
 
 Miacellaneoua 6 
 
FRANCIS BACON: 
 
 SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 Feancis Bacon, the great Light of modem Philosophy, was the son i 
 Sir Nicholas Bacon, who for twenty years held the office of Lord Keep( 
 of the Great Seal. He was bom at York House, London, the residence i 
 his father, on the 22d of January, 1561. His mother, Anne Cooke, wi 
 his father's second wife, and had one other son, Anthony, two years oldi 
 than Francis. As her oldest sister was the wife of Lord Treasurer Bu 
 leigh, Francis stood, from his birth, in a sort of double relation to tl: 
 Court. Both Lady Burleigh and Lady Bacon were highly educate 
 women; their father, Sir Anthony Cooke, being the preceptor of Kin 
 Edward the Sixth. Lady Bacon, before her marriage, translated Bisho 
 Jewel's Apology into Latin, and is said to have done it so well, that tl 
 good prelate could discover no error in it, nor suggest any alteration. 
 
 Of the childhood of Francis and his brother little is known. Their earl 
 education was superintended by their accomplished mother. The healt 
 of Francis was delicate and fragile; which may partly account for thesti 
 dious and thonghtftil turn which seems to have marked his boyhoo( 
 Queen Elizabeth, it is said, took special delight in " trying him with que 
 tions," when he was a little boy; and was so much pleased with the sens 
 and gravity of his answers, that she used to call him in sport her " youn 
 Lord Keeper." And Bacon himself tells us that, in his boyhood, tt 
 Queen once asked him how old he was, and that he promptly repliec 
 " Two years younger than your Majesty's reign." It is also said tha 
 when very young, he stole away from his playfellows, to investigate th 
 cause of a singular echo in St. James's Fields, which had excited h 
 curiosity. 
 
 At the age of thirteen. Bacon entered Trinity College, Cambridge, whei 
 he remained three years, and then left without taking a degree. It is sai 
 that, while in college, he studied diligently the great models of antiquity 
 but even at that early age he took a dislike to the philosophy of Aristotli 
 not on account of the author, to whom he ascribed all high attributes, hi 
 for the unfruitfulness of the method ; it being a philosophy strong only fc 
 disputations and contentions, but barren of works for the benefit of th 
 life of man. 
 
 The Lord Keeper had designed his son Francis for a public career as 
 statesman or diplomatist, and with that view took him out of college, e 
 the age of sixteen, and sent him to Paris, where he spent some time undc 
 the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador at the French Cour 
 It is said that while there he invented an ingenious method of writing i 
 cipher. The main purpose in sending him abroad was, that he migl 
 study men ; and with that view he travelled to various places in Franc 
 and Italy ; but it well ajipears that, though he was a keen observer of mer 
 he could not withdraw his mind altogether from the investigation of nati 
 ral phenomena. After about three years spent on the Continent, he wa 
 called home by the sudden death of his father. This event changed th 
 whole course of his life. Sir Nicholas had intended to purchase an estat 
 for Francis, as he had done for his other sons ; but, as death came upo 
 
554 BAOOir. 
 
 him before this intention was carried out, the money was divided- equally 
 among all his children, the youngest son being thus left with only one fifth 
 of what was intended for him : so that, instead of living only to study, he 
 was under the necessity of studying how to live._ 
 
 Bacon now fixed upon the law as his profession, and in 1580 became a 
 member of Gray's Inn, which was one of the four principal schools or col- 
 leges for students of the law in London. As he had great power of appli- 
 cation in whatever he undertook, his all-gifted mind made swift advances in 
 legal studies, and in June, 1582, he was admitted as an utter barrister, 
 which was the first degree in legal practice. February, 1586, saw him 
 advanced to what was called the high table of Gray's Inn, and he soon 
 after became a bencher. Meanwhile he had kept up his philosophical 
 studies, and published the first fruits thereof in a work rather ambitiously 
 entitled The Greatest Birth of Time; which, however, fell so dead upon the 
 world that it is now heard of only in one of his letters, written long after- 
 wards, to Father Fulgentio ; and its only effect at the time was to mark 
 him out as a rash speculatist. 
 
 In 1584, while yet a student of Gray's Inn, Bacon was elected to Parlia- 
 ment by one of the borough constituencies of Dorsetshire. On this great 
 stage he continued to figure conspicuously for upwards of thirty years. In 
 the Fall of 1586 he took his seat in the House of Commons for Taunton ; 
 and in the next Parliament we find him representing Liverpool. In Feb- 
 ruary, 1593, he was member for the County of Middlesex ; and from thai 
 time onward his reputation as a statesman stood so high, that various 
 constituencies appear to have striven for the honour of having him as their 
 representative ; and in some instances he was elected for several places at 
 the same time. Bacon was an exceedingly industrious and useful member 
 of Parliament. As a practical legislator, he was probably second to no man 
 of his time. His great skill and diligence in the business of his place caused 
 him to be put upon many important committees; and whenever he ad- 
 dressed the whole House, as he very often did, he appears to have surpassed 
 all the others both in commanding and rewarding the attention of the 
 members. Ben Jonson tells us that " the fear of every man who heard him 
 was, lest he>should make an end." 
 
 One passage in his parliamentary life seems to call for some special notice. 
 In the Parliament of 1593, upon a question of granting supplies, the two 
 Houses appointed each a committee, to confer together, and make a joint 
 report. When the result of that conference came up. Bacon opposed the 
 action, claiming for the Commons the exclusive right to originate bills of 
 that nature; and he moved that the House should "proceed herein by 
 themselves apart from their Lordships." Thus his opposition went upon 
 the ground of privilege. Nevertheless, both on that pomt, and also on the 
 terms of the subsidy, he was outvoted, and he acquiesced. His conduct was 
 very offensive to the Queen ; and he is charged with having met her repri- 
 mand with " the most abject apologies." Even if this were true, it was 
 nothing more than the whole House of Commons had often done before. 
 But we have two letters from Bacon on the subject, addressed to Burleigh 
 and Essex ; both in a tone of manly self-justification. The Queen was 
 angry at his speeches, and he expressed his grief that she should " retain an 
 nard conceit of them." He adds the following: "It might please her 
 sacred Majesty to think what my end should be in those speeches, if it were 
 not duty, and duty alone. I am not so simple hut 1 know the common beaten 
 way to please. And whereas popularity hath been objected, I muse what 
 care I should take to please many, that taketh a course of life to deal with 
 few." 
 
 TJf) to this time, and for some years longer. Bacon gained no lucrative 
 position. For reasons which I cannot stay to explain, his uncle, tlio Lord 
 Treasurer, lent bin! but scanty and grudging help. The only thing indeed 
 
SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 555 
 
 which hisXordship did for this illustrious kinsman was to procure for him, 
 in 1589, the reversion of the clerkship of the Star Chamber, which was 
 worth some £1600 a year, but which did not fall vacant till twenty years 
 after. Though Bacon did his work well, both as a lawyer and a legislator, 
 still his thoughts and aspirations pointed elsewhere. He had indeed a 
 strong desire of office, but it was not a selfish desire : it was rather the in- 
 structive yearning of his most original and comprehensive genius for leave 
 to range in its proper home. His highest ambition was for a place which 
 should supply his needs, and at the same time give him leisure to prosecute 
 his intellectual conquests. Having taken all knowledge to be his province, 
 with his vast contemplative ends he united but moderate civil ends. He 
 had indeed an ardent, admiiing, and steadfast friend in the Earl of Essex, 
 who did all he could to help him in the matter of office and salary ; but 
 Essex was so rash in his temper, so ill-judging and so headstrong in his 
 proceedings, that his friendship proved rather a hindrance than a help. 
 
 In 1593 the office of Attorney-General became vacant. Bacon had hopes 
 of the place, and Essex lent his influence in that behalf; but the Queen's 
 displeasure could not be overcome. After a delay of many months, during 
 which Bacon was kept in suspense, the office was given to Sir Edward 
 Coke. By this promotion, the placeof Solicitor-General fell vacant. Bacon 
 then fixed his eye on that office, and Essex worked for him with all his 
 might ; but, after a suspense of a year and a half, his hopes were again 
 blasted by the appointment of Sergeant Fleming. Chagrined and mortified 
 at the failure of his suit, the generous Essex nextconceived the design ol 
 compensating Bacon with a liberal share of his own propertv. He accord- 
 ingly proposed to give him an estate worth about£1800, equivalent to some 
 $50,000 in our time. But Bacon's insight^of character naturally made 
 him reluctant to incur such obligations, as he could nwt but see that the 
 Earl was likely to mar all by his violent courses. He declined the offi^r. 
 Essex insisted, and Bacon at last yielded, but with such words as show that 
 he had too just a presentiment of what the Earl was coming to. " My 
 Lord," said he, "I see I must be your homager and hold land of your gift ; 
 but do yon know the manner of doing homage by law t Always it is with 
 a saving of his faith to the King and his other lords ; and therefore, my 
 Lord, I can be no more yours than I was, and it must be with the ancient 
 savings." 
 
 In April, 1596, the Mastership of the Rolls— an office having charge of 
 all patents that pass the Great Seal, and of the records of the Chancery 
 Court — became vacant, and Bacon was a candidate for the place. Essex 
 again supported his claims, but with the same result as before, — suspense 
 and final disappointment. This was followed, the next year, by an estrange- 
 ment between Bacon and Essex. The Earl's rash and impetuous nature 
 was carrying him into dangerous ways, and Bacon's wise counsels and 
 friendly warnings were naturally distasteful to a man so averse to any self- 
 restraint. In the Spring of 1599, before Essex set out on his expedition to 
 Ireland, Bacon had so far renewed his intercourse with him as to write him 
 several friendly letters of advice, warning him that " merit is worthier than 
 fame," and that " obedience is better than sacrifice." In September follow- 
 ing, the Earl suddenly returned from that ill-starred expedition, covered 
 with dishonour, and not free from disloyal and defiant thoughts. 
 
 I now come to what is commonly regarded as the darkest passage in 
 Bacon's life. In some respects it is rather dark indeed ; yet the indictment, 
 it seems to me, has sometimes been greatly overcharged, — an error which 1 
 would fain avoid. Some years before this time, Bacon had been appointed 
 by the Queen one of her counsel learned in the law. This office he still 
 held, and was of course bound to its duties. The crisis, which he had long 
 foreboded, and had done his utmost to prevent, had now come. In tha 
 Spring of 1600 the Queen was for proceeding against Essex by public in- 
 
556 BACON. 
 
 formation. Bacon dissuaded her from this, but not without giviig her 
 offence. She finally resolved that the matter should be heard before a 
 commission, and her counsel had their parts assigned them. Bacon begged 
 to be excused, but held himself ready to obey the Queen's commands, 
 thinking that by yielding so far he might be in a better position to serve 
 Essex. At this time he knew nothing of the Earl's treasonable designs, 
 and looked upon the affair as a storm that would soon blow over. Essex 
 was acquitted of disloyalty, but censured for contempt and disobedience. 
 By the Queen's order, Bacon drew up a narrative of what had passed, in 
 which he touched the Earl's faults so tenderly, that the Queen told him 
 " she perceived old love would not easily be forgotten" ; and he with great 
 adroitness replied that he hoped she meant that of herself. And in a letter 
 written about this time, he speaks as follows : " For my Lord of Essex, I 
 am not servile to him, having regard to my superior duty. I have been 
 much bound to him. And, on the other side, I have spent more time and 
 more thoughts about his well-doing than I ever did about mine own." 
 
 Essex was again at large, and had his fate once moi-e in his own hands. 
 But it soon appeared that he was rather emboldened than checked in his 
 fatal career. While he was driving on his plots in secret, the Queen had 
 sources of information which Bacon knew not of. In his ignorance of the 
 whole truth. Bacon still kept up his defence of Essex, till at last the Queen, 
 supposing him to know as much as herself, got so angry at his importunity 
 that she would no longer see him. This was in the Fall of 1600. Early 
 in January, 1601, Bacon was again admitted to the Queen's presence, and 
 spoke his mind to her as follows ; " Madam, I see you withdraw your 
 favour fi-om me, and now that I have lost many friends for your sake, I 
 shall lose you too. A great many love me not, because they think I have 
 been against my tord Essex; and you love me not, because you know I 
 have been for him : yet will I never repent me that I have dealt in simplic- 
 ity of heart towards you both, without respect of cautions to myself." The 
 Queen was moved by his earnestness, and spoke kindly to him, bat said 
 nothing of Essex. Bacon then determined to meddle no more in the mat 
 ter, and did not see the Queen again till the Earl had put himself beyond 
 the reach of intercession. 
 
 Thenceforth Essex seems to have cast off all restraint. Left to his own 
 head, and perhaps to the bad counsels of some who were using him as a 
 tool, he plunged into crime with the recklessness of downright infatuation. 
 Of his doings sufBce it to say that they were clearly treasonable, and that 
 nothing less than treason could possibly be made out of them. On the 19th 
 of February he was formally arraigned and brought to trial. Bacon, as 
 one of the Queen's counsel, took the part assigned to him. The defence 
 broke down at all points, and Essex was of course condemned. Bacon 
 spoke twice in the trial ; and of his course the worst that can fairly^ be said 
 appears to be, that the dues of personal gratitude did not withhold him 
 from pressing the argument against the Earl somewhat more harshly than 
 his duty to the Crown absolutely required. On the one hand, it is allowed 
 that Essex had "spent all his power, might, authority, and amity" in 
 Bacon's behalf. On the other hand, Bacon had tried his utmost to serve 
 Essex ; he had stuck by him to the great and manifest peril of himself, 
 and never ceased to plead his cause, till that cause became utterly hopeless. 
 How much a man ought to stake in such a case, or whether he ought to 
 stake his all, is a question not easy to decide ; and in snch a sharp conflict 
 between personal gratitude and public duty, there will always be differ- 
 »nces of opinion. 
 
 Much the same is to be said touching the part sustained by Bacon aftet 
 the execution. Essex was something of a favourite with the people, and 
 his fate drew forth some marks of popular odium against the Queen. It 
 was deemed necessary to vindicate the action of the government, and to 
 
SKETCH OF niS LIFE. 557 * 
 
 Bacon was assigned the task of drawing up, or of dressing into sliape, "A 
 Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed bjr 
 Robert late Earl of Essex," &c., which was published in 1601. His instruc- 
 tions for the writing were very precise, and his first draft was submitted to 
 certain councillors, " who made almost a new writing," so that Bacon him- 
 self " gave only words and form of style." In reference to this paper it has 
 been said that Bacon "exercised his literary talents to blacken the Earl's 
 memory." But it does not appear that he carried the blackening process 
 any further than a fair and just statement of the case would have that effect. 
 Soon after the publication, a parliamentary election was held, and Bacon 
 was returned both by Ipswich and St. Albans ; which infers that he had 
 not lost ground iu the public confidence. Upon the whole, that Bacon was 
 enthusiastic in his friendship, probably none will afiirm. JBut then neither 
 was he bitter in his enmities. And if there was little nobleness of soul, 
 there was surely nothing of malice, in his composition. In his treatment 
 of Essex there is indeed nothing to praise ; nor, as it seems to me, is there 
 very much to be positively blamed. To pronounce him " the meanest of 
 mankind," is surely going' too far; but that there was more than enough 
 of meanness in him, must, I fear, be granted; for of that article "a little 
 more than a little is by much too much." 
 
 The death of the Queen, in March, 1603, and the accession of James the 
 First made no considerable change in Bacon's prospects. He was anxious 
 to be knighted, his chief reason being, " because I have found out an alder- 
 man's daughter, an handsome maiden, to my liking." Accordingly, in 
 July he was dubbed a knight by the King; but it was rather the reverse of 
 an honour, as some three hundred others were dubbed at the same time. 
 He was also elected to the new Parliament, both at Ipswich and St. 
 Albans, and continued to take a very prominent part in the business of the 
 House. In August, his office, as one of the learned counsel, was confirmed 
 to him by patent, together with a pension of £60 a year. In May, 1606, he 
 was married to Alice Barnham, the "handsome maiden" already men- 
 tioned. She was the daughter of a London merchant, and had a fortune of 
 ;£220 a-year, which was settled upon herself, with an addition of £500 
 a-year from her husband. 
 
 The accession of King James naturally drew on a proposal for uniting 
 the two kingdoms of England and Scotland. This most wise measure was 
 strongly^ opposed by many of the English ; but Bacon supported it with all 
 the weight of his name and talents, and doubtless thereby recommended 
 himself not a little to the King's favour. In June, 1607, he attained the 
 long-sought office of Solicitor-General ; and the next year the clerkship of 
 the Star-Chamber became vacant. Bacon had waited for it nearly twenty 
 years. In October, 1613, the place of Attorney-General again fell vacant, 
 and Bacon succeeded to it. The duties of this office brought him into con- 
 nection with the celebrated case of Peachman, which has entailed another 
 blot on his name. Peachman was an aged clergyman who, for some eccle- 
 siastical offence, had been cited before the Court of High Commission, 
 and deprived of his orders. Before the sentence, his house was searched, 
 and an unpublished sermon was found, which was alleged to contain trea- 
 sonable matter. Peachman was believed to have accomplices, and, as he 
 would not reveal them, the Council resolved on putting him to torture. By 
 the common law, the use of torture for extracting evidence was deemed 
 illegal ; but such use was held to be justified in this case on the ground of 
 its being for the purpose of discovery, and not of evidence. But it does 
 not appear that Bacon was at all responsible for this outrage, any further 
 than that, as Attorney-General, he was one of the commission appointed 
 to attend the examination of the prisoner. And his letters show that ha 
 engaged in the affair with reluctance, and that the step was taken against 
 his advice. It is also alleged that, to procure a capital sentence, Bacon 
 
558 BACON. 
 
 tampered with the judges of the King's Bench ; but as the case was not to 
 be tried by any of those judges, it does not well appear why he should have 
 tampered with them for that purpose. In August, 1615, Poachman was 
 tried at Taunton, and was convicted of high treason ; but the capital sen- 
 tence was never carried out, because " many of the judges were of opinion 
 that it was not treason." 
 
 In June, 1616, Bacon was made a member of the Privy Council, and 
 was formally congratulated thereupon by the University of Cambridge, 
 which he then represented in Parliament. In Mai-ch, 1617, Lord Chan- 
 cellor Ellesmere resigned, and Bacon was appointed Lord Keeper of the 
 Great Seal. A week later the King set out for Scotland, leaving his new 
 Lord Keeper at the head of the Council, to manage affairs in his absence. 
 In January, 1618, Sir Prancis became Lord Chancellor, and in the follow 
 ing July was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Vetnlam. In the 
 work of Chancery, his energy and dispatch were something prodigious. 
 Within three months after he became Lord Keeper, he made a clean sweep 
 of all the accumulated cases then on hand, and reported that there was not 
 one cause remaining unheard. Seldom, if ever, before, had the work of 
 that high court been so promptly done, or done more to the satisfaction of 
 the public. In January, 1621, Bacon was created Viscount of St. Albans, 
 and in the patent of promotion was particularly commended for his " integ- 
 rity in the administration of justice." 
 
 Unfortunately, during this period, Bacon could not make headway in 
 political life without paying court to a bold, insolent, and unscrupulous 
 upstart. England had a. weak though learned King, and that King was 
 mainly goyerned by a greedy and prodigal favourite, George Villiers, Duke 
 of Buckingham, whom James had raised to that height for his handsome 
 person and dashing manners. Buckingham had set his heart upon what 
 was called " the Spanish match," that is, the marriage of Charles, Prince of 
 Wales, afterwards King Charles the Pirst, to a Spanish Princess. Bacon 
 wisely used his influence with the King against that match, and probably 
 was in a great measure the means of defeating it. He thereby incurred the 
 resentment of Buckingham, though he had specially laid himself out in 
 wise advice to him ; and he stooped to very unworthy atonements in order 
 to appease his anger and regain bis favour. But Buckingham was alfe 
 powerful with the King, and he greatly abused that power, to the oppression 
 of the people and thp misgovernment of the kingdom. In his need and 
 greed and vainglory, he availed himself of whatever twist he had on the 
 too supple Chancellor, and doubtless did all he could to pervert justice in 
 the Chancery, in order to repair the waste of his boundless prodigality. 
 Hence Bacon became involved in practices which wrought his downfall, 
 and have covered his name with dishonour. 
 
 In January, 1621, three days after Bacon's last promotion. Parliament 
 met, and was not in a mood to be trifled with. . A few days later, a com- 
 mittee was appointed, to report concerning the courts of justice. Their 
 report, made on the 15th of March, fell like a thunderclap: the Lord 
 Chancellor was charged with corruption in his olBce, and instances were 
 alleged in proof. Measures were forthwith taken for his impeachment. 
 Before the time of trial came, twenty-two cases of bribery were drawn up 
 against him. Bacon, sick unto death, as he thought himself, felt thathis 
 enemies had closed upon him, and begged only a fair hearing, that he might 
 give theman ingenuous answer. To the King he wrote as follows : " For 
 the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the books of hearts 
 shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain 
 of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice ; 
 howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times." And in 
 his answer he says, — " I never had bribe or reward in my eye or thoughl 
 when I gave sentence or order." These, to be sure, are substantially tant* 
 
SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 559 
 
 mount to a confession of the matter charged. Nevertheless he was for 
 proceeding with his defence, but from this the King and Buckingham 
 dissuaded him ; for what cause, or by wliat arguments, is not known. In- 
 stead of standing trial, he wrote to the Lords, — " I find matter suflBcient and 
 full, both to move me to desert my defence, and to move your Lordships to 
 condemn and censure me." So, on the 30th of April, his full confession 
 was read before the Lords, in which he says, — "I do plainly and ingenu- 
 ously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence." 
 One of the charges was, that he had given way to great exactions by his 
 servants ; and " he confessed it to be a great fault, that he had looked no 
 better to his servants." The sentence was, a fine of £40,000, imprisonment 
 during the King's pleasure, incapability of holding any oSice in the State, 
 or of sitting in Parliament, and prohibition to come within the verge of the 
 Court. His own comment on this verdict is, "I was the justest judge that 
 was in England these fifty years ; but it was the justest censure in Parlia- 
 ment that was these two hundred years." The severest parts of the 
 sentence were very soon remitted ; and within a year the whole was 
 remitted, and also a pension of £1300 a-year conferred upon him by the 
 King. 
 
 Such is the upshot of this sad tale. Still it does not appear, nor is it 
 alleged, that Bacon took bribes for the perversion of justice. During his 
 Chancellorship he made orders and decrees at the rate of two thousand 
 a-year. Of these decrees not one was ever set aside. None of his judgments 
 were reversed. Even those who first charged him with taking money ad. 
 mitted that he decided against them. The truth seems to be, that in this 
 case the accumulated faults of the ofSee were visited on the individual in- 
 cumbent. Nor, perhaps, could they have been effectually cured but by the 
 destruction of the very man who was the greatest that had complied with 
 them : by such a sacrifice, they might indeed become so unspeakably odious, 
 that even the worst men would take care to shun them. The Parliament 
 was hot and stout, as it had reason to be, against the maladministration of 
 the State. But they were more just in their anger than discriminating as 
 to its objects. They demanded victims; and Bacon, in some respects, 
 would be a most acceptable sacrifice, since the very height whereon he 
 stood would make his fall the more exemplary. Besides, if Parliament 
 could not get at the Chancellor, they might entertain the thought of strik- 
 ing higher. And indeed the King and Buckingham seem to have been 
 apprehensive that Bacon might triumph, should he proceed in his own 
 defence, (for who could be expected to withstand so potent an enchanter, 
 coming to the rescue of his good name?) in which case the public resent- 
 ment, sharpened by defeat, might turn to other objects, and demand a 
 dearer sacrifice. 
 
 Henceforth Bacon lived in strict retirement, and gave himself up unre- 
 servedly to labours in which his heart was at home. He was among the 
 Peers summoned to the first Parliament of Charles the First ; but he did 
 not take his seat. For the last five years his health was very feeble, and he 
 was constantly looking death in the face. At last, a cold, caught in an ex- 
 periment to test the preserving qualities of snow, resulted in a fever; and, 
 after lingering a week, he died on the morning of Easter-day, April 9, 1626. 
 
 If Bacon's political life was, in some respects, ignoble and false, his intel- 
 lectual life was altogether noble and true, and has perhaps been more 
 fruitful in substantial help to mankind than that of any other man. The 
 first instalment of his Essays, ten in number, was published in 1597, in a 
 small volume which also contained his Colours of Good and Evil, and his 
 Meditationes Sacrce. Some of these Essays were afterwards enlarged, and 
 others added to them from time to time, in repeated editions, till at last 
 the whole fifty-eight appeared together in 1625. In 1605, was published 
 his AdvatieetneiU of Learning, which was afterwards recast, enlarged, tran»< 
 
560 BACON. 
 
 lated into Latin, and published in 1623, with the title De Augmentis Scia 
 tiarum. In 1609, his Wisdom of the Ancients came forth, translated int^ 
 Latin. His Novum Organum made its appearance in the Fall of 1620. 
 The proper English of this title is The New Instrument; but the work is 
 occupied with setting forth what is known as the Baconian, that is, the 
 Inductive or Experimental Method of Scientii5c Investigation. It was 
 the great work of his life, and so he regarded it, and kept toiling at it for 
 thirty years. The object of the work, as stated by himself, was to " enlarge 
 the bounds of reason and endow man's estate with'new value." As his 
 plan contemplated a much larger work,, of which this was but a part, he 
 gave, as his reason for publishing it, that he felt his life hastening to its 
 close, and wished that portion of his work at least to be saved. The iVoOTm 
 Organum was followed, in 1622, hy his History of Henry the Seventh. Be- 
 sides these, he has various other works, both professional and philosophi- 
 cal, but which my space does not permit me to mention in detail. 
 
 Bacon appears to have been specially inspired with the faith, that a true 
 and genuine knowledge of Nature would arm its possessor with Nature's 
 power, by enabling him to harness up her forces and put them to work for 
 the service of man. To this faith he clung with a tenacity that nothing 
 could relax. And so strong was he in this faith, that he could not admit 
 any knowledge of Nature to be real, which did not confer such power. 
 Thus in his view power is the test and measure of knowledge; and this I 
 take to be the true sense of the Baconian axiom, "knowledge is power." 
 And this great idea, together with the metliod which it involves, was itself 
 a prophecy, or rather the seminal principle, of all the stupendous achieve- 
 ments which Science has since made in the mastery of Nature. 
 
 I quote from Sir James Mackintosh : " That in which Bacon most ex- 
 celled all other men was the range and compass of his intellectual view, 
 and the power of contemplating many and distant objects together with- 
 out indistinctness or confusion. This wide-ranging intellect was illumi- 
 nated by the brightest Fancy that ever contented itself with the office of 
 only ministering to Reason ; and from this singular relation of the two 
 grand faculties of man it has resulted, that his philosophy, though illus- 
 trated still more than adorned by the utmost splendour of imagery, con- 
 tinues still subject to the undivided supremacy of Intellect. In the midst 
 of all the prodigality of an imagination which, had it been independent, 
 would have been poetical, his opinions remained severely rational. ' " 
 
 But, with all his greatness and beauty of intellect. Bacon was sadly 
 wanting in moral elevation. In his position, a high and delicate honour, 
 the sensitive chastity of principle which feels a stain as a wound, was es- 
 pecially needful for his safety ; but it evidently had no ruling place in his 
 breast. Still, though his intellectual merits can hardly be overdrawn, it is 
 easy to overdraw his moral defects. He was not only greatly admired as a 
 thinker, but deeply loved and honoured as a man, by many of the best and 
 purest men of the time ; which could hardly have been the case but that, 
 with all his blemishes, he had great moral and social virtues. Though 
 often straitened for means, he was always generous to his servants : his 
 temper and carriage were eminently gentle and humane : he was never ac- 
 cused of insolence to any human being, which is the common pleasure of 
 mean-spirited men : his conduct in Parliament was manly, his views as _a 
 legislator were liberal, and leaning strongly towards improvement : it is 
 not pretended that he ever gave an unjust or illegal judgment as Chancel- 
 lor : his private life was blameless, and abounding in works of piety and 
 charity : and his losing the favour of the King and Buckingham, when 
 they were in the full career of rapacity and corruption, fairly infers him to 
 have resisted them as much as he could without losing the power to resifl 
 them at all. 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 OF TEUTH. 
 
 "What is truth?" said jesting Pilate,. and would not stay foi 
 an answer.^ Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and 
 count it a bondage to fix a belief ; affecting free-will in think- 
 ing, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers 
 of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing' 
 wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much 
 blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not 
 only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of 
 truth, nor, again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men's 
 thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour ; but a natural though 
 corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the 
 Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what 
 should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they 
 make for pleasure, as with poets,' nor for advantage, as with 
 the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this 
 same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show 
 the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so 
 stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come 
 to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not 
 rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best 
 
 * Bacon's Essays are the best-known and most popular of all his works. It is 
 also one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest 
 advantage; the noTelty and depth of his reflections often receiving a strong 
 relief from the triteness of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end 
 in a few hours; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom falls to romarlc 
 in it something unobserved before. This indeed is a characteristic of all Ba- 
 con's writings, and only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they 
 furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our 
 torpid facul ties.— DUGALD Siewakt. 
 
 1 Bacon, I think, mistakes here. Pilate seems to be in any thing but a jesting 
 mood. He is evidently much interested in the Prisoner before him, and is sur- 
 prised, for an instant, out of his official propriety; but presently bethinks him- 
 self that the question is altogether beside his official duty, and proceeds at once 
 to the business in hand. 
 
 2 Discoursing in the sense ot discursive ; that is, roving or unsettled. 
 
 3 Bacon here supposes a, fiction to be the same thing as a lie. But, propeilj 
 speakinjr, poetry is antithetic, not to truth, but to matter of fact. 
 
562 BAOOK. 
 
 in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. 
 Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's 
 minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imagi- 
 nations as one would, and the like, it would leave the minds of 
 a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and 
 indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fa- 
 thers, in great severity, called poesy mnum dcemonum,^ because it 
 filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a 
 lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the 
 lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as 
 we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in 
 men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, whicli 
 only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, 
 which is the • love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of 
 truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which 
 is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. 
 The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the 
 light of the sense ; the last was the light of reason ; and His 
 sabbath work ever since is the illumination of His Spirit 
 First, He breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaoa ; 
 then He breathed light into the face of man ; and still He 
 breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The 
 poet that beautified the sect,^ that was otherwise inferior to the 
 rest, saith yet excellently well : " It is a pleasure to stand 
 upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea ; a pleas- 
 ure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and 
 the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable 
 to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth," (a hill nat 
 to be commanded,^ and where the air is always clear and 
 serene,) "and to see the errors and wanderings, and mists and 
 tempests, in the vale below:" ' so always that this prospect' be 
 with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is 
 Heaven upon Earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest 
 in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. 
 
 i " The wine of evil spirits." 
 
 5 Tlie allusion is to Iiucretias, the Boman poet, and to the Epicurean sect of 
 philosophers, whose doctrines Lucretius clothed in their most attractive garb. 
 Epicurus himself was of a pure and blameless life; but his leading tenet was 
 that the chief aim of all philosophy should be to secure health of body and tran- 
 quillity of mind. The using, however, of the term pleasure, to express this 
 object, has at all times exposed the system to reproach ; and, in fact, the name 
 of the sect has too often served as a cloak for luxury and libertinism. 
 
 6 That is, a hill having no higher hill In its neighbourhood. So, in a military 
 sense, a higher hill commands a lower one standing near it. 
 
 7 This is rather » paraphrase than a translation of the fine passage in 
 Lucretius. 
 
 8 Prospect is here used actively ; that is, in the sense of overloohing or lookinj 
 down upon. 
 
OF DEATH. 56S 
 
 To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the trutl 
 of civil business: It will be acknowledged, even by those thai 
 practise it not, that clear and round ^ dealing is the honour oi 
 man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coir 
 of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better 
 but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses arc 
 the goings of the serpent ; which goeth basely upon the belly 
 and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover £ 
 man with shame as to be found false and perfidious: and there 
 fore Montaigne 1 saith prettily, when he inquired the reasor 
 why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such ar 
 odious charge: saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that i 
 man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards Goc 
 and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks 
 from man." Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach o: 
 faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shal 
 be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the gener 
 ations of men ; it being foretold that, when " Christ cometh,' 
 He shall not "find faith upon the Earth." 
 
 or DEATH.2 
 
 Mebt fear death as children fear to go in the dark ; and ai 
 that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is th( 
 other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages o 
 sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious ; bu 
 the fear of it, as a tribute due unto Nature, is weak. Yet h 
 religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity anc 
 of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books o: 
 mortification, that a man should think with himself what th( 
 pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured ; anc 
 thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole 
 
 9 Flam,, direct, downright are among the old senses otrawnd. 
 
 1 Michael de Montaigne, the celebrated French Essayist. His Essays em 
 brace a variety of topics, which are treated in a sprightly and entertainini 
 manner, and are replete with remarks indicative of strong native good sense 
 He died in 1592. The quotation is ftem the second book of his Essa/ys : " Lyinj 
 is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch, an ancient writer, paints in mos 
 disgraceful colours, when he says that it is ' affording testimony that one firs 
 despises Go^, and then fears men.' It is not possible more happily to describi 
 its horriblej disgusting, and abandoned nature ; for can we imagine any thini 
 more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard t 
 God? •' 
 
 2 A portion of this Essay is borrowed from the writings of Seneca. 
 
564 BACON. 
 
 body is corrupted and dissolved ; when many times death pass- 
 eth with less pain than the torture of a limb ; for the most vital 
 parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake 
 only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, Pompa 
 mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa.^ Groans and convulsions, 
 and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blacks * and ob- 
 sequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the 
 observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak 
 but it mates * and masters the fear of death ; and therefore 
 death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many at- 
 tendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge 
 triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honour aspireth to it ; 
 grief flieth to it ; fear preoccupateth ^ it ; nay, we read, after 
 Othothe emperor had slain himself, pity (which is thetenderest 
 of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to 
 their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Sen- 
 eca adds, niceness and satiety: Cogita qvamdiu eadem feceris : 
 mori velle, non tantumfortis aut miser, sed etiamfastidiosus potesV 
 A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, 
 only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over. 
 It is no less worthy to observe, how little alteration in good 
 spirits the approaches of death make ; for they appear to be the 
 same men till the last instant. Augustus Csesar died in a com- 
 pliment: Livia, conjugii nostri memor, vive et vale:^ Tiberius in 
 dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him : Jam Tiberium vires et 
 corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant :^ Vespasian in a jest, sitting 
 upon a stool: Utputo, Bmsfio:^ Galba with a sentence, Feri,siex 
 re sit popuU Bomani,^ holding forth his neck: Septimus Severus 
 in despatch : Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum ; ^ and the like. 
 Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by 
 their great preparations made it appear more fearfuL Better 
 
 3 " The array of the death-bed has more terrors than death itself." This 
 quotation is from Seneca. 
 
 i He probably alludes to the custom of hanging the room with black where 
 the body of the deceased lay; a practice usual in Bacon's time. 
 
 6 To mate, or to amate, is to overpower, to subdue. So in MacbeUi, t., 1 : "My 
 mind she has mated, and amazed my sight." 
 
 6 Preoccupate in the Latin sense ot anticipate. 
 
 7 " Eeflect how often you do the same things : a man may wish to die, not 
 only because he is either brave or wretched, but even because he is surfeited 
 with life." 
 
 8 " Livia, mindful of our union, live on, and faro tliee well." 
 
 9 " His bodily strength and vitality were now forsalsing Tiberius, but not his 
 duplicity." 
 
 1 "I am growing into a god, I reckon." Tliis was said as a rebuke of hi« 
 flatterers, as in the well-known case of Canute reproving his courtiers. 
 i " Strike, if it will do the Eoman people any good." 
 S " Be quick, if there remains any thing for me to do." 
 
OF UNITY IN RELIGION. 565 
 
 saith he, quifinem vitoi extrefmum inter munera ponit natwrm.* It 
 is as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little infant perhaps 
 the one is as painful as the other. He that dies iu an earnest 
 pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood ; who, for the 
 time, scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and 
 bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of 
 death : but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is JVwnc 
 dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expecta- 
 tions. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good 
 fame, and extinguisheth envy : Extinctus amabitur idem.^ 
 
 OF UNITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 Religion being the chief band of human society, it is a happy 
 thing when itself is well contained within the true band of 
 unity. The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils un- 
 known to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion 
 of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in 
 any constant belief ; for you may imagine what kind of faith 
 theirs was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church 
 were the poets. But "the true God hath this attribute, that He 
 is a jealous God ; and therefore His worship and religion will 
 endure no mixture nor partner. We shall therefore speak a 
 few words concerning the unity of the Church: what are the 
 fruits thereof ; what the bounds ; and what the means. 
 
 The fruits of unity (next unto the well-pleasing of God, which 
 Is all in all) are two ; the one towards those that are without the 
 Church, the other towards those that are within. For the 
 former, it is certain that heresies and schisms are of all others 
 the greatest scandals ; yea, more than corruption of manners : 
 for as in the natural body a wound or solution of continuity " is 
 worse than a corrupt humour, so in the spiritual. So that noth- 
 ing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men 
 out of the Church, as breach of unity: and therefore, whenso- 
 e\er it cometh to that pass that one saith, Ecce in Beserto,'' an- 
 other saith, Eax in penetralibus ; ^ that is, when some men seek 
 
 i " Who regards death as one of Nature's hoons." The passage is quoted, 
 but with some inaccuracy, from Juvenal. 
 6 " The same man will he loved when dead." 
 
 6 A solution of continuity is, for instance, a severing of a muscle or a sinew 
 by a transverse cut. 
 
 7 " Behold, he is in the desert." 
 
 8 " Behold, he is iu the secret chambers." 
 
566 BACOK. 
 
 Christ in the conventicles of heretics, and others in an outward 
 face of a church ; that voice had need continually to sound in 
 men's eava, nolite exire, "go not out." The Doctor of the Gen- 
 tiles (the propriety of whose vocation ' drew him to hiive a spe- 
 cial care of those without) saith, " If a heathen come in, and hear 
 you speak with several tongues, will, he not say that you are 
 mad?" and, certainly, it is little better. When atheists and 
 profane persons do hear of so many discordant and contrary 
 opinions in religion, it doth avert ^ them from the Church, and 
 maketh them "to sit down in the chair of the scorners." 
 
 It is but a light thing to be vouched in so serious a matter, but 
 yet it expresseth well the deformity : there is a master of scof- 
 flng,2 that in his catalogue of books of a feigned library sets down 
 this title of a book, The Morris-Dance of Heretics:^ for, indeed, 
 every sect of them hath a diverse posture, or cringe, by them- 
 selves, which cannot but move derision in worldlings and 
 depraved politics,* who are apt to contemn holy things. 
 
 As for the fruit towards those that are within, it is peace, 
 which containeth infinite blessings : it establisheth faith ; it 
 kindleth charity ; the outward peace of the Church distilleth 
 into peace of conscience, and it turneth the labours of writing 
 and reading of controversies into treatises of mortification and 
 devotion. 
 
 Concerning the bounds of unity, the true placing of them im- 
 porteth exceedingly.^ There appear to be two extremes ; for to 
 certain zealots all speech of pacification is odious. " Is it peace; 
 Jehu ? " " "What hast thou to do with peace ? turn thee behind 
 me." Peace is not the matter,^ but following and party. Contra- 
 riwise, certain Laodiceans and lukewarm persons think they may 
 accommodate points of religion by middle ways, and taking part 
 of both, and witty ' reconcilements, as if they would make an ar- 
 bitrement between God and man. Both these extremes are to 
 be avoided ; which will be done if the league of Christians, 
 penned by our Saviour himself, were in the two cross clauses 
 thereof soundly and plainly expounded; "He that is not with 
 
 9 That is, the peculiar nature of whose calling. 
 
 1 Avert in the Latin sense of turn awatj, or rcpeZ. 
 
 'i The allusion 1b to Babelnis, the great French hiimorist. 
 
 3 This dance, which was originally called the Morisco dance, is supposed to 
 have been derived from the Moors of Spain ; the dancers in earlier times black- 
 ening their faces to resemble Moors. It was probably a corruption of the an- 
 cient Pyrrhic dance, which was performed by men in armour. 
 
 4 Politics was often used for politicians. 
 
 5 To import exceedingly is to be of the utmost importance. 
 
 6 That is, peace is not what they want. 
 
 7 Here v>Uty is ingenious; and to " accommodate points" is to harmonizt 
 differences. 
 
OF UKITT IN RELIGIOK. 567 
 
 US is against us "; and again, "He that is not against us is with 
 us "; that is, if the points fundamental, and of substance in re- 
 ligion, were truly discerned, and distinguished from points not 
 merely * of faith, but of opinion, order, or good intention. This 
 is a thing may seem to many a matter trivial, and done already; 
 but if it were done less partially, it would be embraced more 
 generally. 
 
 Of this I may give only this advice, according to my small 
 model. Men ought to take heed of rending God's Church by 
 two kinds of controversies: the one is, when the matter of the 
 point controverted is too small and light, not worth the heat 
 and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction ; for, as it is 
 noted by one of the fathers, Christ's coat indeed had no seam, 
 but the Church's vesture was of divers colours ; whereupon he 
 saith. In veste varietas sit, sassura non sit,^ — they be two things, 
 unity and uniformity: the other is, when the matter of the 
 point controverted is great, but it is driven to an over great 
 subtilty and obscurity, so that it becometh a thing rather 
 ingenious than substantial. A man that is of judgment and 
 understanding shall sometimes hear ignorant men difEer, and 
 know well within himself that those which so differ mean one 
 thing, and yet they themselves would never agree: and if it 
 come so to pass in that distance of judgment which is between 
 man and man, shall we think that God above, that knows the 
 heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their con- 
 tradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both? 
 The nature of such controversies is excellently expressed by 
 St. Paul, in the warning and precept that he giveth concerning 
 the same : Deoita prof anas vocum novitates, et oppositicmes falsi 
 nominis saientice.^ Men create oppositions which are not, and 
 put them into new terms so fixed as,^ whereas the meaning 
 ought to_govem the term, the term in efEect governeth the 
 meaning.^]. There be also two false peaces, or unities : the one, 
 when the peace is grounded but upon an implicit ignorance ; 
 for all colours will agree in the dark: the other, when it is 
 pieced up upon a direct admission of contraries in fundamental 
 points ; for truth and falsehood in such things are like the iron ^ 
 
 S Merely in the BeuBG of 2^^^^t t^^olutely ; like theljaLtia. merus. SoinJJam 
 let, i., 2 : "Things rank and gross in nature possess it mereiy." 
 
 9 " In Uie garment tliere may be many colours, but let tliere be no rending 
 of it." 
 
 1 "Avoid profene and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely ao 
 called." 
 
 2 In all such cases, Bacon ases as and that indiscriminately. 
 
 3 Alluding to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which signified the short duration 0/ 
 his kingdom. See Daniel, ii., 33. 
 
568 BACOS-. 
 
 and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image ; they may 
 cleave, but they will not incorporate. 
 
 Concerning the means of procuring unity, men must beware 
 that, in the procuring or muniting* of religious unity, they do 
 not dissolve and deface the laws of charity and of human 
 society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual 
 and temporal, and both have their due office and place in the 
 maintenance of religion: but we may not take up the third 
 sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it ; that is, to 
 propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to 
 force consciences ; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blas- 
 phemy, or intermixture of practice against the State; much 
 less to nourish seditions ; to authorize conspiracies and rebel- 
 lions ; to put the sword into the people's hands, and the like, 
 tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordi- 
 nance of God: for this is but to dash the first table against the 
 second ; and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that 
 they are men. Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of 
 Agamemnon, that could endure the sacrificing of his own 
 daughter, exclaimed, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.^ 
 What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in 
 France,^ or the powder treason of England?' He would have 
 been seven times more Epicure and atheist than he was ; for as 
 the temporal sword is to be drawn with great circumspection in 
 cases of religion, so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the 
 hands of the common people ; let that be left unto the Ana- 
 baptists^ and other furies. It was great blasphemy, when the 
 Devil said, "I will ascend and be like the Highest"; but it is 
 greater blasphemy to personate God, and bring Him in saying, 
 "I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness"; and what 
 
 4 Muniting ia fortifying or strengthening. 
 
 5 " To deeds so dreadful could religion prompt." The poet refers to Aga- 
 memnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, with the view of appeasijig the 
 wrath of Diana. 
 
 6 He alludes to the massacre of the Huguenots, in France, which took place 
 on St. Bartholomew's day, August 24, 1572, by the order of Charles IX. and his 
 mother, Catherine de Medici. 
 
 7 More gen erally known as " the Gunpowder Plot." 
 
 8 A set of desperate fanatics who appeared at Munster about 1530. Assum- 
 ing a special and conscious indwelling of the Holy Ghost, they of course set 
 themselves above all law, and often plunged into the gi-ossest sensualities and 
 cruelties. Hooker aptly says of them, " what strange fantastical opinion soever 
 at any time entered into their heads, their use was to think the Spirit taught it 
 them." And again : " These men, in whose mouths at the first soimded noth- 
 ing but only mortification of the flesh, were come at the length to think they 
 might lawfully have their six or seven wives apiece; they which at the first 
 tliought judgment and justice itself to be merciless cruelty, accounted at th6 
 length their own hands sanctified witli being embruod in Christian blood." 
 
OF EEVENGE. 569 
 
 is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend to ttie 
 cruel and execrable actions of murdering princes, butchery of 
 people, and subversion of States and governments? Surely 
 this is to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of 
 a dove, in the shape of a vulture or raven ; and to set out of 
 the bark of a Christian church a flag of a bark of pirates and 
 assassins: therefore it is most necessary that the Church by 
 doctrine and decree, princes by their sword, and all learnings, 
 both Christian and moral, as by their Mercury rod," do damn, 
 and send to Hell for ever those facts and opinions tending to 
 the support of the same ; as hath been already in good part 
 done. Surely, in councils concerning religion, that counsel of 
 the Apostle would be prefixed, Ira hominis non implet justi- 
 tiam Dd;^ and it was a notable observation of a wise father. 
 and no less ingenuously confessed, that those which held and 
 persuaded pressure of consciences were commonly interested 
 therein themselves for their own ends. 
 
 or KEVENGE. 
 
 Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more Man's na- 
 ture runs to, the more ought law to weed it out : for, as for the 
 first wrong, it doth but ofEend the law, but the revenge of that 
 wrong putteth the law out of oflSce. Certainly, in taking revenge, 
 a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is 
 superior ; for it is a prince's part to pardon : and Solomon, I am 
 sure, saith, "It is the glory of a man to pass by an offence." 
 That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have 
 enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they 
 do but trifle with themselves that labour in past matters. There 
 is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to 
 purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; 
 therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself/ 
 better than me ? And if any man should do wrong merely out 
 of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which 
 prick and scratch because they can do no other. The most tol- 
 erable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law 
 to remedy; but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as 
 
 9 Alluding to the cadicceus, with which Mercury, the messenger of the gods, 
 summoned the souls of the departed to the infernal regions. 
 
 1 " The wrath of man worteth not the righteousness of God." Observe that 
 would here has the sense of should. The auxiliaries could, should, and would 
 were often used indiscriminately in Bacon's time. 
 
570 BACON. 
 
 there is nc^ law to punish, else a man's enemy is still beforehand, 
 and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desir- 
 ous the party should know whence it cometh: this is the more 
 generous ; for the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing 
 the hurt as in making the party repent: but base and crafty 
 cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, 
 Duke of Plorence,^ had a desperate saying against perfidious or 
 neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable. " Tou 
 shall read," saith he, "that we are commanded to forgive our 
 enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to forgive 
 our friends." But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: 
 "Shall we," saith he, "take good at God's bands, and not be 
 content to take evil also?" and so of friends in a proportion. 
 This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own 
 wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. Public 
 revenges^ are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death 
 of Ceesar ; * for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry 
 the Third of France; ^ and many more. But in private revenges 
 it is not so; nay, rather vindictive persons live the life of witches; 
 who, as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate.^ 
 
 OF ADVEESITY. 
 
 It was a high speech of Seneca, (after the manner of the 
 Stoics), that "the gooM things which belong to prosperity are to 
 be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to 
 be admired," — Bona rerum semndarum optahilia, adversarwm mi- 
 rahilia. Certainly, if miracles be the command over Nature, 
 they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his 
 than the other, (much too high for a heathen,) "It is true great- 
 ness to have in one the fraility of a man, and the security of a 
 
 2 The allusion is to Cosmo de Medici, chief of the Florentine republic, and 
 much distinguished as an enoourager of literature and art. 
 
 3 By " public roTenges," he means punishment awarded by the State with the 
 sanction of the laws. 
 
 i He alludes to the retribution dealt by Augustus and Antony to the niur. 
 derers of Julius Caesar. It is related by ancient historians, as a singular fact, 
 that not one of them died a natural death. 
 
 5 Henry III. of Trance was assassinated in 1589 by Jacques Clement, a Jaco- 
 bin monk, in the frenzy of fanaticism. Although Clement justly suffered pun- 
 ishment, the end of this bloodthirsty and bigoted tyrant may be justly deemed 
 a reti-ibntion dealt by the hand of an offended Providence. 
 
 6 For some excellent rcmarlfs on the subject of tliis Essay, see a passage 
 n:om Burke, page 320 of this volume. 
 
OP ADVEESITT. 571 
 
 god," — Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hmninis, securitatem dei. 
 This would have done better in poesy, where transcendencies 
 are more allowed ; and the poets indeed-have been busy with 
 it ; for it is in effect the thing which is figured in that strange 
 fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without 
 mystery ;'' nay, and to have some approach to the state of a 
 Christian; "that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prome- 
 theus, (by whom human nature is represented,) sailed thelengtli 
 of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher," lively describing 
 Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh 
 through the waves of the world. But, to speak in a mean.^ the 
 virtue of proeperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is 
 fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Pros- 
 perity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the 
 blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and 
 the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet, even in the Old 
 Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as 
 many hearse-like airs ^ as carols ; and the pencil of the Holy 
 Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job 
 than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many 
 fears and distastes ; and adversity is not without comforts and 
 hopes. "We see in needleworks and embroideries, it is more 
 pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, 
 than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome 
 ground : judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the 
 pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, 
 most fragrant when they are incensed,^ or crushed : for pros- 1 
 perity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover l- 
 virtue. 
 
 7 Mystery, here is secret meaning ; like the hidden moral of a fable or myth. 
 
 8 " Speaking in a mean " is speaking with moderation. So in one of Words- 
 worth's Ecclesiastical Sonnrets : " The golden mean and quiet flow of truths that 
 soften hatred, temper strife." 
 
 9 rvmereal airs. It must be remembered that many of the Psalms of David 
 were written by him when persecuted by Saul, as also in the tribulation caused 
 by tha wicked conduct of his son Absalom. Some of them, too, though called 
 " The Psalms of David," were really composed by the Jews in their captivity at 
 Babylon; as, for instance, the 137th Psalm, which so beautifully commences, 
 " By the waters of Babylon there we sat down." One of them is supposed to 
 be the composition of Moses. 
 
 J Incensed is set on fire or ImrntA. 
 
573 BACOir. 
 
 OF PARENTS AKD CHILDREN. 
 
 The joys of parents are secret, and so are their giiefs and 
 fears ; they cannot utter the one, nor they will not utter the 
 other. Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes 
 more bitter ; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate 
 the remembrance of death. The perpetuity by generation is 
 common to beasts ; but memory, merit, and noble works are 
 proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works 
 and foundations ^ have proceeded from childless men, which 
 have sought to express the images of their minds where those of 
 their bodies have failed : so the care of posterity is most in them 
 that have no posterity. They that are the first raisers of their 
 Houses are most indulgent towards their children, beholding 
 them as the continuance, not only of their kind, but of their 
 work ; and so both children and creatures. 
 
 The difference in affection of parents towards their several 
 children is many times unequal, and sometimes unworthy, es- 
 pecially in the mother ; as Solomon saith, "A wise son rejoieeth 
 the father, but an ungracious son shames the mother." A man 
 shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of 
 the eldest respected, and the youngest made wantons ; ^ but in 
 the midst some that are as it were forgotten, who, many times, 
 nevertheless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, in 
 allowance towards their children, is a harmful error, makes them 
 base, acquaints them with shifts, makes them sort* with mean 
 company, and makes them surfeit more when they' come to 
 plenty: and therefore the proof is besf" when men keep their 
 authority towards their children, but not their purse. Men 
 have a foolish manner (both parents and schoolmasters and ser- 
 vants) in creating and breeding an emulation between brothers 
 during childhood, which many times sorteth ° to discord when 
 they are men, and disturbeth families.' The Italians make little 
 
 2 ^ouTidations, as the word is here used, are institutions or establishments, 
 such as hospitals and other charitable endowments. 
 
 3 That is, petted into self-indulgent and petulant triflers. 
 
 4 Sort is consort^ or associate* So in Hamlet, ii., 2 : " I will not sort you with 
 the rest of my servants." 
 
 5 Proof IB sometimes equivalent to fact, instance, or result. Here " the proof 
 is best " means it proves, or tarns out, best. So in Julius CcBsar, ii., 1 : " 'Tis a 
 common prao/ that lowliness is young ambition's ladder." 
 
 6 Sometimes to sort is to fall out, to happen, to come. So in Much Ado dbovi 
 Nothing, v., 4 : " I am glad that all things sort so well^" 
 
 7 There is much justice in this remark. Children should be taught to do 
 what is right for its own sake, and because it is their dnty to do so, and not that 
 they may have the selfish gratification of obtaining the reward which their com 
 
OF MARRIAGE AKD SINGLE LIFE. 573 
 
 diffiereuce between children and nephews, or near kinsfolk ; but, 
 so they be of the lump, they care not, though they pass not 
 through their own body; and, to say truth, in nature it is much 
 a like matter ; insomuch that we see a nephew sometimes resem- 
 bleth an uncle or a kinsman more than his o^vn parent, as the 
 blood happens. Let parents choose betimes the vocations and 
 courses they mean their children should take, for then they are 
 most flexible ; and let them not too much apply themselves to 
 the disposition of their children, as thinking they will take best 
 to that which they have most mind to. It is true, that if tlie 
 affection or aptness of the children be extraordinary, then it is 
 good not to cross it; but generally the precept is good, Optimum 
 elige, stwwe et facile illud faciei consuetudo.^ Younger brothers are 
 commonly fortunate, but seldom or never where the elder are 
 disinherited. 
 
 or MAEEIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE. 
 
 He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to for- 
 turte ; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of 
 virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest 
 merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or 
 childless men, which both in affection and means have married 
 and endowed the public. Tet it were great reason that tliosfe 
 that have children should have greatest care of future times, 
 unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. 
 Some there are who, though they lead a single life, yet their 
 thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times im- 
 pertinences ; ' nay, there are some other that account wife and 
 children but as bills of charges ; nay, more, there are some fool- 
 ish rich covetous men that take a pride in having no children, 
 because ' they may be thought so much the richer ; for perhaps 
 they have heard some talk, " Such an one is a great rich man," 
 and another except to it, "Tea, but he hath a great charge of 
 children " ; as if. it^ere an abatement to his riches. But the 
 most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in cer- 
 
 panioDB have failed to secure, and of being led to think themselves siiperioT to 
 their companions. 
 
 8 " Select that course of life which is the most advantageous : haWt will soon 
 render it pleasant and easily endured." 
 
 8 Jmper^neTtce in its original sense; tbingB irretmamt. 
 
 1 because is here equivalent to in order that. So in St. Matthew, xx., 31 
 "And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace." 
 
574. BAOosr. 
 
 tain self-pleasing and humorous " minds, which are so sensible of 
 every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and 
 garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best 
 friends, best masters, best servants ; but not always best sub- 
 jects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are 
 of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen,' for 
 charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a 
 pool.* It is indifferent for judges and magistrates ; for if they 
 be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse 
 than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly, in their 
 hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and children ; and I 
 think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks maketh the 
 vulgar soldier more base. Certainly wife and children are a 
 kind of_ discipline _ofhumani^; and single men, though they 
 be many times more charitable, because their means are less 
 exhaust,* yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard- 
 , hearted, (good to make severe inquisitors,) because their tender- 
 ness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom,, 
 and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was 
 said of Ulysses, Yetulam suam prcetuUt immortalitati.^ Chaste 
 women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the 
 merit of their chastity. It is one ,of the best bonds, botB of 
 chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her husband 
 wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives 
 are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old 
 men's nurses ; so as a man may have a quarrel' to marry when 
 he will: but yet he was reputed one of the wise men that made 
 answer to the question when a man should marry, "A young 
 man not yet, an elder man not at all." It is often seen that bad 
 husbands have very good wives ; whether it be that it raiseth 
 the price of their husbands' kindness when it comes, or that the 
 
 2 Humorous was much used in the sense of wMrmical oi crotchety ; gOTemed 
 by humours. 
 
 3 Chwrchmantot clergyman; SLtreqaeDtusase. So in Shakespeare often. 
 
 i The meaning is, that, if clergymen have the expenses of a family to sup 
 port, they will hardly find means for the exercise of benevolence toward their 
 parishioners. 
 
 6 Exhaust for exlmusted. iMany preterites were formed in like manner 
 Shakespeare abounds in them. Also in the Psalter: "And be ye lift up, ye 
 everlasting doors." 
 
 6 " He preferred his aged wife Penelope to immortality." This was when 
 Ulysses was entreated by the goddess Calypso to give up aU thoughts of return- 
 ing to Ithaca, and to remain with her in the enjoyment of immortality. 
 
 7 05«»rreZ was often equivalent to cottse, reason, or ea;c«se. SoiuHolinshed; 
 "He thought he had a good quarrel to attack him." And in Macbeth, iv., 3; 
 " The chance of goodness be like our warranted quarrel " ; that is, " May virtue'i 
 chance of success be as good, as well warranted, as our cause is just" 
 
OF GREAT PLACE. 575 
 
 wives take a pride in tlieir patience: but this never fails, if the 
 bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends' 
 consent ; for then they will be sure to make good their own 
 folly. 
 
 OF GREAT PLACE 
 
 Men in great place are thrice servants, — servants of the sove- 
 reign or State, servants of fame, and servants of business ; so 
 as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their 
 actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power 
 and to lose liberty ; or to seek power over others, and to lose 
 power over a man's self. The rising unto place is laborious, 
 and by pains men come to greater paius ; and it is sometimes 
 base, and by indignities ^ men come to dignities. The standing 
 is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an 
 eclipse, which is a melancholy thing : Gum non sis qui fueris, non 
 esse cur velis vivere.^ Nay, retire men cannot when they would, 
 neither will they when it were reason ; but are impatient of pri- 
 vateness even in age and sickness, which require the shadow ; ' 
 like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their street-door, 
 though thereby they offer age to scorn. Certainly great persons 
 had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves 
 happy ; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find 
 it : but if they think with themselves what other men think of 
 them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they 
 are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the 
 contrary within ; for they are the first that find their own 
 griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults. Cer- 
 tainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and 
 while they are in the puzzle of business they have no time to 
 tend their health either of body or mind. IIU mors gravis ineu- 
 hat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi.^ In place there 
 is license to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse ; for 
 in evil the best condition is not to will, the second not to can. 
 But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring ; 
 for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men 
 are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act ; 
 
 8 IndigTtities for hasen^ses or meannesses. 
 
 9 " Since yon are not what yon were, there is no reason why yon shonld wish 
 to live." 
 
 1 Shadow for shade; that is, retirement. 
 
 2 "Death presses heavily upon him who, too well known to all others, die* 
 unknown to himself." 
 
176 BACOK. 
 
 and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and 
 commanding ground. Merit and good works is the end of man's 
 motion, and conscience* of the same is the accomplishment of 
 man's rest ; for if a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he 
 shall likewise be partaker of God's rest : Et conversus Dms, ut 
 aspiceret opera, quce fecenmt manus sum, vidit quod omnia essent 
 bonanimis ;* and then the Sabbath. 
 
 In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best exam- 
 ples, for imitation is a globe * of precepts ; and after a time set 
 before thee thine own example, and examine thyself strictly 
 whether thou didst not best at first. Neglect not, also, the ex- 
 amples of those that have carried themselves ill in the same 
 place ; not to set ofE thyself by taxing their memory, but to 
 direct thyself what to avoid. Reform, therefore, without bra- 
 very^ or scandal of former times and persons ; but yet set it 
 down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow 
 them. Eeduce things to the first institution, and observe 
 wherein and how they have degenerated ; but yet ask counsel 
 of both times, — of the ancient time what is best, and of the 
 later time what is Attest. Seek to make thy course regular, 
 that men may know beforehand what they may expect ; but be 
 not too positive and peremptory; and express thyself well 
 when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve the right of thy 
 place, but stir not questions of jurisdiction ; and rather assume 
 thy right in silence, and de facto,'' than voice it with claims and 
 challenges. Perserve likewise the rights of inferior places ; 
 and think it more honour to direct in chief than to be busy in 
 all. Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execu- 
 tion of thy place ; and do not drive away such as bring thee 
 information as meddlers, but accept of them in good part. 
 
 The vices of authority are chiefly four,— delays, corruption, 
 roughness, and facility.* For delays, give easy access ; keep 
 times appointed ; go through with that which is in hand, and 
 interlace not business but of necessity. For corruption, do not 
 only bind thine own hands or thy servants' hands from taking, 
 but bind the hands of suitors also from ofEering ; for integrity 
 
 3 Conscience for consciousness. So Hooker : " The reason why the simpler 
 sort are moved with authority is the conscience of their own ignorance." 
 
 4, " And God turned to behold the works which his hands had made, and he 
 saw that every thing was very good." 
 
 5 Globe for circle. So in Paradise Lost, ii., 512 : " Him a globe of flery sera- 
 phim enclosed with bright emblazonry." 
 
 6 Bravery in the sense of bravado ox proud defiance. So in Julius Casar, v., 
 1 : " They come down with fearful bra/Dery, thinking by this face to fasten in oul 
 thoughts that they have courage." 
 
 7 That is, " as matter of fact," or as a thing of course. 
 ^ facility here means easiness of access, or pliability. 
 
OF GREAT PLACE. 577 
 
 used doth the one, but integrity professed, and with a manifest 
 detestation of bribery, doth the other ; and avoid not only the 
 fault, but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, and 
 changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion 
 of corruption: therefore always, when thou changest thine 
 opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together 
 with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to 
 steal it.' A servant or a favourite, if he be inward,^ and no 
 other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a 
 by-way to close ^ corruption. For roughness, it is a needless 
 cause of discontent : severity breedeth fear, but roughness 
 breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be 
 grave, and not taunting. As for facility, it is worse than bri- 
 bery ; for bribes come but now and then ; but if importunity or 
 idle respects ^ lead a man, he shall never be without ; as Solo- 
 mon saith, "To respect persons is not good ; for such a man will 
 transgress for a piece of bread." 
 
 It is most true that was anciently spoken, — " A place showeth 
 the man ; " and it showeth some to the better and some to the 
 worse. Ownium consensu eapax imperii, nisi imperasset,^ saith 
 Tacitus of Galba ; but of Vespasian he saith. Solus imperantium, 
 Yespasiamcs mutatus in melius ;^ though the one was meant of 
 sufficiency, the other of manners and afEection. It is an assured 
 sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom honour amends ; 
 for honour is, or should be, the place of virtue ; and as in Nat- 
 ure things move violently to their place, and calmly in their 
 place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and 
 calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair ; and if 
 there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is in 
 the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. Use the 
 memory of thy predecessor fairly and tenderly ; for, if thou dost 
 not, it is a debt will sure be paid when thou art gone. If thou 
 have colleagues, respect them ; and rather call them when they 
 look not for it, than exclude them when they have reason to 
 look to be called. Be not too sensible or too remembering of 
 thy place in conversation and private answers to suitors ; but 
 let it rather be said, "When he sits in place, he is another man." 
 
 9 To steal iB to do a thing secretly. So In The Taming of the Shrew, iii., 2 : 
 *' 'Twere good, methinke, to steal our marriage." 
 
 1 Inward tor intimate. So in King Bieha/rd the Third, iii., 4: " Wlio is most 
 inward with tlie noble dulie ? " 
 
 2 Close in the sense of secret or hidden ; a frequent usage. 
 
 3 Respects for coTisideration^ ; also a frequent usage. 
 
 4 "All would liave agreed in pronouncing him fit to govern, if he had no( 
 governed." 
 
 5 " Of the emperors, Vespasian alone changed for the better after his accea 
 lion." 
 
578 BACOir. 
 
 OF BOLDNESS. 
 
 It is a trivial grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise 
 man's consideration. Question was asked of Demosthenes, 
 what was the chief part of an orator? he answered, action, 
 what next? action: what next again ? action. He said it that 
 knew it best, and had by nature himself no advantage in that 
 he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator 
 which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player, 
 should be placed so high above those other noble parts of in- 
 vention, elocution, and the rest ; nay, almost alone, as if it were 
 all in all. But the reason is plain. There is in human nature 
 generally more of the fool than of the wise ; and therefore 
 those faculties by which the foolish part of men's minds is 
 taken are most potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness 
 in civil business: what first? boldness ; what second and third? 
 boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and base- 
 ness, far inferior to other parts ; but, nevertheless, it doth fas- 
 cinate, and bind hand and foot those that are either shallow in 
 judgment or weak in courage, which are the greatest part ; yea, 
 and prevaileth with wise men at weak times : therefore we see 
 it hath done wonders in popular States, but with senates and 
 princes less ; and more, ever upon the first entrance of bold 
 persons into action, than soon after ; for boldness is an ill keeper 
 of promise. Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural 
 body, so are there mountebanks for the politic body,— men that 
 undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky in two or 
 three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and there- 
 fore cannot hold out ; nay, you shall see a bold fellow many 
 times do Mahomet's miracle. Mahomet made the people be- 
 lieve that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it 
 ofEer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people 
 assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and 
 again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit 
 abashed, but said, " If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Ma- 
 homet will go to the hill." So these men, when they have 
 promised great matters and failed most shamefully, yet (if they 
 have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, 
 and make a turn, and no more ado. Certainly, to men of great 
 judgment, bold persons are a sport to behold ; nay, and to 
 the vulgar also boldness hath somewhat of the ridiculous ; for, 
 if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great 
 boldness is seldom without some absurdity: especially it is a 
 sport to see when a bold fellow is out of countenance, for that 
 puts his face into a most shrunken and wooden posture, as 
 
OF GOODKESS, AND GOODKESS OF NATURE. 57^ 
 
 needs it must: for in bashfulness the spirits do a little go and 
 come ; but witli bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a 
 stay ; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the 
 game cannot stir:^ but this last were fitter for a satire than for 
 a serious observation. This is well to be weighed, that bold- 
 ness is ever blind ; for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences : 
 therefore it is Ul in counsel, good in execution ; so that the right 
 use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be 
 seconds and under the direction of others ; for in counsel it is 
 good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them except 
 they be very great 
 
 OF GOODNESS, A2fD GOODNESS OP NATUEE. 
 
 I TAKE goodness in this sense, — the affecting of the weal of 
 men, which is that the Grecians call Philanthropia; and the 
 word humanity (as it is used) is a little too light to express it. 
 Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclina- 
 tion. This, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, is the 
 greatest, being the character of the Deity ; and without it man 
 is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of 
 vermin. Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, 
 and admits no excess but error. The desire of power in excess 
 caused the angels to fall ; the desire of knowledge in excess 
 caused man to fall ; but in charity there is no excess, neither 
 can angel or man come in danger by it. The inclination to 
 goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man ; insomuch 
 that, if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living 
 creatures ; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who never- 
 theless are kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and birds ; 
 insomuch as Busbechius' reporteth, a Christian boy in Con- 
 stantinople had like to have been stoned for gagging in a wag- 
 gishness a long-billed fowl.^ Errors, indeed, in this virtue, of 
 
 6 stale-mate was a term in chess ; used when the game was ended hy the king 
 oeing alone and uncheciied, and then forced into a situation from which he was 
 unable to mc -a without going into check. A rather ignominious pi-edicanient. 
 
 7 A learned traveller, born in Flanders, in 1522. He was employed by the 
 Emperor Ferdinand as ambassador to the Sultan Solyman II. His Letters rela- 
 tive to his travels in the East, which are written in Latin, contain much inter- 
 esting information. They were the pocket companion of Gibbon. 
 
 8 In this instance the stork or crane was probably protected, not on the 
 abstract grounds mentioned in the text, but for reasons of policy and gratitude 
 combined. In Eastern climates the cranes and dogs are far more efficacious 
 than human agency in removing fllth and ofTal, and thereby diminishing the 
 cliances of pestilence. Superstition, also, may have foi-med another motive, as 
 
580 BACOK. 
 
 goodness or charity, may be committed. The Italians have aa 
 ungracious jiroverb, Tanto huon che vol niente, — " So good, that he 
 is good for nothing "; and one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas 
 Machiavel,' had the confidence to put in writing, almost in 
 plain terms, "That the Christian faith had given up good men 
 in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust"; which h« 
 spake, because, indeed, there was never law, or sect, or opinion 
 did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth: 
 therefore, to avoid the scandal and the danger both, ib is good 
 to take knowledge of the errors of a habit so excellent. Seek 
 the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or 
 fancies ; for that is but facility or softness, which taketh an 
 honest mind prisoner. Neither give thou ^sop's cock a gem, 
 who would be better pleased and happier if he had had a 
 barley-corn. The example of God teacheth the lesson truly: 
 " He sendeth His rain, and maketh His Sun to shine upon the 
 just and the unjust"; but He doth not rain wealth, nor shine 
 honour and virtues upon men equally: common benefits are to • 
 be communicate with all, but peculiar benefits with choice. 
 And beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the 
 , pattern ; for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern, 
 the love of our neighbours but the portraiture. "Sell all thou 
 hast, and give it to the poor, and follow Me"; but sell not all 
 thou hast except thou come and follow Me ; that is, except thou 
 have a vocation wherein thou mayest do as much good with 
 little means as with great ; for otherwise, in feeding the streams, 
 thou driest the fountain. 
 
 Neither is there only a habit of goodness directed by right 
 reason ; but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition 
 towards it, as, on the other side, there is a natural malignity ; 
 for there be that in their nature do not affect the good of oth- 
 ers. The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to a crossness, 
 or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficileness,i or the 
 like ; but the deeper sort to envy, and mere mischief. Such 
 men, in other men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, and 
 
 wc learn that storks were held there In a sort of religious reverence, beoauso 
 they were supposed to make eveiy Winter the pilgrimage to Mecca. 
 
 Nicolo HachiavcUi, a Florentine statesman. He wrote *' Discourses on the 
 ilrst Decade of Livy," which were conspicuous for their liberality of sentiment, 
 and just and profound reflections. This work was succeeded by his famous 
 treatise, The Prince, his patron, Caesar Borgia, being the model of the perfect 
 prince there described by him. The whole scope of tills work is directed to one 
 object — the maintenance oif power, however acquired. The word MachiaoelUm 
 has been adopted to denote all that is deformed, InsinceA, and perHdious ia 
 politics. He died in 1527. 
 
 1 This hard word conies pretty near meaning unreasonableness, or imper 
 nuadableness. 
 
OF ATHEISM. 581 
 
 are ever on the loading part; not bo good as the dogs that 
 licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon 
 any thing that is raw ; misanthropi, that make it their practice 
 to bring men to the bough, and yet have never a tree lor the 
 purpose in their gardens, as Timon^ had. Such dispositions 
 are the very errors of human nature, and yet they are the 
 fittest timber to make great politics of ; like to knee-timber,^ 
 that is good for ships that are ordained to be tossed, but not for 
 building houses that shall stand firm. 
 
 The parts and signs of goodness are many. If a man be gra- 
 cious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the 
 world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, 
 but a continent that joins to them : if he be compassionate 
 towards the afflictions of others, it shows that his heart is like 
 the noble tree that is wounded itself when it gives the balm:^ 
 if he easily pardons and remits offences, it shows that his mind 
 is planted above injuries, so that he cannot be shot: if he be 
 thankful for small benefits, it shows that he weighs men's 
 minds, and not their trash: but, above all, if he have St. Paul's 
 perfection, that he would wish to be an anathema ^ from Christ 
 for the salvation of his brethren, it shows much of a Divine 
 nature, and a Mud of conformity with Christ himself. 
 
 OP ATHEISM. 
 
 1 had rather believe all the fables in the Legend,' and the 
 Talmud,' and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is 
 without a mind ; and therefore God never wrought miracles to 
 convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it. It 
 
 2 Timon of Athens, as be is generally called, was sumamed the Misanthrqpef 
 from the hatred which he bore to his fellow-men. Going to the,public assembly 
 on one occasion, he mounted the Eostrum, and stated that he had a fig-tree on 
 which many worthy citizens had ended their days by the halter; that he was 
 going to cut it down for the purpose of building on the spot, and therefore rec- 
 ommended them to avail themselves of it before it was too late. 
 
 3 A piece of timber that has grown crooked, and has been so cut that the 
 trunk and branch form an angle. 
 
 4 He probably here refers to the myrrh-tree. Incision is the method usually 
 adopted for extracting the resinous juices of trees : as in the india-rubber and 
 gutta-percha trees. 
 
 5 A votive, and In the present instance a vicarious offering. He alludes to 
 the words of St. Paul in his Second Epistle to Timothy, ii., 10. 
 
 6 TheLegendwas a collection of miraculous and wonderful stories; socallod 
 because the book was appointed to be read in churches on certain days. 
 
 7 This is the book that contains the Jewish traditions, and the Babbini<»il 
 explanations of the law. It is replete with wonderful narratives. 
 
583 BAooir. 
 
 is true, that a little philosopliy inclineth man's mind to atheism, 
 but deptli in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to relig- 
 ion ; for, while the mind of man looketh upon second causes 
 scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further ; but 
 when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked 
 together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity : nay, even 
 that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demon- 
 strate religion ; that is, the school of Leucippus,' and Democ- 
 ritus,^ and Epicurus: for it is a thousand times more credible 
 that four mutable elements and one immutable fifth essence,' 
 duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of 
 infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced,^ should have pro- 
 duced this order or beauty without a Divine marshal. The 
 Scripture saith, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no 
 God"; it is not said, "The fool hath thought in his heart": so 
 as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that^ he would have, 
 than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it ; 
 for none deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh* 
 that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more that 
 atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man, than by 
 this, that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as 
 if they fainted in it within themselves, and would be glad to be 
 strengthened by consent of others ; nay, more, you shall have 
 atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects ; 
 and, which is most of all, you shall have of them that will 
 suffer for atheism, and not recant: whereas, if they did truly 
 think that there were no such thing as God, why should they 
 trouble themselves ? Epicurus is charged, that he did but dis- 
 
 8 A Philosopher of Abdera; the first who taught the system of atoms, which 
 was afterwards more fully developed by Democritus and Epicurus. 
 
 9 He was a disciple of the last-named philosopher, and held the same princi- 
 ples : he also denied the existence of the soul after death. He is considered to 
 have been the parent of experimental Philosophy, and was the first to teach, 
 what is now confirmed by science, that the Hilky Way is an accumulation ol 
 stars. 
 
 1 The "four mutable elements" are earth, water, air, and fire, of which all 
 visible things were thought to be composed. The " fifth essence," commonly 
 called quintessence! was an immaterial principle, superior to the four elements^ 
 a spirit-power. 
 
 2 The Epicureans held that the Universe consisted, originaUy, of atoms dif- 
 fused chaotically through space, and that, after infinite trials and encounters, 
 without any counsel or design, these did at last, by a lucky chance, " entangle 
 and settle themselves in this beautiful and regular 11-ame of the world which we 
 now see." In other words, that old chaos grew into the present order by a/or- 
 tuitous concourse of those atoms. 
 
 3 Here that is equivalent to the compound relative what, that which. ^h« 
 usage was veiy common. 
 
 4 That is, whose ends it serves, or whose interest it is. 
 
OF ATHEISM. 583 
 
 ■semble for his credit's sake, when he affirmed there were 
 blessed natures, but such as enjoyed themselves without hav- 
 'ing respect to the government of the world ; wherein they say 
 he did temporize, though in secret he thought there was no 
 God: but certainly he is traduced, for his words are noble and 
 diviue: Won Deos vulgi negare profanum; sed vulgi opiniones iHis 
 applicare profanum.^ Plato could have said no more ; and, 
 although he had the confidence to deny the administration, he 
 had not the power to deny the nature. The Indians of the 
 West have names for their particular gods, though they have 
 no name for God: as if the heathens should have had the 
 names Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, &c., but not the word Deus: which 
 shows that even those barbarous people have the notion, 
 though they have not the latitude and extent of it ; so that 
 against atheists the very savages take part with the very sub- 
 tilest philosophers. The contemplative atheist is rare, — a Di- 
 agoras, a Bion, a Lucian, perhaps, and some others: and yet 
 they seem to be more than they are ; for that all that impugn 
 a received religion, or superstition, are, by the adverse part, 
 branded with the name of atheists: but the great atheists in- 
 deed are hypocrites, which are ever handling holy things, but 
 without feeling ; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end. 
 The causes of atheism are, divisions in religion, if there be 
 many ; for any one main division addeth zeal to both sides, but 
 many divisions introduce atheism: another is, scandal of priests, 
 when it is come to that which St. Bernard saith. Won est jam di- 
 cere, ut populus, sic sacerdos; quia nee sic populus, ut saeerdos:'^ 
 a third is, custom of profane scoffing in holy matters, which 
 doth by little and little deface the reverence of religion: and 
 lastly, learned times, especially with peace and prosperity ; for 
 troubles and adversities do more bow men's minds to religion. 
 They that deny a God destroy man's nobility ; for certainly 
 man is of kin to the beasts by his body ; and, if he be not of kin 
 to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It de- 
 stroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature ; 
 for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and 
 courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a 
 
 5 "It ia not profane to deny the gods of the common people; but to apply to 
 the gods the notions of the common people, is profane." 
 
 6 " It is not now to be said, As the people so the priest, for the people are 
 not so bad as the priests."— St. Bernard, Abbot of Clalrvaux, founded a hundred 
 and sixty convents, and died in 1153. He was unsparing in his censures of the 
 priests of his time. Gibbon speaks of him as follows : " Princes and pontiffs 
 trembled at the fteedom of his apostolical censures: France, England, and 
 Milan consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the Church : the debf 
 was repayed by the gratitude of Innocent the Second ; and his successor, Eir 
 genius the Third, was the firiend and disciple of the holy Bernard." 
 
584 -ESUUS7 
 
 man, who to him is instead of a God, or melior natura ;' which 
 courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that con- 
 fidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So 
 man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divine pro- 
 tection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human 
 nature in itself could not obtain ; therefore, as atheism is in all 
 respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of 
 the means to exalt itself above human frailty. As it is in partic- 
 ular persons, so it is in nations: never was there such a state foi 
 magnanimity as Rome. Of this state hear what Cicero saith: 
 Quam volwmus, licet, Patres conscripti, nos amemus, tamen nee num- 
 ero Hispanos, nee robore Oallos, nee calUditate Pcenos, nee artibus 
 Qrcecos, nee denique Itoe ipso hujus gentis et terrm domestico nati- 
 voque sensu Italos ipsos et Latinos; sed pietate, ac religione, aique 
 hac v/na sapientia, quod Deorwn immortalium nundne omnia regi, 
 guhemarique perspeadmus, omnes gentes nationesque superavimus.' 
 
 or SUPEESTITION". 
 
 It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an 
 opinion as is unworthy of Him ; for the one is unbelief, the 
 other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach 
 of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: "Surely," 
 said he, "I had rather a great deal men should say there was 
 no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that 
 there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as 
 they were born" ; as the poets speak of Saturn:^ and as the 
 contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater 
 towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, 
 to natural piety, to laws, to reputation ; all which may be guides 
 to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not ; but su- 
 perstition dismounts all these, and erectetli an absolute mon- 
 archy in the minds of men: therefore atheism did never perturb 
 
 7 That is, " a superior nature." 
 
 8 "Let us be as partial to ourselves as we will, Conscript Fathers, yet we have 
 not surpassed the Spaniards in number, nor the Gauls in strength, nor the 
 Carthaginians in cunning, nor the Greeks in the arts, nor, lastly, the Latins and 
 Italians of this nation and laud, in natui-al intelligence about home-alTairs ; but 
 we hare excelled all nations and people in piety and religion, and in this one 
 wisdom of fully recognizing that all things are ordered and governed by the 
 power of the immortal gods." 
 
 9 Time was personiiled in Saturn, and by this story was meant its tenden ij 
 to destroy whatever it has brought into existence. 
 
585 
 
 States ; i for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no 
 further. And we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time 
 of Augustus Caesar) were civil times ; ^ but superstition hath 
 been the confusion of many States, and bringeth in a new 
 primum mobile,^ that ravisheth all the spheres of government. 
 The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition 
 wise men follow fools ; and arguments are fitted to practice in 
 a reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates 
 in the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of the schoolmen 
 bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, 
 which did feign eccentrics and epicycles,* and such engines of 
 orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no 
 such things ; and, in like manner, that the schoolmen had 
 framed a number of subtile and intricate axioms and theorems, 
 to save the practice of the Church. 
 
 The causes of superstition are, pleasing and sensual rites and 
 ceremonies ; excess of outward and Pharisaical holiness ; over- 
 great reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the Church ; 
 the stratagems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre ; 
 the favouring too much of good intentions, which openeth the 
 gate to conceits and novelties ; the taking an aim at Divine 
 matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imagi- 
 nations ; and, lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with 
 calamities and disasters. Superstition, without a veil, is a de- 
 formed thing ; for as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like 
 a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the 
 more deformed ; and as wholesome meat corrupteth to little 
 worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty 
 observances. There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, 
 when men think to do best if they go farthest from the super- 
 stition formerly received ; * therefore care would ^ be had that 
 (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the 
 bad, which comnionly is done when the people is the reformer. 
 
 1 Bacon woTild hardly have written this passage, had he lived after the 
 French Kevolution. See some of the pieces from Burke in this volume; es- 
 pecially that on page 296. 
 
 2 And yet in those very times human society was, through sheer' profligacy, 
 going to rnin faster in Kome, was rotting inwards more deeply, than it has 
 ever done in any modem nation. 
 
 S l£ the astronomical language of Bacon's time, primum mobile meant a body 
 drawing all others into its own sphere. 
 
 4 An epicycle is a smaller circle, whose centre is in the circumference of a 
 greater one. 
 
 5 So, for example, in Bacon's time, there was a class of people who had a 
 Bnperstitious dread of such things as the ring in marriage, and kneeling at tha 
 Lord's Supper. 
 
 6 Would lor a?iouia. See page 569, note 1. 
 
586 BACoir. 
 
 OF TKAVUL. 
 
 Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education ; in the 
 elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country 
 before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, 
 and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor or 
 grave servant, I allow' well ; so that he be such a one that hath 
 tlie language, and hath been in the country before ; whereby 
 he may be abte to tell them what things are worthy to be seen 
 in the country where they go, what acquaintances they are 
 to seek, what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth ; for 
 else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It is a 
 strange thing that, in sea-voyages, where there is nothing to be 
 seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries ; but in land- 
 travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part 
 they omit it ; as if chance were fitter to be registered than ob- 
 servation: let diaries, therefore, be brought in use. The things 
 to be seen and observed are, the Courts of princes, especially 
 when they give audience to ambassadors ; the courts of justice, 
 while they sit and hear causes ; and so of consistories ecclesi 
 astic ; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which 
 are therein extant ; the walls and fortifications of cities and 
 towns ; and so the havens and harbours, antiquities and ruins, 
 libraries, colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are ; 
 shipping and navies ; houses and gardens of state and pleasure 
 near great cities ; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, 
 bourses,^ warehouses, exercises Of horsemanship, fencing, train- 
 ing of soldiers, and the like ; comedies, such whereunto the 
 better sort of persons do resort ; treasuries of jewels and robes ; 
 cabinets and rarities ; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memora- 
 ble in the places where they go ; after all which the tutors or 
 servants ought to make diligent inquiry. As for triumphs,' 
 masques, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such 
 shows, men need not to be put in mind of them ; yet they are 
 not to be neglected. If you will have a young man to put his 
 travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much, tliis 
 you must do: first, as was said, he must have some entrance 
 into the language before he goeth ; then he must have such a 
 servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country, as was likewise said : 
 let him carry with him also some card, or book, describing the 
 
 7 Approve is the old meaning of dUow. Often so in Shakespeaxe. Also in the 
 Psalms : " The Lord alloweth the righteous." 
 
 8 Bourse is French for parse; and the sign of a purse was anciently set OTOl 
 the places where merchants met. 
 
 9 Public shows of any kind were often called triumphs. 
 
OF WISDOM FOE A MAK'S SELF. 587 
 
 country where he travelleth, which will be a good key to hia 
 inquiry ; let him keep also a diary ; let him not stay long in one 
 city or town, more or less as the place deserveth, but not long ; 
 nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his 
 lodging from one end and part of the town to another, which is 
 a great adamant ^ of acquaintance ; let him sequester himself 
 from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places 
 where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth ; 
 let him, upon his removes from one place to another, procure 
 recommendation to some person of quality residing in the place 
 whither he removeth, that he may use his favour in those things 
 he desireth to see or know ; thus he may abridge his travel with 
 much profit. 
 
 As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that 
 which is most of all profitable is acquaintance with the secreta- 
 ries and employed men 2 of ambassadors ; for so in travelling in 
 one country he shall suck the experience of many. Lot him 
 also see and visit eminent persons in all kinds, which are of great 
 name abroad, that he may be able to tell how the life agreeth 
 with the fame : for quarrels, they are with care and discretion 
 to be avoided ; they are commonly for mistresses, healths,^ place, 
 and words: and let a man beware how he keepeth company with 
 choleric and quarrelsome persons ; for they will engage him into 
 tlieir own quarrels. "When a traveller returneth home, let him 
 not leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether be- 
 hind him, but maintain a correspondence by letters with those 
 of his acquaintance which are of most worth ; and let his travel 
 appear rather in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture ; 
 and in his discourse let him be rather advised* in his answers 
 than forward to tell stories : and let it appear that he doth not 
 change his country manners for those of foreign parts ; but only 
 prick in some flowers of that he hath learned abroad into the 
 customs of his own country 
 
 01" WISDOM FOB A MAN'S SELF. 
 
 An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd ^ thing 
 in an orchard or garden: and certainly men that are great lovers 
 
 1 Adamant is the old name for the loadstone. 
 
 2 What are now called attaoMs. 
 
 3 He probably means the refusing to join on the occasion of drinking healths 
 When taking wine. 
 
 4 Advised is circumspect, deliberate. Often so in Shakespeare. 
 
 5 Shrewd, here, is ill or mischievous. So in King Henry the Eighth, v., 2 . 
 "Do »y Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and he is your ftjend for ever." 
 
588 BACOIT. 
 
 of themselves waste the public. Divide with reason between 
 self-love and society ; and be so true to thyself as thou be not 
 false to others, specially to thy king and country. It is a poor 
 centre of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth ; for that 
 only stands fast upon his own centre ; " whereas all things that 
 have aflBnity with the heavens, move upon the centre of another, 
 which they benefit. The referring of all to a man's self is more 
 tolerable in a sovereign prince, because themselves are not only 
 themselves, but their good and evil is at the peril of the public 
 fortune : but it is a desperate evil in a servant to a prince, or a 
 citizen in a republic ; for whatsoever affairs pass such a man's 
 hands, he crooketh them to his own ends, which must needs be 
 often eccentric to the ends of bis master or State : therefore let 
 princes or States choose such servants as have not this mark, 
 except they mean their service should be made but the acces- 
 sary. That which maketh the effect more pernicious is, that all 
 proportion is lost. It were disproportion enough for the ser- 
 vant's good to be preferred before the master's ; but yet it is a 
 greater extreme, when a little good of the servant shall carry 
 things against a great good of the master's: and yet that is the 
 case of bad ofiftcers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other 
 false and corrupt servants ; which set a bias upon their bowl,' 
 of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their 
 master's great and important affairs. And, for the most part, 
 the good such servants receive is after the model of their own 
 fortune ; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model 
 of their master's fortune. And certainly it is the nature of ex- 
 treme self -lovers, as they will set a house on fire, an^ it were 
 but to roast their eggs: and yet these men many times hold 
 credit with their masters because their study is but to please 
 them, and profit themselves ; and for either respect they will 
 abandon the good of their affairs. 
 
 "Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a 
 depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to 
 leave a house somewhat before it fall: it is the wisdom of the 
 fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for 
 him : it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they 
 would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that 
 those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are sui amantes, sine 
 
 6 Bacon adhered to the old astronomy, which made the Earth the centre of 
 the system. The Copernican system was not generally received in England till 
 many years later, 
 
 7 A Man is, properly, a weight placed in one side of a bowl, which deflects i* 
 &om the straight line. 
 
 8 An, for if, occurs continually in Shakespeare. 
 
OJ? IJSfNOVATIONS. 589 
 
 Hvali,^ are many times unfortunate ; and whereas they have all 
 their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end 
 themselves sacrifices to thainconstancy of fortune, whose wings 
 they thought by their self- wisdom to have pinioned. 
 
 OF INNOVATIONS. 
 
 As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are 
 all innovations, which are the births of time ; yet, notwithstand- 
 ing, as those that first bring honour into their family are com- 
 monly more worthy than most that succeed, so the first precedent 
 (if it be good) is seldom attained by imitation: for ill, to man's 
 nature as it stands perverted, hath a natural motion strongest in 
 continuance ; but good, as a forced motion, strongest at first. 
 Surely every medicine ' is an innovation ; and he that will not 
 apply new remedies must expect new evils: for time is the 
 greatest innovator ; and if time of course alter things to the 
 worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the bet- 
 ter, what shall be the end ? It is true that what is settled by 
 custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit ; and those 
 things which have long gone together are, as it were, confeder- 
 ate within themselves: whereas new things piece not so well 
 but, though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their 
 inconformity ; besides, they are like strangers, more admired, 
 and less favoured. All this is true, if time stood still ; which, 
 contrariwise, moveth so round,^ that a froward retention of 
 custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation ; and they that 
 reverence too much old times are but a scorn to the new. It 
 were good, therefore, that men in their innovations would follow 
 the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but 
 quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived ; for, otherwise 
 whatsoever is new is unlooked for ; and ever it mends some, and 
 pairs 3 other ; and he that is holpen* takes it for a fortune, and 
 
 9 " Lovers of themselves, without a competitor." * 
 
 1 Medicine and remedy arc here used as synoaymous. 
 
 2 Rmmd, as applied to speech or action, means plain, hold, downright, de- 
 cided. So Polonius, in Bamlet, says, " I went round to work." But the word 
 sometimes appears to have the sense of rapid. And so Addison seems to use 
 it: "Sir Eoger heard them on a round trot"; though here it may very well 
 mean downright or decided. 
 
 3 To pair is, properly, to mahe less or worse. So the Earl of Somerset to 
 King James : " 1 only cleave to that which is so little, as that it will suffer no 
 pairing or diminution." The word has long been out of use except in impair. 
 
 i Holpen, or holp, is the old preterite olhelp. Used continually in the Psal. 
 ter; often in Shakespeare also. 
 
590 BACOK. 
 
 thanks the time ; and he that is hurt, for a wrong, andimputeth 
 it to the author. It is good also not to try experiments in States, 
 except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident ; and well 
 to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, 
 and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation:' 
 and lastly, that the novelty, though it be not rejected, yet be 
 held for a suspect ; <> and, as the Scripture saith, " That we make 
 a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us, and dis- 
 cover what is the straight and right way, and so to walk in it." 
 
 OF SEEMING "WISE. 
 
 It hath been an opinion, that the French aro wiser than they 
 seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are ; but, how- 
 soever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and 
 man ; for, as the apostle saith of godliness, "Having a show of 
 godliness, but denying the power thereof " ; so certainly there 
 are, in points of wisdom and sufficiency,' that do nothing or 
 little very solemnly ; magna conatu nugas? It is a ridiculous 
 thing, and fit for a satire to persons of judgment, to see what 
 shifts these formalists have, and what prospectives' to make 
 superficies to seem body, that hath depth and bulk. Some are 
 so close and reserved, as they will not show their wares but by 
 a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat ; and 
 when they know within themselves they speak of that they do 
 not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of 
 that which they may not well speak. Some help themselves 
 with countenance and gesture, and are wise by signs ; as Cicero 
 saith of Piso, that when he answered him he fetched one of his 
 brows up to his forehead, and bent the other down to his chin ; 
 Bespondes, altera adfrontem sublato, altera ad mentwm depresso 
 supercilio, crudelitatem tihi rum placere.^ Some think to bear it 
 
 5 For some capital obserrationa on this subject, see, among the pieces from 
 Burke, page 213; also, pages 257—259. 
 
 6 "Held for a suspect" of course means the same as "held In suspioum." 
 Shakespeare has a like usage repeatedly. So in The Comedy of Errors, iii., 1: 
 " You draw within the compass of suspect th' un violated honour of your wife." 
 
 7 Sufficiency appears to be used here in the sense of awthority, or fuU power. 
 So Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure, 1., 1: "Then no more remains but 
 t' add sufficiency, as your worth is able, and let them work." 
 
 8 " Achieve nothing with a mighty effort." 
 
 9 Prospective is an old term for a perspective glass. So Daniel, as quoted by 
 Nares : " Take here this prospective, and therein note and tell what thou seest, 
 for well maycBt thou there observe their shadows." Through such prospectivea 
 things were often made to seem very different fl-om what they really were. 
 
 1 " With one brow raised to your forehead, the other bent downward to yoni 
 Jhin, you answer that cruelty delights you not." 
 
OF FKIEND3HIP. 591 
 
 oy speaking a great word, and being peremptory ; and go on, 
 and tako by admittance that which they cannot make good. 
 Some, ■vrhatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise, 
 or make light of it, as impertinent or curious ; ^ and so would 
 have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never without 
 a difEerence,^ and commonly, by amusing men with a subtilty, 
 blanch ^ the matter ; of whom A. Gellius saith, Hominem delirum, 
 qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit ponderaJ" Of which kind 
 also Plato, in his Protagoras, bringeth in Prodicus in scorn, and 
 maketh him. make a speech that consisteth of distinctions from 
 the beginning to the end. Generally, such men, in all delibera- 
 tions, find ease to be of the negative side, and affect a credit to 
 object and foretell difficulties ; for, when propositions are de- 
 nied, there is an end of them ; but if they be allowed, it requir- 
 eth a new work ; which false point of wisdom is the bane of 
 business. To conclude, there is no decaying merchant, or in- 
 ward beggar,^ hath so many tricks to uphold the credit of their 
 wealth as these empty persons have to maintain the credit of 
 their sufficiency. Seeming wise men may make shift to get 
 opinion ; but let no man choose them for employment ; for, 
 certainly, you were better take for business a man somewhat 
 absurd than over-formal. 
 
 OP PEIEISTDSHIP. 
 
 It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth 
 and untruth together in few words than in that speech, "Who- 
 soever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god "-J 
 for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aver- 
 sation towards ' society in any man hath somewhat of the 
 savage beast ; but it is most untrue that it should have any 
 character at all of the Divine nature, except it proceed, not out 
 of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to seques- 
 
 2 Impertinent is irr^vant ; and curious is over-nice. 
 
 3 Difference in the sense of subtile distinction, 
 
 i Blanch, here, is evade or elude. So Bacon, again, in hia ffenry the Seventh : 
 " The judges of that time thought it was a dangerous thing to admit ifs and ans 
 to qualify the words of treason, whereby every man might express his malice, 
 and blanch his danger." So too in BeliguifB Wottoniance : " I suppose you will 
 not blanch Paris in your way." 
 
 5 "A foolish man, who Mtters away weighty matters by flne-spun trifling 
 with words." 
 
 6 One really insolvent, though to the world he does not appear so, 
 
 7 The quotation is il-om Aristotle's Ethics. 
 
 8 Aversation towards is the same as aversion to. 
 
592 BACON. 
 
 ter a man's self for a higher conversation ; such as is found to 
 have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen,— as 
 Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, 
 the Sicilian ; and Apollonius, of Tyana ;» and truly and really in 
 divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. 
 But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it ex- 
 tendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a 
 gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there 
 is no love. The Latm adage meeteth with it a little: Magna 
 civitas, magna soUtudo;^ because in a great town friends are 
 scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most 
 part, which is in less neighbourhoods: but we may go further, 
 and affirm most truly, that it is a mere^ and miserable solitude 
 to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilder- 
 ness ; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the 
 frame of his nature and aflections is unfit for friendship, he 
 taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. 
 
 A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of 
 the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all 
 kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings 
 and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body ; and it is 
 not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza* to open 
 the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the 
 lungs, castoreum for the brain ; but no receipt openeth the 
 heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, 
 fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon 
 the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. 
 
 It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings 
 and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we 
 speak ; so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard 
 of their own safety and greatness : for princes, in regard of the 
 distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and ser- 
 vants, cannot gather this fruit, except, to make themselves 
 capable thereof, they raise some persons to be as it were com- 
 panions, and almost equals to themselves, which many times 
 sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such 
 
 9 Epimenides, a poet of Crete, is said to have fallen into a sleep which lasted 
 fifty-seven years. He was also said to have lived 299 years. Nama pretended 
 that he was instructed in the art of legislation by the divine nymph Egeria, who 
 dwelt in the Arician grove. Empedocles, the Sicilian phUosopher, declared 
 himself to be immortal, and to be able to cure all evils : he is said by some to 
 have retired from society, that his death might not be known. Apollonius, of 
 Tyana, the Pythagorean philosopher, pretended to miraculous powers, and 
 after his death a temple was erected to him at that place. 
 
 1 "A great city is a great desert." 
 
 2 Mere, Again, for absolute or utter. See page 567, note S. 
 
 3 ^arza is the old name for sarsaparill». 
 
OF FEIENDSHIP. 593 
 
 persons the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were mat- 
 ter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth 
 the true use and cause thereof, naming them particlpes eurarum ; 
 for it is that which tieth the knot: and we see plainly that this 
 hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but 
 by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have 
 oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom 
 both themselves have called friends, and allowed others like- 
 wise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is 
 received between private men. 
 
 L. Sulla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after 
 surnamed The Great) to that height that Pompey vaunted him- 
 self for Sulla's overmatch ; for when he had carried the Consul- 
 ship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sulla, and that 
 Sulla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pom- 
 pey turned upon him again, and in efEect bade him be quiet, 
 for that more men adored the Sun rising than the Sun setting. 
 With Julius Csesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, 
 as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after 
 his nephew ; and this was the man that had power with him to 
 draw him forth to his death: for when Csesar would have dis- 
 charged the Senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially 
 a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm 
 out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the 
 Senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream : and it seemed 
 his favour was so great, as Antonius, in a letter which is re- 
 cited verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him vetiefka, 
 "witch"; as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised 
 Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height, as, when he con- 
 sulted with Mfficenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, 
 Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either marry 
 his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life ; there was no 
 third way, he had made him so great. "With Tiberius Csesar, 
 Sejanus had ascended to that height, as they two were termed 
 and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius, in a letter to him, 
 saith, jEfcec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi ;* and the whole 
 Senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in 
 respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two. 
 The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plautia- 
 nus ; for he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plau- 
 tiahus, and would often maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to 
 his son ; and did write also, in a letter to the Senate, by these 
 words: "I love the man'so well, as I wish he may over-live me." 
 Now, if these princes had been as a Trajan or a Marcus Aure- 
 
 4 "On account of our friendship, I liave not concealed these things." 
 
594 BACOS'. 
 
 lius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an 
 abundant goodness of nature ; but being men so wise, of such 
 strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of them- 
 selves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they 
 found their own felicity, though as great as ever happened to 
 mortal men, but as an half-piece, except they might have a 
 friend to make it entire: and yet, which is more, they were 
 princes that had wives, sons, nephews ; yet all these could not 
 supply the comfort of friendship. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of his first 
 master, Duke Charles the Hardy,^ namely, that he would com- 
 municate his secrets with none ; and, least of all, those secrets 
 which troubled him most. "Whereupon he goeth on and saith, 
 thattowards his latter time that closeness did impair and alittle 
 perish^ his understanding. Surely Comineus might have made 
 the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second 
 master, Louis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his 
 tormentor. The parable ' of Pythagoras is dark, but true, Gar 
 we edito, "Eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give it 
 a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto 
 are cannibals of their own hearts: but one thing is most admir- 
 able, (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship,) 
 which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend 
 works two contrary effects ; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth 
 griefs in halves: for there is no man that imparteth his joys to 
 his friend, but he joyeth the more ; and no man that imparteth 
 his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, 
 in truth, of operation upon ajnan's mind of like virtue as the 
 alchymists.used to attribute to their stone for man's body, that 
 it worketh all contrary efEects, but still to the good and benefit 
 of nature. But yet, without praying in aid' of alchymists, 
 there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of 
 Nature ; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any 
 natural action ; and, on the other side, weakeneth and duUeth 
 any violent impression ; and even so is it of ^ minds. 
 
 5 Charles tbe Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the antagonist of Louis XI. of Fiance. 
 Comines spent his early years at his Court, but afterwards passed into the ser- 
 vice of Louis XI. This monarch was notorious for his cruelty, treachery, and 
 dissimulation. 
 
 6 The use of perish as a transitive verb is not peculiar to Bacon. Beaumont 
 and Fletcher have it in The Maid's Tragedy, iv., 1: "Let not my sins perish 
 your noble youth." Also in The Honest Man's Fortune, i., 2: "His wants and 
 miseries have perish'd his good face." • 
 
 7 Parable anilproverb were formerly synonymous. 
 
 8 To pray in aid is an old law phrase for calling one in. to help who has an 
 interest in the cause. 
 
 9 0/was, as it stiE is, often equivalent to in respect of. 
 
OF FKIENDSHIP. 595 
 
 The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for 
 the understanding, as the first is for the affections ; for friend- 
 ship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and 
 tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of ■ 
 darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be 
 understood only of faithful counsel, which a man receiveth 
 from his friend; but, before you come to that, certain it is 
 that, whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his 
 wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communi- 
 cating and discoursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts 
 more easily ; he marshalleth them more orderly ; he seeth how 
 they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth 
 wiser than himself ; and that more by an hour's discourse than 
 by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the 
 King of Persia, " That speech was like cloth of arras, opened 
 and put abroad ;i whereby the imagery doth appear in figure ; 
 whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs." Neither is this 
 second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, re- 
 strained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel, 
 (they indeed are best,) but even without that a man leameth of 
 himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth 
 his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a 
 man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to 
 suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. 
 
 Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, 
 that other point which lieth more open, and falleth within vul- 
 gar^ observation, — which is faithful counsel from a friend. 
 Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, "Dry light is ever 
 the best"; and certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth 
 by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which 
 cometh from his own understanding and judgment ; which is 
 ever infused and drenched in his aflections and customs. So as 
 there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend 
 giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the 
 counsel of a friend and of a flatterer ; for there is no such flat- 
 terer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against 
 flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is 
 of two sorts ; the one concerning manners, the other concerning 
 business: for the first, the best preservative to keep the mind 
 in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of 
 a man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too 
 
 1 That is, like tapestries, opened and spread out. Many of the tapestries or 
 hangings formerly nsed for lining rooms had pictures and sentences emhroid. 
 ered in them. This is characteristically alluded to by Falstaff in 1 Henry thi 
 Fourth, iv., 2 : " Slaves as ragged as Lazarua in tha painted cloth." 
 
 2 Vulgar and common are used interchangeably by old writers. 
 
696 BACON. 
 
 piercing and corrosive ; reading good books of morality. U a 
 little flat and dead ; observing our faults in others is sometimes 
 improper for our case ; but the best receipt (best, I say, to work 
 and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange 
 thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities 
 many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a 
 friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their 
 fame and fortune : for, as St. James saith, they are as men 
 "that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their 
 own shape and favour." As for business, a man may think, if 
 he will, that two eyes see no more than one ; or, that a game- 
 ster seeth always more than a looker-on ; or, that a man in 
 anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty 
 letters ; ' or, that a musket may be shot ofE as well upon the 
 arm as upon a rest; and such other fond* and high imagma- 
 tions, to think himself all in all: but, when all is done, the help 
 of good counsel is that which setteth business straight: and if 
 any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by 
 pieces ; asking counsel in one business of one man, and in an- 
 other business of another man ; it is well, (that is to say, better, 
 perhaps, than if he asked none at all,) but he runneth two dan- 
 gers, — one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled ; for it is 
 a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to 
 have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to 
 some ends which he hath that giveth it ; the other, that he shall 
 have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe, (though with good 
 meaning,) and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy ; 
 even as if you would call a physician that is thought good for 
 the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacq.uainted 
 with your body ; and therefore may put you in a way for a pres- 
 ent cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and 
 so cure the disease, and kill the patient: but a friend, that is 
 wholly acquainted with a man's estate,^ will beware, by further- 
 ing any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconven- 
 ience : and therefore rest not upon scattered counsels ; they 
 will rather distract and mislead than settle and direct. 
 
 After these two noble fruits of friendship, (peace in the afEec- 
 lions and support of the judgment,) followeth the last fruit, 
 which is like the pomegranate, full of m^y kernels ; I mean 
 aid, and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. Here the 
 best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is 
 
 3 He alludes to the recommendation which moralists have often given, that a 
 person in anger should go through the alphabet to himself before he allow" 
 himself to speak. 
 
 4 .Fond is often foolish in old writers. So in Shakespeare, passim. 
 
 5 .Estate ia the Bense oi state, that is, condition. Oilen so. 
 
OP EXPENSE. 597 
 
 to cast and see how many things there are which a man can not 
 do himself ; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech 
 of the ancients to say "that a friend is another himself"; for 
 that^ a friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, 
 and die many times in desire of some things which they prin- 
 cipally take to heart ; the bestowing of a child, the finishing of 
 a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest 
 almost secure that the care of those things will continue after 
 him ; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. 
 A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place ; but 
 where friendship is, all ofiices of life are, as it were, granted to 
 him and his deputy ; for he may exercise them by his friend. 
 How many things are there, which a man cannot, with any face 
 or comeliness, say or do himself I A man can scarce allege his 
 own merits, with modesty, much less extol them ; a man cannot 
 sometimes brook to supplicate or beg, and a number of the 
 like: but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, 
 which are blushing in a man's own. So, again, a man's person 
 hath many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man 
 cannot speak to his son but as a father ; to his wife but as a 
 husband ; to his enemy but upon terms : whereas a friend may 
 speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth' with the per- 
 son. But to enumerate these things were endless : I have 
 given the rule, where a man can fitly play his own part ; if he 
 have not a friend, he may quit the stage. 
 
 OF EXPENSE. 
 
 KiCHES are for spending, and spending for honour and good 
 actions ; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by 
 the worth of the occasion : for voluntary undoing may be as 
 well for a man's country as for the kingdom of Heaven ; but 
 ordinary expense ought to be limited by a man's estate, and 
 governed with such regard, as it be within his compass ; and 
 not subject to deceit and abuse of servants ; and ordered to the 
 best show, that the bills may be less than the estimation abroad. 
 Certainly, if a man will keep but of even hand,^ his ordinary 
 expenses ought to be but to the half of his receipts ; and if he 
 think to wax rich, but to the third part. It is no baseness for 
 the greatest to descend and look into their own estate. Some 
 
 6 Equivalent to becaase, or inasmuch as. A very frequent usage. 
 
 7 Here sori is mit or accord. So in King Henry the Fifth, iv., 1, speaking oi 
 the name Pistol : " It sorts well witli your fierceness." 
 
 8 " Of even hand " is equivalent to in an equal balance. 
 
598 BACON. 
 
 forbear it, not upon negligence alone, but doubting' to bring 
 themselves into melancholy, in respect they shall find it broken; 
 but wounds cannot be cured without searching. He that can- 
 not look into his own estate at all had need both choose well 
 those whom he employeth, and change them often ; for new 
 are more timorous and less subtle. He that can look into his 
 estate but seldom, it behoveth him to turn all to certainties. 
 A man had need, if he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to 
 be as saving again in some other : as,^ if he be plentiful in diet, 
 to be saving in apparel ; if he be plentiful in the hall, to be 
 saving in the stable, and the like ; for he that is plentiful in ex- 
 penses of all kinds will hardly be preserved from decay. In 
 clearing of a man's estate, he may as well hurt himself in being 
 too sudden, as in letting it run on too long ; for hasty selling is 
 commonly as disadvantageable as interest. Besides, he that 
 clears at once will relapse ; for, finding himself out of straits, he 
 will revert to his customs ; but he that cleareth by degrees in- 
 duceth a habit of frugality, and gaineth as well upon his mind 
 as upon his estate. Certainly, who hath a state to repair, may 
 not despise small things : and, commonly, it is less dishonour- 
 able to abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty gettings. 
 A man ought warily to begin charges which, once begun, will 
 continue ; but in matters that return not he may be more mag- 
 nificent. 
 
 OF SUSPICION. 
 
 Stjspicioks amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds,— 
 they ever fly by twilight: certainly they are to be repressed, or 
 at the least well guarded ; for they cloud the mind, they lose 
 friends, and they check ^ with business, whereby business can- 
 not goon currently and constantly: they dispose kings to tyr- 
 anny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and 
 melancholy: they are defects, not in the heart, but in the 
 brain ; for they take place in the stoutest natures, as in the 
 example of Henry the Seventh of England. There was not a 
 more suspicious man nor a more stout:-^ and in such a composi- 
 tion they do small hurt ; for commonly they are not admitted, 
 but with examination, whether they be likely or no j but in 
 fearful natures they gain ground too fast. There is nothing 
 makes a man suspect much, more than to know little ; and 
 
 9 To doubt was often used in the sense of to /ear. 
 
 1 As here has the force of /or instance. Often so. 
 
 2 That is, clash, or inter/ere, 
 
 8 Stout, in old language, is stubborn, or, sometimes, haughty. 
 
OF DISCOUESB. 599 
 
 therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know 
 more, and not to keep their suspicions in smother. What 
 would men have ? Do they think those they employ and deal 
 with are saints ? Do they not think they will have their own 
 ends, and be truer to themselves than to them? Therefore 
 there is no better way to moderate suspicions, than to account 
 upon such suspicions as true, and yet to bridle them as false: 
 for so far a man ought to make use of suspicions as to provide, 
 as if that should be true that he suspects, yet it may do him no 
 hurt. Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers are but buzzes ; 
 but suspicions that are artificially nourished, and put into men's 
 heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. Cer- 
 tainly, the best mean to clear the way in this same wood of 
 suspicions, is frankly to communicate them with the party that 
 he suspects: for thereby he shall be sure to know more of the 
 truth of them than he did before ; and withal shall make that 
 party more circumspect, not to give further cause of suspicion. 
 But this would not be done to men of base natures ; for they, 
 if they find themselves once suspected, will never be true. The 
 Italian says, Sospetto licentia fede;^ as if suspicion did give a 
 passport to faith ; but it ought rather to kindle it to discharge 
 itself. 
 
 OE DISCOURSE. 
 
 Some in their discourse desire rather commendation of wit, m 
 being able to hold all arguments, than of judgment, in discern- 
 ing what is true ; as if it were a praise to know what might be 
 said, and not what should be thought. Some have certain com- 
 monplaces and themes wherein they are good, and want variety ; 
 which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious, and, when it is 
 once perceived, ridiculous. The honourablest part of talk is to 
 give the occasion ; and again to moderate and pass to somewhat 
 else; for then a man leads the dance. It is good in discourse, and 
 speech of conversation, to vary, and intermingle speech of the 
 present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of 
 questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest ; for it 
 is a dull thing to tire, and, as we say now, to jade any thing too 
 far. As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be privi- 
 leged from it, namely, religion, matters of State, great persons, 
 any man's present business of importance, and any case that 
 deserveth pity ; yet there be some that think their wits have 
 been asleep, except they dart out somewhat that is piquant, and 
 to the quick. That is a vein which would be bridled : Farce, puer, 
 
 i " Suspicion dissolves the obligation to fidelity." 
 
600 BACON. 
 
 stimulis, et fortius utere hris.^ And, generally, men ought to flntl 
 the difference between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he 
 that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, 
 so he had need be afraid of others' memory. He that question- 
 eth much shall learn much, and content much, but especially if 
 he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he 
 asketh ; for he shall give them occasion to please themselves in 
 speaking, and himself shall continually gather knowledge: but 
 let his questions not be troublesome, for that is fit for a poser ; ' 
 and let him be sure to leave other men their turns to speak: 
 nay, if there be any that would reign and take up all the time, 
 let him find means to take them off, and to bring others on, as 
 musicians use to do with those that dance too long galliards.' 
 If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are 
 thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know 
 that you know not. Speech of a man's self ought to be seldom, 
 and well chosen. I knew one was wont to say in scorn, "He 
 must needs be a wise man, he speaks so much of himself": and 
 there is but one case wherein a man may commend himself 
 with good grace, and that is in commending virtue in another, 
 especially if it be such a virtue whereunto himself pretendeth. 
 Speech of touch ^ towards others should be sparingly used ; for 
 discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any 
 man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, 
 whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in 
 his house ; the other would ask of those that had been at the 
 other's table, "Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow 
 given ? " To which the guest would answer, " Such and such a 
 thing passed." The lord would say, " I thought he would mar 
 a good dinner." Discretion of speech is more than eloquence ; 
 and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than 
 to speak in good words, or in good order. A good continued 
 speech, without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness ; 
 and a good reply, or second speech, without a good settled 
 speech, showeth shallowness and weakness. As we see in 
 beasts, that those that are weakest in the course, are yet nim- 
 blest ir ttie turn; as it is betwixt the greyhound and the 
 hare. To ise too many circumstances, ere one come to the 
 matter, is wearisoine ; to use none at all, is blunt. 
 
 5 " Boy, spare the spur, and more tightly hold the reins." 
 
 6 A poser is one who tests or examines. 
 
 7 The galliard was a sprightly dance much used in Bacon's time. 
 
 8 Personal hits, or glances at particular indiriduals. 
 
OF EICHES. 601 
 
 OF RICHES. 
 
 I CAireroT call riches better than the baggage of virtue : the 
 Roman word is better, impedimenta; for as the baggage is to an 
 army, so is riches to virtue ; it cannot be spared nor left behind, 
 but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it sometimes 
 loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no 
 real use, except it be in the distribution ; the rest is but conceit: 
 so saith Solomon, " Where much is, there are many to consumo 
 it ; and what hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes ? " 
 The personal fruition in any man cannot reach to feel great 
 riches: there is a custody of them, or a power of dole and dona- 
 tive of them, or a fame of them, but no solid use to the owner. 
 Do you not see what feigned prices are set upon little stones 
 and rarities? and what works of ostentation are undertaken, 
 because^ there might seem to be some use of great riches? 
 But then you will say, they may be of use to buy men out of 
 dangers or troubles ; as Solomon saith, "Riches are as a strong- 
 hold in the imagination of the rich man " : but this is excellently 
 expressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact ; for, 
 certainly, great riches have sold more men than they have 
 bought out. Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get 
 justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave content- 
 edly: yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of them ; but 
 distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rabirius Posthumus, In 
 studio rei ampUficandoe apparebat, rum avaritioe prcedam, sed in- 
 strumentum bonitati qumri.^ Hearken also to Solomon, and be- 
 ware of hasty gathering of riches : Qui fesiinat ad divitias, non 
 erit insons.^ The poets feign, that when Plutus (which is riches) 
 is sent from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly ; but when he 
 is sent from Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot ; meaning, that 
 riches gotten by good means and just labour pace slowly ; but 
 when they come by the death of others, (as by the course of 
 inheritance, testaments, and the like,) they come tumbling upon 
 a man: but it might be applied likewise to Pluto, taking him 
 for the Devil ; for when riches come from the Devil, (as by 
 fraud and oppression, and unjust means,) they come upon 
 speed. The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul : 
 parsimony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent ; for it 
 withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity. The 
 improvement of the ground is the most natural obtaining of 
 
 9 Here because is in order that. See page 573, note 1. 
 
 1 " In his anxiety to increase Iiis fortune, it was evident that not the gratifi 
 cation of avarice was sought, but the means of doing good." 
 ? " He who hastens to riches will not be without guilt." 
 
602 BACON. 
 
 riches, for it is our great mother's blessing, the Earth ; but it is 
 slow ; and yet, where men of great wealth do stoop to hus- 
 bandry, it multiplieth riches exceedingly. I knew a nobleman 
 in England that had the greatest audits' of any man in my 
 time, — a great grazier, a great sheep-master, a great timber- 
 man, a great collier, a great corn-man, a great lead-man, and so 
 of iron, and a number of the like points of husbandry ; so as the 
 earth seemed a sea to him in respect of the perpetual impor- 
 tation. It was t'-uly observed by one, that himself "came very 
 hardly to a little riches, and very easily to great riches"; for 
 when a man's stock is come to that, that he can expect the 
 prime of markets,* and overcome'^ those bargains which for 
 their greatness are few men's money, and be partner in the 
 industries of younger men, he cannot but increase mainly." 
 The gains of ordinary trades and vocations are honest, and 
 furthered by two things, chiefly, — by diligence, and by a good 
 name for good and fair dealing ; but the gains of bargains are 
 of a more doubtful nature, when men shall wait upon others' 
 necessity ; broke ' by servants and instruments to draw them 
 on ; put ofE others cunningly that would be better chapmen,^ 
 and the like practices, which are crafty and naught: as for the 
 chopping' of bargains, when a man buys not to hold, but to sell 
 over again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the 
 seller and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, if the 
 hands be well chosen that are trusted. Usury is the certainest 
 means of gain, though one of the worst ; as that whereby a man 
 doth eat -his bread, in sudore vuli&s alieni ;^ and, besides, doth 
 plough upon Sundays: but yet, certain though it be, it hath 
 flaws ; for that the scriveners and brokers do value unsound 
 
 S Atidit here means a rent-roll, or account of income. 
 
 i That is, wait till the markets are at their best. The use of expect for await 
 was common. So in Hebrews, x., 13 : " Expecting, till his enemies be made his 
 footstool." And in The Merclmnt of Venice, v., 1: "Sweet soul, let's in, and 
 there expect their coming." 
 
 5 Overcome in the sense of overtake, or come upon. 
 
 6 ^ere mainly IB greatly. So in Jffo7nZe^,iv.,7: "As by your safety, greatness, 
 wisdom, all things else, you mainly were stirr'd up." 
 
 7 To broJce, as the word is here used, is to deal meanly, to pander, or employ 
 panders. So in All's Well that Ends Well, iii., 5 : "He brolces with all that can 
 in such a suit corrupt the tender honour of a maid." 
 
 8 Chapmen ior purchasers, or traders; the old meaning of the word. So in 
 Troilus and Cressida, iv., 1 : " Ton do as chapmen do, dispraise the thing that 
 you desire to buy." 
 
 9 To cliop, as the word is here used, is to change, to traffic, as in buying to 
 sell again. Hence the phrase " a chopping wind," or " a chopping sea." So 
 Di-yden, in The Mind and Panther: "Every hour your form is cliqpp'd and 
 changed, like winds before a storm." 
 
 I " In the sweat of another's byow." 
 
OF RICHES. 603 
 
 men to serve their own turn.* The fortune in being the first in 
 an invention, or in a privilege, doth cause sometimes a wonder- 
 ful overgrowth in riches, as it was with the first sugar-man = in 
 the Canaries : therefore, if a man can play the true logician, to 
 have as well judgment as invention, he may do great matters, 
 especially if the times be fit. He that resteth upon gains cer- 
 tain shall hardly grow to great riches ; and he that puts all 
 upon adventures doth oftentimes break and come to poverty: it 
 is good, therefore, to guard adventures with certainties that 
 may uphold losses. Monopolies, and coemption of wares for 
 re-sale, where- they are not restrained, are great means to en- 
 rich ; especially if the party have intelligence what things are 
 like to come into request, and so store himself beforehand. 
 Biches gotten by service, though it be of the best rise, yet when 
 they are gotten by flattery, feeding humours, and other servile 
 conditions, they may be placed amongst the worst.* As for 
 fishing for testaments and executorships, (as Tacitus saith of 
 Seneca, Testamenta et orbos tanquam indagine capi,^) it is yet 
 worse, by how much men submit themselves to meaner persons 
 than in service. 
 
 Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they 
 despise them that despair of them ; and none worse when they 
 come to them. Be not penny-wise : riches have wings, and 
 sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must 
 be set flying to bring in more. Men leave their riches either 
 to their kindred or to the public ; and moderate portions pros- 
 per best in both. A great state left to an heir is as a lure to all 
 the birds of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the 
 better stablished in years and judgment: likewise, glorious* 
 gifts and foundations are like sacrifices without salt ; and but 
 the painted sepulchres of alms, which soon will putrefy and 
 corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure not thine advancements ' 
 by quantity, but frame them by measure : and defer not char- 
 ities till death ; for, certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that 
 doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own. 
 
 2 That is, as crafty penmen and panders falsely represent knaoes as trust- 
 worthy, in order to catch victims. See note 7, just above. 
 
 3 The first planters of the sugar-cane. 
 
 i This is obscure; but the meaning may come something thus: "Eiches 
 gotten by service, though the service be of the highest price, or of the most lu- 
 crative sort, yet, If it proceed by sinister arts and base compliances, are to be 
 reckoned among the worst." This use of rise seems odd, but is the same at 
 bottom as in the phrase, " a rise of value," or " a rise of prices." 
 
 5 " Wills and childless parents, taken as with a net." 
 
 6 Glorious in the sense of the Latin gloriosus; that is, boastful, oroslentit 
 turns. A frequent usage. 
 
 7 Advances ; gifts ol money or property. 
 
804 BACON. 
 
 OF NATUEB IN MEN. 
 
 Nattjee is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extin. 
 guished. Force maketh nature more violent in the return, 
 doctrine and discourse maketh nature less importune,^ but cus- 
 tom only doth alter and subdue nature. He that seeketh vic- 
 tory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too 
 small tasks ; for the first will make him dejected by often fail- 
 ings, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though 
 by often prevailings. And, at the first, let him practise with 
 helps, as swimmers do with bladders or rushes ; but, after a 
 time, let him practise with disadvantages, as dancers do with 
 thick shoes ; for it breeds great perfection if the practice be 
 harder than the use. "Where nature is mighty, and therefore 
 the victory hard, the degrees had need be, first to stay and ar- 
 rest nature in time ; (like to him that would say over the four 
 and-twenty letters when he was angry ;) then to go less in 
 quantity ; as if one should, in forbearing wine, come from drink- 
 ing healths to a draught at a meal ; and, lastly, to discontinue 
 altogether: but if a man have the fortitude and resolution to 
 enfranchise himself at once, that is the best : 
 
 " Optimus iUe animi yindex laedentia pectus 
 Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel." » 
 
 Neither is the ancient rule amiss, to bend nature as a wand to 
 a contrary extreme, whereby to set it right ; understanding it 
 where the contrary extreme is no vice. Let not a man force a 
 habit upon himself with a perpetual continuance, but with 
 some intermission ; for the pause reinforceth the new onset ; 
 and if a man that is not perfect be ever in practice, he shall as 
 well practise his errors as his abilities, and induce one habit of 
 both ; and there is no means to help this but by seasonable in- 
 termissions. But let not a man trust his victory over Ms nature 
 too far, for nature will lie buried a great time, and yet revive 
 upon the occasion or temptation ; like as it was with ^sop's 
 damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely 
 at the board's end till a mouse ran before her: therefore let a 
 man either avoid the occasion altogether, or put himself often 
 to it, that he may be little moved with it. A man's nature is 
 best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation ; in 
 passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts ; and in 
 i- new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him. They 
 
 8 Importune for importvnate ; that is, troublesome. 
 
 9 " He is the best assertor of the soul, who bursts the bonds that gall hini 
 »ad grieves it out at ouoe." The quotation is from Ovid's Semedy for Love. 
 
OF CUSTOM AlTD BDUCATIOK. 605 
 
 are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations ;. other- 
 wise they may say, Multum incola fuit anima meaP- when they 
 converse in those things they do not affect.^ In studies, what- 
 soever a man commandeth upon himself, let him set hours for 
 it ; but whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no 
 care for any set times ; for his thoughts will fly to it of them- 
 selves, so as the spaces of other business or studies will sufiace. 
 A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds ; therefore let 
 him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other. 
 
 OF CUSTOM AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination; 
 their discourse and speeches according to their learning and 
 infused opinions ; but their deeds are after' as they have been 
 accustomed: and therefore, as Machiavel well noteth, (though 
 in an evil-favoured instance,) there is no trusting to the force of 
 nature, nor to the bravery of words, except it be corroborate by 
 custom. His instance is, that, for the achieving of a desperate 
 conspiracy, a man should not rest upon the fierceness of any 
 man's nature, or his resolute undertakings, but take such a one 
 as hath had his hands formerly in blood: but Machiavel knew 
 not of a Priar Clement, nor a Ravillac,* nor a Jaureguy,* nor a 
 Baltazar Gerard ; ^ yet his rule holdeth still, that nature, nor 
 the engagement of words, are not so forcible as custom. Only 
 superstition is now so well advanced, that men in the first blood 
 are as firm as butchers by occupation ; and votary resolution' 
 is made equipollent to custom, even in matter of blood. In 
 other things, the predominancy of custom is everywhere visi- 
 ble, insomuch as a man would wonder to hear men profess, 
 protest, engage, give great words, and then do just as they have 
 done before, as if they were dead images and engines, moved 
 only by the wheels of custom. We see also the reign or tyi- 
 anny of custom, what it is. The Indians (I mean the sect of 
 
 1 " My Bonl has long been a sojourner." 
 
 2 That is, " when their course of life is in those things which they do not Wee." 
 Here the verb converse has the same sense as the substantive in Philippians, i., 
 27: " Let your conversation be as becometh the Gospel of Christ." 
 
 3 A good instance of after nsed in the sense of according. 
 
 4 The assassin of Henry the Fourth of France, in 1610. 
 
 5 He attempted to assassinate William, Prince of Orange, and wounded him 
 severely. Philip the Second, in 1582, set a price upon the Prince's head. 
 
 6 He assassinated the Prince of Orange in l.'iS4; a crime which he is sup. 
 posed to have meditated for six years. 
 
 7 A resolution confiimed and consecrated by a solemn vow. 
 
606 BACON. 
 
 tiieir wise men) lay themselves quietly upon a stack of wood, 
 and so sacrifice themselves by fire: nay, the wives strive to be 
 burned with the corpses of their husbands. The lads oj Spart?^, 
 of ancient time, were wont to be scourged upon the altar bi 
 Diana, without so much as queching.' I remember, in the be- 
 ginning of Queen Elizabeth's time of England, an Irish rebel, 
 condemned, put up a petition to the deputy that he might be 
 hanged in a withe, and not in a, halter, because it had been so 
 used with former rebels. There be monks in Eussia for pen- 
 ance, that will sit a whole night in a vessel of water, till they be 
 engaged with hard ice. 
 
 Many examples may be put of the force of custom, both upon 
 mind and body ; therefore, since custom is the principal magis- 
 trate of man's life, let men by all means endeavour to obtain 
 good customs. Certainly, custom is most perfect when it be- 
 ginneth in young years: this we call education, whjeh jb, ifi 
 effect, but an early custom. So we see, in languages, the tongue 
 is more pliant to all expressions and soundSj the joints are 
 more supple to all feats of activity and motions, in youth than 
 afterwards ; for it is true, that late learners cannot so well take 
 the ply,° except it be in some minds that have not suffered 
 themselves to fix, but have kept themselves open and prepared 
 to receive continual amendment, which is exceeding rare: but 
 if the force of custom, simple and separate, be great, the force 
 of custom, copulate and conjoined and collegiate, is far greater ; 
 for there example teacheth, company comforteth,! emulation 
 quickeneth, glory raiseth ; so as in such places the force of cus- 
 tom is in his^ exaltation.^ Certainly, the great multiplication 
 of virtues upon human nature resteth upon societies well or- 
 dained and disciplined ; for commonwealths and good govern- 
 ments do nourish virtue grown, but do not much mend the 
 seeds: but the misery is, that the most effectual means are now 
 applied to the ends least to be desired. 
 
 8 To giiech, or to quick, is an old word for to move, to stir, to flinch. 
 
 9 JPly is bent, turn, or direction. So used by Macaulay : " The Czar's mind 
 had taken a Btvsmge ply, which it retained to the last." 
 
 1 To com/ort is here used in its original sense, to make strong. So in the 
 Litany : " That it may please Thee to comfort and help the weak-hearted." 
 
 2 Sis for its, referring to custom ; its not being then an accepted word. 
 Shakespeare and the English Bible are full of like instances; as, "if the salt 
 have lost Ms savour," and " the fl:uit-tree yielding fruit alter his kind." 
 
 3 Hxaltation is here used in its old astrological sense; a planet being said to 
 be in its exaltation when it was In the sign Where its influence was supposed to 
 be the strongest. 
 
OF YOUTH AND AGE. 607 
 
 or YOUTH AND A&E. 
 
 A MAN that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have 
 lost no time ; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is 
 like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second, for there is 
 a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages ; and yet the inventioD 
 of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations 
 stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. 
 Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires ana 
 perturbations, are not ripe for action till they have passed the 
 meridian of their years ; as it was with Julius Caesar and Septi- 
 mius Severus, of the latter of whom it is said, Juventutem egii 
 errorihus, imo furoribus plenam;* and yet he was the ablest em- 
 peror, almost, of all the list: but reposed natures may do well 
 iu youth, as it is seen in Augustus Csesar, Cosmos duke of Flor- 
 ence, Gaston de Foix,^ and others. On the other side, heat and 
 vivacity in age is an excellent compbsition for business. Toung 
 men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than 
 for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled busi- 
 ness ; for the experience of age, in things that fall within the 
 compass of it, directeth them ; but in new things abuseth them. 
 The errors of young men are the ruin of business ; but the 
 errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have 
 been done, or sooner. 
 
 Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace 
 more than they can hold ; stir more than they can quiet ; fly 
 to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees ; 
 pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon, 
 absurdly; care not to innovate,^ which draws unknown incon- 
 veniences ; use extreme remedies at first, and, that which doub- 
 leth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an 
 unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age 
 object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent 
 too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, 
 but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly 
 it is good to compound employments of both; for that will be 
 good for the present, because the virtues of either age may cor- 
 rect the defects of both ; and good for succession, that young 
 men may be learners, while men in age are actors ; and, lastly, 
 good for extern accidents, because authority followeth old men, 
 
 i "His yoDth was full of crrore, and even of ftantlo passions." 
 
 5 A nephew of Louis the Twelfth : he commanded the French armies in Italy 
 
 against the Spaniards, and was killed in the tattle of Eavenna, in 1512. 
 That is, are not cautious in innovating, or are not oarefVil how they iimo 
 
 »ate. This use of the infinitive was very common. 
 
608 BACON-. 
 
 ancl favour and popularity youth: but, for the moral part, per- 
 haps youth will have the preeminence, as age hath for the 
 politic. A certain rabbin, upon the text, "Your young men 
 shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams," infer, 
 reth that young men are admitted nearer to God than old, be- 
 cause vision is a clearer revelation than a dream; and, certainly, 
 the more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth ; 
 and age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding than 
 in the virtues of the will and affections. There be some have 
 an over-early ripeness in their years, which fadeth betimes: 
 these are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is 
 soon turned ; such as was Hermogenes ^ the rhetorician, whose 
 books are exceeding subtile, who afterwards waxed stupid: a 
 second sort is of those that have some natural dispositions, 
 which have better grace in youth than in age ; such as is a flu- 
 ent and luxuriant speech, which becomes youth well, but not 
 age: so Tully saith of Hortensius, Idem manebat, neque idem 
 decebat:^ the third is of such as take too high a strain at the 
 first, and are magnanimous more than tract of years can uphold; 
 as was Scipio Africanus, of whom Livy saith, in efEect, Ultima 
 primis cedebant.^ 
 
 OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ViBTOE is like a rich stone, best plain set ; and surely virtue 
 is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features, 
 and that hath-rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect; 
 neither is it almost ' seen that very beautiful persons are other- 
 wise of great virtue, as if nature were rather busy not to err 
 than in labour to produce excellency ; and therefore they prove 
 accomplished, but not of great spirit ; and study rather behav- 
 iour than virtue. But this holds not always ; for Augustus 
 Caesar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, Edward the 
 Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the Sophy of 
 Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beauti- 
 ful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour is more than 
 that of colour, and that of decent and gracious ^ motion mora 
 than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty which 
 
 7 He lived in tlio eeoond century after Christ, and is said to have lost his 
 memory at the age of twenty-flve. 
 
 8 " He remained the same, bnt the same was no longer becoming to him." 
 
 9 " His last deeds fell short of the first." 
 
 1 Almosttheve,'hgL& the £orce of generally. The usage was not imcommon. 
 
 2 Here decent and gracious are becoming and graceful. 
 
OF DEFOEMITT. 609 
 
 a picture cannot express ; no, nor the first sight of the life. 
 There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in 
 the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert 
 Durer were the more' trifler ; whereof the one would make a 
 personage by geometrical proportions, the 'other, by taking the 
 best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent. Such per- 
 sonages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made 
 them ; not but I think a painter may make a better face than 
 ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity, (as a musician 
 that maketh an excellent air in music,) and not by rule. A man 
 shall see faces that, if you examine them part by part, you shall 
 find never a good ; and yet all together do well. If it be true 
 that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly 
 it is no marvel though persons in years seem many times more 
 amiable: Pulchrorum autumnus pulcher:* for no youth can be 
 comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make 
 up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer-fruits, which are easy 
 to corrupt, and cannot last ; and, for the most part, it makes a 
 dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance ; but yet 
 certainly, again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine, and 
 vices blush. 
 
 OF DEFOEMITT. 
 
 Defoemed persons are commonly even with Nature ; for as 
 Nature hath done ill by them, so do they by Nature, being for 
 the most part (as the Scripture saith) " void of natural affection" : 
 and so they have their revenge of Nature. Certainly there is a 
 consent between the body and the mind, and where Nature 
 erreth in the one, she ventureth in the other: Ubipeccat in uno, 
 periclitatur in aliero: but, because there is in man an election 
 touching the frame of his mind, and a necessity in the frame of 
 body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes obscured 
 by the Sun of discipline and virtue ; therefore it is good to con- 
 sider of deformity, not as a,sign which is more deceivable,^ but 
 as a cause which seldom faileth of the effect. Whosoever hath 
 any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath 
 also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself 
 from scorn ; therefore all deformed persons are extreme bold ; 
 
 3 More in the aenae of greater. So Shakespeare, repeatedly. 
 
 4 "The Autumn of the beautiful is beautiful." 
 
 5 Deceivable for deceptive ; the passive form with the active sense. So in 
 King RicTiard the Second, ii., 3 : " Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee, 
 whose duty is deceivable and false. Also, in As You lAhe It, we have disputable 
 fur disputatious. 
 
610 BACOK. 
 
 first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to scorn, but in 
 process of time by a general habit. , Also it stirreth in them in- 
 dustry, and especially of this kind, to watch and oljserve the 
 weakness of others., that they may have somewhat to repay. 
 Again, In their superiors, it quencheth jealousy towards^ them, 
 as persons that they think they may at pleasure despise ; and it 
 layeth their competitors and emulators asleep, as never believ- 
 ing they should be in possibility of advancement till they see 
 them in possession: so that upon the matter, in a great wit, 
 deformity is an advantage to rising. Kings in ancient times 
 (and at this present in some countries) were wont to putigreat 
 trust in eunuchs, because they that are envious towards all are 
 more obnoxious' and oflBcious towards one ; but yet their trust 
 towards them hath rather been as to good spials and good whis- 
 perers than good magistrates and officers ; and much like istjie 
 reason of deformed persons. Still the grouud is, they wi]J„if 
 they be of spiriti seek to free themselves from scorn, which 
 must be either by virtue or malice ; and therefore let it not he 
 marvelled, if sometimes they prove excellent persons; as was 
 Agesilaiis, Zanger the son of Solyman, JEsop, Gasca president 
 of Peru ; and Socrates may go likewise amongst them, with 
 others. 
 
 or STUDIES. 
 
 Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. 
 Their chief use for delight is in piivateness and retiring ; for or- 
 nament, is in discourse ; and for ability, is in the judgment and 
 disposition of business: for expert men can execute, and per- 
 haps judge of particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, 
 and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those 
 that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth ; 
 to use them too much for ornament, is affectation ; to make 
 judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar: 
 they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience : for natu- 
 ral abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study ; 
 and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at 
 large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men 
 contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use 
 them ; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom 
 without them and above them, won by observation. Eead not 
 to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, 
 nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some 
 
 6 Obnoxious iu the Latin sense of submissive or complying. 
 
Of tEAISE. 6ll 
 
 books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few t?( 
 be chewed and digested ; that is, some books are to be read only 
 in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ;' and some few 
 to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some 
 books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them 
 by others ; but that would be only in the less important argu- 
 ments, and the meaner sort of books ; else distilled books are, 
 like common distilled waters, flashy things. Beading maketh a 
 full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man ; 
 and therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great 
 memory ; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit ; 
 and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem 
 to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise ; poets 
 witty ; the mathematics subtile ; natural philosophy deep ; 
 moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to contend:' Abmmt studio, 
 in mores^ nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but 
 may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body 
 may have appropriate exercises,^ — bowlingis good for the stone 
 and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for 
 the stomach, riding for the head and the like ; — so, if a man's 
 wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics, for in demon- 
 strations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin 
 again ; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let 
 him study the schoolmen, for they are Cymini sector es;^ if he 
 be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to 
 prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: 
 so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. 
 
 OF PEAISE. 
 
 Praise is the reflection of virtue, but it is as the glass or 
 body which giveth the reflection : if it be from the common 
 people, it is commonly false and naught, and rather followeth 
 vain persons than virtuous ; for the common people understand 
 not many excellent virtues : the lowest virtues draw praise from 
 them, the middle virtues work in them astonishment or admira- 
 tion ; but of the highest virtues they have no sense or perceiv- 
 ing at all ; but shows, and spedes virtutibus similes,^ serve best 
 with them. Certainly fame is like a river, that beareth up things 
 light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid ; but il 
 
 7 Curiously in the sense of attentively or inquisitwely. 
 
 8 " Studies pass up into manners and iiabits." 
 
 9 "Splitters of cummin," or, as we now say, " hair-splittera." 
 1 "Appearances resembling virtues." 
 
612 BACOK. 
 
 persons of quality and judgment concur, then it ia (as the Script- 
 ure saith) JTomen honuminstarungumtifragrantis;^ itfillethall 
 round about, and will not easily away ; for the odours of oint- 
 ments are more durable than those of flowers. 
 
 There be so many false points of praise, that a man may 
 justly hold it a suspect. Some praises proceed merely of flat- 
 tery ; and if he be an ordinary flatterer, he will have certain 
 common attributes, which may serve every man ; if he be a 
 cunning flatterer, he will follow the arch-flatterer, which is a 
 man's self ; and wherein a man thinketh best of himself, 
 therein the flatterer will uphold him most: but if he be an im- 
 pudent flatterer, look, wherein a man is conscious to himself 
 that he is most defective, and is most out of countenance in 
 himself, that will the flatterer entitle him to perforce, spreta 
 consdentia.^ Some praises come of good wishes and respects, 
 which is a form due in civility to kings and great persons, fau- 
 dando prcecipere ;* when, by telling men what they are, they 
 represent to them what they should be. Some men are praised 
 maliciously to their hurt, thereby to stir envy and jealousy 
 towards them ; Fessimum genus inimicorum, laudantium ; ° inso- 
 much as it was a proverb amongst the Grecians, that "he that 
 was praised to his hurt should have a push ' rise upon his nose " ; 
 as we say that a blister will rise upon one's tongue that tells a 
 lie. Certainly moderate praise, used with opportunity, and not 
 vulgar, is that which doeth the good. Solomon saith, " He that 
 praiseth his friend aloud, rising early, it shall be to him no bet- 
 ter than a curse." Too much magnifying of man or matter 
 doth irritate contradiction, and procure envy and scorn. To 
 praise a man's self cannot be decent, except it be in rare cases ; 
 but to praise a man's office or profession, he may do it with 
 good grace, and with a kind of magnanimity. The Cardinals of 
 Eome, which are theologues, and friars, and schoolmen, have 
 a phrase of notable contempt and scorn towards civil business ; 
 for they call all temporal business of wars, embassages, judi- 
 cature, and other employments, sherrerie, which is under- 
 sherifEries, as if they were but matters for under-sherifis and 
 catchpoles ; though many times those under-sheriffiries do more 
 good than their high speculations. St. Paul, when he boasts 
 of himself, he doth oft interlace, "I speak like a fool"; but 
 speaking of his calling, he saith, Magnijicabo apostolatum mmm.'' 
 
 2 "A good name is like fragrant ointment." 
 
 3 " Conscience being turned out of doors." 
 
 4 "To instruct in the act of praising." 
 
 6 *' Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies." 
 
 6 Push is an old word for a pimple or pustule. 
 
 7 " I will magnify my apostleship." 
 
OF JUDICATURE. 613 
 
 OF JUDICATUEE. 
 
 Judges ought to remember that their office is Jus dicere, and 
 not JIM dare,— to intei-pret law, and not to make law, or give 
 law ; else will it be like the authority claimed by the Church of 
 Kome, which, under pretext of exposition of Scripture, doth 
 not stick to add and alter, and to pronounce that which they do 
 not find, and by show of antiquity to introduce novelty. Judges 
 ought to be more learned than witty, more reverend than plan- 
 Bible, and more advised ^ than confident. Above all things, in- 
 tegrity is their portion and proper virtue. " Cursed," saith the 
 law, "is he that removeth the landmark." The mislayer of a 
 mere stone is to blame ; but it is the unjust judge that is the 
 capital remover of landmarks, when he deflneth amiss of lands 
 and property. One foul sentence doth more hurt than many 
 foul examples ; for these do but corrupt the stream, the other 
 corrupteth the fountain: so saith Solomon, Fons turhatus et vena 
 corrupta est Justus cadens in causa sua coram adversaria.^ 
 
 The office of judges may have reference unto the parties that 
 sue, unto the advocates that plead, unto the clerks and minis- 
 ters of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign or State 
 above them. 
 
 Krst, forthe causes or parties that sue. "There be," saith the 
 Scripture, "that turn judgment into wormwood" ; and surely 
 there be, also, that turn it into vinegar ; for injustice maketh it 
 bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal duty of a judge 
 is to suppress force and fraud, whereof force is the more perni- 
 cious when it is open, and fraud when it is- close and disguised. 
 Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to be spewed out, 
 as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to prepare his way to a 
 just sentence, as God useth to prepare His way, by raising val- 
 leys and taking down hills: so, when there appeareth on either 
 side a high hand, violent prosecution, cunning advantages 
 taken, combination, power, great counsel, then is the virtue oi 
 a judge seen to make inequality equal ; that he may plant his 
 judgment as upon an even ground. Quifortiter emungit, elicit 
 eanguinem ;^ and where the wine-press is hard wrought, it 
 yields a harsh wine, that tastes of the grape-stone. Judges 
 must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences ; 
 for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws : especially, 
 in case of laws penal, they ought to have care that that which 
 
 8 Here, again, advised is careful, considerate. See page 587, note 4. 
 
 9 "A righteous man falling in his cause before his adversary is as a troubled 
 fountain and a comipt spring." 
 
 1 " He who wrings the nose hard brings blood" 
 
614 BACOIT. 
 
 was meant for terror be not turned into rigour ; and that tliey 
 bring not upon the people that shower whereof the Scripture 
 speaketh, Pluet super eos laqueos ; ^ for penal laws pressed are a 
 shower of snares upon the people: therefore, let penallaws, if 
 they have been sleepers of long, or if they be grpwn unfit for 
 the present time, be by wise judges confined in the execution: 
 Judicis iifficium est, ut res, ita tempora rerum, &c.' In causes of 
 life and death, judges ought (as far as the law permitteth) in 
 justice to remember mercy, and to cast a severe eye upon the 
 example, but a merciful eye upon the person. 
 
 Secondly^ for the advocates and counsel that plead. Patience 
 and gravity of hearing is an essential part of justice ; and an 
 over-speaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal. It is no grace to 
 a judge first to find that which he might have heard in due 
 time from the bar ; or to show quickness of conceit in cutting 
 oS evidence or counsel too short, or to prevent* information by 
 questions, though pertinent. The parts of a judge in hearing 
 are four, — to direct the evidence ; to moderate lengthy repeti- 
 tion, or impertinency of speech ; to recapitulate, select, and pol- 
 late the material points of that which hath been said ; and to 
 give the rule or sentence. Whatsoever is above these is too 
 much, and proceedeth either of glory,^ and willingness to 
 speak, or of impatience to hear, or of shortness of memory, or 
 of want of a staid and equal attention. It is a strange thing to 
 see that the boldness of advocates should prevail with judges, 
 whereas they should imitate God, in whose seat they sit, who 
 represseth the presumptuous, and giveth grace ^ to the modest ; 
 but it is more strange that judges should have noted favourites, 
 which cannot but cause multiplication of fees, and suspicion of 
 by-ways. There is due from the judge to the advocate some 
 commendation and gracing, where causes are well handled and 
 fair pleaded, especially towards the side which obtaineth not ; 
 for that upholds in the client the reputation of his counsel, and 
 beats down in him the conceit of his cause.' There is likewise 
 due to the public a civil reprehension of advocates, where 
 there appeareth cunning counsel, gross neglect, slight informa- 
 
 2 " He will rain snarea upon them." 
 
 S " It is the duty of a judge to conaider not only the facts but the clroum- 
 stancea of the case." 
 
 4 Prevent in its old sense of anticipate oi forestall. 
 
 5 Glory here is vainrglory ; that is vaunting or display. See page 603, note G. 
 
 6 Grace in the sense of favour. So in St. James, Iv., 6 : "God resisteth the 
 proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." 
 
 7 That is, abates iis couUdence in the goodness of his cause. Conc^ for 
 opinion. So In King Henry the Eighth, ii., 3 : "I shall not fail to approve the fail 
 conceit the King hath of you." Also in the Scripture saying : " Seest thou a man 
 wise in his own conceit T " 
 
OF JUDIOATUEE. 615 
 
 tion, indiscreet pressing, or an over-bold defence. And let not 
 the counsel at the bar chop' with the judge, nor wind himself 
 into the handling of the cause anew after the judge hath de- 
 clared his sentence ; but, on the other side, let not the judge 
 meet the cause half way, nor give occasion to the party to say 
 liis counsel or proofs were not heard. 
 
 Thirdly, for that that concerns clerks and ministers. The 
 place of justice is a hallowed place ; and therefore not only the 
 bench, but the footpace^ and precincts and purprise^ thereof 
 ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption ; for, cer- 
 tainly, "Grapes," as the Scripture saith, "will not be gathered 
 of thorns or thistles" ; neither can justice yield her fruit with 
 -sweetness amongst the briars and brambles of catching and 
 polling 2 clerks and ministers. The attendance of courts is sub- 
 ject to four bad instruments: first, certain persons that are 
 sowers of suits, which make the court swell, and the country 
 pine: the second sort is of those that engage courts in quarrels 
 of jurisdiction, and are not truly amid curiae, \m.tparasiU aiirim,^ 
 m pufiing a court up beyond her bounds for their own scraps 
 and advantage : the third sort is of those that may be accounted 
 the left hands of courts ; persons that are full of nimble and 
 sinister tricks and shifts, whereby they pervert the plain and 
 direct courses of courts, and bring justice into oblique lines and 
 labyrinths: and the fourth is the poller and exacter of fees ; 
 which justifies the common resemblance of the courts of jus- 
 tice to the bush whereunto while the sheep flies for defence in 
 weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece. On the other side, 
 an ancient clerk, skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, and 
 understanding in the business of the court, is an excellent fln- 
 ger of a court, and doth many times point the way to the judge 
 himself. 
 
 Fourthly, for that which may concern the sovereign and Es- 
 tate. Judges ought, above all, to remember the conclusion of ' 
 the Eoman Twelve Tables, Salus populi suprema lex;* and to 
 know that laws, except they be in order to that end, are but 
 things captious, and oracles not well inspired: therefore it is a 
 
 8 To chop, here, is to bandy words. See page 602, note 9. 
 
 9 The footpace is what we call the lobby. 
 
 1 The purprise ia the enclosure. So in Holland's Plutarch :" Their wives and 
 chadren were to assemble all together unto a certain place in Phocis, and en. 
 Tiron the -whole purprise and precinct thereof with a huge quantity of wood." 
 
 2 •XopoUlaanoli-wovdtovto pillage, to plunder. PoiZer, a little further on, 
 has the same sense. So Burton : " Ho may rail downright at a spoiler of coun 
 tries, and yet in office be a most giievovis poller himself." 
 
 8 Not " Mends of the court," but " parasites of the court." 
 4 " The safety of the people is the supreme law." 
 
616 BACOir. 
 
 happy thing in a State, when kings and states ^ do often con. 
 suit with judges ; and, again, when judges do often consult 
 with the king and State: the one, when there is matter of law 
 intervenient in business of State ; the other, when there is 
 some consideration of State intervenient in matter of law ; for 
 many times the things deduced to judgment liiay be meum and 
 tuum, when the reason and consequence thereof may trench to 
 point of Estate. I call matter of Estate, not only the parts of 
 sovereignty, but whatsoever introduceth any great alteration or 
 dangerous precedent ; or concerneth manifestly any great por- 
 tion of people: and let no man weakly conceive that just laws 
 and true policy have any antipathy ; for they are like the spirits 
 and sinews, that one moves with the other. Let judges also re- 
 member that Solomon's throne was supported by lions on both 
 sides : let them be lions, but yet lions under the throne ; being 
 circumspect that they do not check or oppose any points of 
 sovereignty. Let not judges, also, be so ignorant of their own 
 right as to think there is not left them, as a principal part of 
 their office, a wise use and application of laws ; for they may 
 remember what the apostle saith of a greater law than theirs: 
 jybs sdmus quia lex bona est, modo quis e& utatur legitime.^ 
 
 OF ANGEE. 
 
 To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery ' of the 
 Stoics. "We have better oracles : " Be angry, but sin not ; let 
 not the Sun go down upon your anger." Anger must be limited 
 and confined both in race and in time. We will first speak how 
 the natural inclination and habit "to be angry" may be attem- 
 pered and calmed ; secondly, how the particular motions of 
 anger may be repressed, or at least refrained from doing mis- 
 chief ; thirdly, how to raise anger, or appease anger in another. 
 
 For the first,- there is no other way but to meditate and rumi- 
 nate well upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man's life ; 
 and the best time to do this, is to look back upon anger when 
 the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, that "anger is 
 like ruin, which breaks itself upon that it falls." The Scripture 
 exhorteth us "to possess our souls in patience" ; whosoever is 
 out of patience, is out of possession of his soul. Men must not 
 tm-n bees, animasque in vulnere pommt.^ Anger is certainly a 
 
 6 states for orders. See page 193, note 2. 
 
 6 " We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawftilly." 
 
 7 Bravery, again, for boast or bravado. See page 576, note 6. 
 
 8 "And *tiug their lives into the wound." 
 
OF ANGEE. 617 
 
 Kind of baseness, as it appears well in the weakness of those 
 subjects in whom it reigns, children, women, old folks, sick 
 folks. Only men must beware that they carry their anger rather 
 with scorn than with fear ; so that they may seem rather to be 
 above the injury than below it ; which is a thing easily done, if 
 a man will give law to himself in it. 
 
 Por the second point, the causes and motives of anger are 
 chiefly three : first, to be too sensible of hurt ; for no man is 
 angry that feels not himself hurt ; and therefore tender and 
 delicate persons must needs be oft angry, they have so many 
 things to trouble them, which more robust natures have little 
 sense of : the next is, the apprehension and construction of the 
 injury ofEered, to be, in the circumstances thereof, full of con- 
 tempt ; for contempt is that which putteth an edge upon anger, 
 as much or more than the hurt itself ; and therefore, when men 
 are ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt, they do 
 kindle their anger much : lastly, opinion of the touch ° of a 
 man's reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger ; wherein 
 the remedy is, that a man should have, as Gonsalvo was wont to 
 say, telam honoris crassiorim.^ But, in all refrainings of anger, 
 it is the best remedy to win time, and to make a man's self be- 
 lieve that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet come ; but 
 that he foresees a time for it, and so to still himself in the 
 mean time, and reserve it. 
 
 To contain 2 anger from mischief, though it take hold of a 
 man, there be two things whereof you must have special cau- 
 tion : the one, of extreme bitterness of words, especially if they 
 be aculeate and proper ; ^ for communia maledicta * are nothing 
 so much : and, again, that in anger a man reveal no secrets ; for 
 that makes him not fit for society : the other, that you do not 
 peremptorily break ofE in any business in a fit of anger ; but, 
 howsoever you show bitterness, do not act any thing that is not 
 revocable. 
 
 For raising or appeasing anger in another, it is done chiefly by 
 choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, 
 to incense them; again, by gathering (as was touched before) all 
 
 9 A peculiar use of touch, but meaning, apparently, about the Bame as etain 
 or etigma : " the notion that one's reputation ia touched." So in the often-quoted 
 but misunderstood passage in Troilns and Cressida, iii., 3 : " One touch of nat- 
 ure makes the whole world kin"; where the context shows that "one touch of 
 nature " is equivalent to one natural blemish, weahness, or foil]/. 
 
 1 "A thicker covering of honour." 
 
 2 Contain, refrain, and restrain are often used indiscriminately by old 
 writers. So in TroUus and Cressida, v., 2 : " O, contain yourself; your passion 
 draws ears hither." 
 
 3 That is, pointed, or stinginr/, and personal. 
 i " General reproaches." 
 
618 BAOON. 
 
 that you can find out to aggravate the contempt: and tLe two 
 remedies are by the contraries ; the fottner to take good times, 
 when first to relate to a man an angry business, for the first im 
 pression is much ; and the other is, to sever, as much as maybOj 
 tlie construction of the injury from the point of contempt ; im- 
 puting it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you will. 
 
 DISCREDITS OF LEAKNTNG, 
 
 Hbee is the first distemper of learning, when nien steady 
 words and not matter. And how-is it possibly , but this. should 
 have an operation to discredit learning, even with yulgar capaci- 
 ties, when they see learned men's works like the first letter of a 
 patent, or limned book,; which though it hath large flourishes, 
 yet it is but a letter ¥ It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy * 
 is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity: for words are 
 but the images of matter ; a,nd except they have life of reason 
 And invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in 
 love with a picture. 
 
 But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to he con- 
 demned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy 
 litself with sensible and plausible .elocution. For hereof; we 
 have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Sengca, Plutarch, 
 and of Plato also in some degree ; and hereqf likewise [there is 
 great use: for, surely, to the severe inquisition of truth, and the 
 deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindranpe, because it 
 is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, and quencheth the 
 desire of further search, before we come to a just period ; but 
 then, if ( a man be to have any use of such knowledge in civil 
 occasions of conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or thn 
 like, then shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors 
 which write in tfet manner. But the excess of this is so justlj 
 contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the image oi 
 Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain, Nil sacn 
 es ; so there is none of Hercules' followers in learning, that 'is, 
 the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth, but 
 will despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed, capable 
 of no divineness. And thus much of the first disease or distem- 
 per of learning. ; 
 
 The second which foUoweth is in nature worse than the for- 
 
 5 Pygmalion Is said to have made an image of a maiden so Ijeautiful, that he 
 went mad with love for it, and prayed Aphrodite to hreathe life into it. Th« 
 prayer being granted, he then married the maiden. 
 
DISCKEDITS OF LEARNING. 619 
 
 mer: for, as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, 
 BO, contrariwise, vain matter is worse than vain words: wherein 
 it seemeth.the repreliension of St. Paul was not only proper for 
 those times, but prophetical for the times following ; and not 
 only respective to divinity, but extensive ^ to all knowledge : 
 Devita prof anas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis sd.en- 
 tice.'' Por he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and 
 falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms ; 
 the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth 
 induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, 
 like as many substances in Nature which are solid do putrefy 
 and corrupt into worms ; so it is the property of good and sound 
 knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtile, 
 idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate ques- 
 tions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, 
 but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind 
 of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen; 
 who— having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, 
 and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in 
 the cells of a few authors, (chiefly Aristotle their dictator,) as 
 their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and col- 
 leges, and knowing little history, either of Nature or time — 
 did, out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of 
 wiVspin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which 
 are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it 
 work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures 
 of God, worketh aiccording to the stuff, and is limited thereby ; 
 but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it 
 is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admi- 
 rable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance 
 or profit. 
 
 This same unprofitable subtiltyor curiosity is of two sorts; 
 either in the subject itself that they handle, when it is a fruitless 
 speculation or controversy, (whereof there are no small number 
 ^ both in divinity and philosophy,) or in the manner or method 
 Of liandling of a knowledge, which amongst them was this : 
 Upon every particular position or assertion to frame objections, 
 and to those objections, solutions ; which solutions were for the 
 most part not confutations, but distinctions : whereas indeed 
 the strength of all sciences is, as the strength of the old man's 
 faggot, in the bond. For the harmony of a science, supporting 
 each part the other, is and ought to be the true and brief confu- 
 
 6 Extensive for extensible; the active form with the passive sense. TWa 
 indiscriminato use of active and passive forms was very common. 
 
 7 " Shun flippant novelties of speech, and oppositions of science folsely so 
 called." 
 
630 BACON. 
 
 tation and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections. 
 But, on the other side, if you take out every axiom, as the sticks 
 of the faggot, one by one, you may quarrel with them, and bend 
 them and break them at your pleasure : so that as Was said of 
 Seneca, Verhorum minuttis rerum frangit pondera,' so a man may 
 truly say of the schoolmen, Quaestionum minutiis scientiarum 
 frangunt soliditatem.^ For were it not better for a man in a fair 
 room to set up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, 
 than to go about with a small watch-candle into every corner? 
 And such is their method, that rests not so much upon evidence 
 of truth proved by arguments, authorities, similitudes, exam- 
 ples, as upon particular confutations and solutions of every 
 scruple, cavillation, and objection ; breeding, for the most par^ 
 one question as fast as it solveth another : even as in the former 
 resemblance, when you carry the light into one corner, you 
 darken the rfest. So that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth 
 to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge ; 
 which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts ; 
 but then Candida sucdnctam latrantibus inguina monstris:^ so 
 the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and pro- 
 portionable ; but then, when you descend into their distinctions 
 and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit 
 of man's life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking 
 questions. So as it is not possible but this quality of knowl- 
 edge must fall under popular contempt, the people being apt to 
 contemn truth upon occasion of controversies and altercations, 
 and to think they are all out of their way which never meet ; 
 and when they see such digladiation about subtilties, and mat- 
 ters of no use or moment, they easily fall upon that judgment 
 of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba ista sunt senum otiosorum.^ 
 
 Notwithstanding, certain it is that if those schoolmen to their 
 great thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had joined 
 variety and universality of reading and contemplation, they had 
 proved excellent lights, to the great advancement of all learn- 
 ing and knowledge ; but, as they are, they are great undertakers 
 indeed, and fierce with dark keeping.* But as, in the inquiry of 
 the Divine truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of 
 God's word, and to vanish in the mixture of their own inventions; 
 so, in the inquisition of Nature, they ever left the oracle of God's 
 
 8 " He breaks down the strength of things with nice verbal distinctions." 
 
 9 " They fritter away the solid mass of the sciences with minnte questions." 
 1 " Having her fair loins girded about with barking monsters." 
 
 3 " Those are the words of idle old men." 
 
 3 That is, as certain animals are made fierce by being kept in the dark. Ba« 
 con seems to mean that the minds of the schoolmen grew rabid from being 
 imprisoned in one idea, or in a narrow cell of thought. 
 
DISCSEDITS OF LEAElirilirG. 621 
 
 works, and adored the deceiving and deformed images which 
 the unequal mirror of their own minds, or a few received au- 
 thors or principles, did represent unto them. And thus much 
 for the second disease of learning. 
 
 For the third vice or disease of learning, which concerneth 
 deceit or untruth, it is of all the rest the foulest ; as that which 
 doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, which is nothing 
 but a representation of truth : for the truth of being and the 
 truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct 
 beam and the beam reflected. This vice therefore brancheth 
 itself into two sorts ; delight in deceiving and aptness to be de- 
 ceived ; imposture and credulity ; which although they appear 
 to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning 
 and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most 
 part concur : for, as the verse noteth, Fercontatorem fugito, nam 
 garrulus idem est,* an inquisitive man is a prattler ; so upon the 
 like reason a credulous man is a deceiver : as we see it in fame, 
 that he that will easily believe rumours will as easily augment 
 rumours, and add somewhat to them of his own ; which Tacitus 
 wisely noteth, when he saith, Fingunt simul creduntqiie : ^ so 
 great an affinity hath fiction and belief. 
 
 As for the overmuch credit that hath been given unto authors 
 in sciences, in making them dictators, that their words should 
 stand, and not consuls to give advice ; the damage is infinite 
 that sciences have received thereby, as the principal cause that 
 hath kept them low at a stay without growth or advancement. 
 For hence it hath come, that in arts mechanical the first deviser 
 comes shortest, and time addeth and perfecteth ; but in sciences 
 the first author goeth farthest, and time loseth and corrupteth. 
 So, we see, artillery, sailing, printing, and the like, were grossly 
 managed at the first, and by time accommodated and refined ; 
 but, contrariwise, the philosophies and sciences of Aristotle, 
 Plato, Democritus, Hippocrates, Euclides, Archimedes, of most 
 vigour at the first and by time degenerate and imbased ; whereof 
 the reason is no other, but that in the former many wits and in- 
 dustries have contributed in one ; and in the latter many wits 
 and industries have been spent about the wit of some one, whom 
 many times they have rather depraved than illustrated. For, 
 as water will not ascend higher than the level of the first spring- 
 head from whence it descendeth, so knowledge derived from 
 Aristotle, and exempted from liberty of examination, will not 
 rise again higher than the knowledge of Aristotle. And there, 
 fore, although the position be good, Oportet discentem credere, yet 
 
 4 " Shun the prying questioner, for he is also talkative." 
 9 •■ They fabricate tales, and at the e^me time believe them-" 
 
622 BACOK. 
 
 it must be coupled with tMs, OparUt edoctiim Judicare /« for dia. 
 ciples do owe unto masters only a temporary belief and a sus- 
 pension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed, and 
 not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity. And there- 
 fore, to conclude this point, I will say no more, but so let great 
 authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, 
 be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to dis- 
 cover truth. 
 
 Thus have I gone over these three diseases of learning ; be- 
 sides the which there are some other rather peccant humours 
 than formed diseases, which nevertheless are not so secret and 
 intrinsic but that they fall under a popular observation and tr£u- 
 ducement, and therefore are not to be passed over. 
 
 The first of these is the extreme affecting of two extremi- 
 ties, — the one antiquity, the other novelty ; wherein it seemeth 
 the children of Time do take after the nature and malice of the 
 father. For, as he devoureth his children, so one of them seek- 
 eth to devour and suppress the other : while antiquity envieth 
 there should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content 
 to add, but it must deface. Surely the advice of the prophet is 
 the true direction in this matter, State super vias antiquas, et 
 videte quxnam sit via recta et bona et ambulate in eaJ Antiquity 
 deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand there- 
 upon and discover what is the best way ; but, when the discov- 
 ery is well taken, then to make progression. And, to speak 
 truly, Antiquitas sceaili juventus mundi.' These times are the 
 ancient times, when the world is ancient, and hot those which 
 we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computetion back- 
 ward from ourselves. 
 
 Another error, that hath also some afllnity with the former, 
 is a conceit that of former opinions or sects after variety and ex- 
 amination the best hath still prevailed and suppressed the rest ; 
 so as, if a man should begin the labour of a new search, he were 
 but like to light upon somewhat formerly rejected, and by re- 
 jection brought into oblivion: as if the multitude, or the wisest 
 for the multitude's sake, were not ready to give passage rather 
 to that which is popular and superficial than to that which is 
 substantial and profound ; for the truth is, that time seemeth 
 to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to 
 us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth 
 that which is weighty and solid. 
 
 Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence, and 
 
 6 "The learner ought to believe," and, " the learned ought to judge." 
 
 7 " Take your stand upon the ancient ways, and search which is the right 
 and good way, and waUi therein." 
 
 8 " The antiquity of time is the youth of the world," 
 
DISCREDITS OF LBAENING. 623 
 
 a Mnd of adoration of the mind and understanding of man ; by 
 means whereof, men have withdrawn themselves too much from 
 the rontemplation of Nature, and the observations of experience, 
 and have tumbled up and down in their own reason and con- 
 ceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are notwithstanding 
 commonly taken for the most sublime and divine philosophers, 
 Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying, "Men sought truth in 
 their own little worlds, and not in the great and common world" ; 
 for they disdain to spell, and so by degrees to read in the vol- 
 ume of God's works: and, contrariwise, by continual meditation 
 and agitation of wit do urge and as it were invocate their own 
 spirits to divine and give oracles unto them, whereby they are 
 deservedly deluded. 
 
 Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to asser- 
 tion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the 
 two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of ac- 
 tion commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and 
 smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable ; the other 
 rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair 
 and even: so it is in contemplation ; if a man will begin with 
 certainties, he shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content to 
 begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. 
 
 Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery 
 of knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremp- 
 tory, and not ingenuous and faithful ; in a sort as may be soon- 
 est believed, and not easiliest examined. It is true that in com- 
 pendious treatises for practice that form is not to be disallowed ; 
 but in the true handling of knowledge, men ought not to fall 
 either on the one side into the vein of Velleius the Epicurean, 
 mi tarn metuens, quam ne duhitare aliqua de re videretur; ' nor on 
 the other side into Socrates' ironical doubting of all things ; but 
 to propound things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as 
 they stand in a man's own judgment proved more or less. 
 
 Other errors there are in the scope that men propound to 
 themselves, whereunto they bend their endeavours: for, whereas 
 the more constant and devote kind of professors of any science 
 ought to propound to themselves to make some additions to 
 their science, they convert their labours to aspire to certain 
 second prizes ; as, to be a profound interpreter or commenter, 
 to be a sharp champion or defender, to be a methodical com- 
 pounder or abridger ; and so the patrimony of knowledge cometh 
 to be sometimes improved, but seldom augmented. 
 
 But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or mis- 
 placing of the last or farthest end of knowledge. For men have 
 
 9 " ^is greatest fear was, lest he should seem to doubt of 3117 thing." 
 
624 BACON. 
 
 entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes 
 upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes to 
 entertain their minds with variety and delight ; sometimes for 
 ornament and reputation ; and sometimes to enable them to 
 victory of wit and contradiction ; and most times for lucre and 
 profession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their 
 gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were 
 sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and 
 restless spirit ; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind 
 to walk up and down with a fair-prospect ; or a tower of State, 
 for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding 
 ground, for strife and contention ; or a shop, for profit or sale ; 
 and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the 
 relief of man's estate. But this is that which will indeed digni- 
 fy and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be 
 more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than 
 they have been ; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest 
 planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupi- 
 ter, the planet of civil society and action. Howbeit, I do not 
 mean, when I speak of use and action, that end before-mentioned 
 of the applying of knowledge to lucre and profession ; for I am 
 not ignorant how much that diverteth and interrupteth the 
 prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the 
 golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which while she goeth aside 
 and stoopeth to take up, the race is hindered ; Decimal cursus, 
 aurumque voluhile tolliO Neither is my meaning, as was spoken 
 of Socrates, to call philosophy down from Heaven to converse 
 upon the Earth ; that is, to leave natfSTal philosophy aside, and 
 to apply knowledge only to manners and policy. But, as both 
 Heaven and Earth do conspire and contribute to the use and 
 benefit of man ; so the end ought to be, from both philosophies 
 to separate and reject vain speculations, and whatsoever is 
 empty and void, and to preserve and augment whatsoever is 
 solid and fruitful: that knowledge may not be as a courtesan, 
 for pleasure and vanity only, or as a bond-woman, to acquire 
 and gain to her master's use ; but as a spouse, for generation, 
 fruit; and comfort. 
 
 DIGNITY AND VALUE OP KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Etest let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or 
 first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far 
 as they are revealed to man and maybe observed with soljriety ; 
 
 I " Sjie turns aside &om )ier course, and picks up the rolling gold." 
 
DlGNltY ANi) VALUE OP KKOWLEttGD. 6S5 
 
 wherein we may not seek it by the name of learning ; for all 
 learning is knowledge acquired, and all knowledge in God is 
 original: and therefore we must look for it by another name, 
 that of wisdom or sapience, as the Scriptures call it. 
 
 It is so, then, that in the work of the creation we see a double 
 emanation of virtue from God ; the one referring more properly 
 to power, the other to wisdom ; the one expressed in making 
 the subsistence of the matter, and the other in disposing the 
 beauty of the form. This being supposed, it is to be observed 
 that for any thing which appeareth in the history of the creation, 
 the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth was made in 
 a moment ; and the order and disposition of that chaos or mass 
 was the work of six days; such a note of difference it pleased 
 God to put upon the works of power and the works of wisdom ; 
 wherewith concurreth, that in the former it is not set down that 
 God said, '^" Let there be heaven and earth," as it is set down of 
 the works following ; but actually, that God made heaven and 
 earth; the one carrying the style of a manufacture, and the 
 other of a law, decree, or counsel. 
 
 After the creation was finished, it is set down unto us that 
 man was placed in the garden to work therein ; which work, so 
 appointed to him, could be no other than work of contempla- 
 tion ; that is, when the end of work is but for exercise and ex- 
 periment, not for necessity; for, there being then no reluctation 
 of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, man's emplo3Tnent must 
 of consequence have been matter of delight in the experiment, 
 and not matter of labour for the use. Again, the first acts 
 which man performed in Paradise consisted of the two summary 
 parts of knowledge ; the view of creatures, and the imposition 
 of names. As for the knowledge which induced the fall, it was 
 not the natural knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowl- 
 edge of good and evil ; wherein the supposition was, that God's 
 commandments or prohibitions were not the originals of good 
 and evil, but that they had other beginnings, which man aspired 
 to know ; to the end to make a total defection from God and to 
 depend wholly upon himself. 
 
 To descend to Moses the lawgiver, and God's first pen : he is 
 adorned by the Scriptures with this addition and commendation, 
 " That he was seen in all the learning of the Egyptians " ; which 
 nation we know was one of the most ancient schools of the 
 world: for so Plato brings in the Egyptian priest saying unto 
 Solon, "You Grecians are ever children ; you have no knowl- 
 edge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge." Take a view of 
 the ceremonial law of Moses: you shall find, besides the preflg- 
 uration of Christ, the badge or difference of the people of God, 
 the exercise and impression of obedience, and other divine uses 
 
636 BACbt. 
 
 and fruits thereof, that some of the most learned Rabbins have 
 travailed profitably and profoundly to observe, some of them a 
 natural, some of them a moral sense, or reduction of many of 
 the ceremonies and ordinances. As in the law of the leprosy, 
 where it is said, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the 
 patient may pass abroad for clean ; but if there be any whole 
 flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean "; one of them 
 noteth a principle of Nature, that putrefaction is more conta- 
 gious before maturity than after : and another noteth a position 
 of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so 
 much corrupt manners, as those that are half good and half evil. 
 So in this and very many other places in that law, there is to be 
 found, besides the theological sense, much aspersion of phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 So likewise in the person of Solomon the King, we see the 
 gift or endowment of wisdom and learning, both in Solomon's 
 petition and in God's assent thereunto, preferred before all 
 other terrene and temporal felicity. By virtue of which grant 
 or donative of God, Solomon became enabled not only to write 
 those excellent parables or aphorisms concerning divine and 
 moral philosophy ; but also to compile a natural history of all 
 verdure, from the cedar upon the mountain to the moss upon 
 the wall, (which is but a rudiment between putrefaction and an 
 herb,) and also of all things that breathe or move. Nay, the 
 same Solomon the King, although he excelled in the glory of 
 treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, 
 of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, 
 yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the 
 glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The 
 glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to 
 find it out"; as if, according to the innocent play of children, 
 the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end 
 to have them found out ; and as if kings could not obtain a 
 greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game ; con- 
 sidering the great commandment of wits and means, whereby 
 nothing needeth to be hidden from them. 
 
 Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times after 
 our Saviour came into the world ; for our Saviour himself did 
 first show His power to subdue ignorance, by His conference 
 with the priests and doctors of the law, before He showed His 
 power to subdue Nature by His miracles. And the coming of 
 the Holy Spirit was chiefly figured and expressed in the simili- 
 tude and gift of tongues, which are but vehicula scientioe. 
 
 So in the election of those instruments which it pleased Go3 
 to use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that ut 
 the first He did employ persons altogether unlearned, otherwise 
 
DIGKITY AKD VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 637 
 
 than by inspiration, more evidently to declare His immediata 
 working, and to abase all human wisdom and knowledge ; yet 
 nevertheless that counsel of His was no sooner performed, but 
 in the next vicissitude and succession He did send His divine 
 truth into the world, waited on with other learnings, as with 
 servants and handmaids : for so we see St. Paul, who was 
 only learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen most used in 
 the Scriptures of the New Testament. 
 
 So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers 
 of the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learn- 
 ing of the heathen ; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor 
 Julianus (whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be ad- 
 mitted into schools, lectures, or exercises of learning) was es- 
 teemed and accounted a more pernicious engine and machination 
 against the Christian Faith than were all the sanguinary perse- 
 cutions of his predecessors ; neither could the emulation and 
 jealousy of Gregory the first of that name. Bishop of Rome, 
 ever obtain the opinion of piety or devotion ; but, contrariwise, 
 received the censure of humour, malignity, and pusillanimity, 
 even amongst holy men ; in that he designed to obliterate and 
 extinguish the memory of heathen antiquity and authors. But, 
 contrariwise, it was the Christian Church, which, amidst the 
 inundations of the Scythians on the one side from the North- 
 west, and the Saracens from the East, did preserve in the sacred 
 lap and bosom thereof the precious relics even of heathen learn- 
 ing, which otherwise had been extinguished as if no such thing 
 had ever been. 
 
 Wherefore, to conclude this part, let it be observed, that there 
 be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and illus- 
 tration, which philosophy and human learning do perform to 
 faith and religion. The one, because they are an effectual in- 
 ducement to the exaltation of the glory of God. Eor, as the 
 Psalms and other Scriptures do often invite us to consider and 
 magnify the great and wonderful works of God, so, if we should 
 rest only in the contemplation of the exterior of them as they 
 first offer themselves to our senses, we should do a like injury 
 unto the majesty of God, as if we should judge or construe of 
 the store of some excellent jeweller, by that only which is set 
 out toward the street in his shop. The other, because they 
 minister a singular help and preservative against unbelief and 
 error. Tor our Saviour saith, " You err, not knowing the Scrip- 
 tures, nor the power of God " ; laying before us two books or 
 volumes to study, if we will be secured from error ; first the 
 Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures, 
 expressing His power ; whereof the latter is a key unto the 
 former : not only opening our understanding to conceive the 
 
628 BAOOK. 
 
 true sense of the Scriptures, by the general notions of reason 
 and rules of speech ; but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing 
 us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is 
 chiefly signed and engraven upon His works. Thus much there, 
 fore for Divine testimony and evidence concerning the true dig. 
 nity and value of learning. 
 
 As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a discourse of 
 this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice of those 
 things which we shall produce, than to embrace the variety 
 of them. First, therefore, in the degrees of human honour 
 amongst the heathen, it was the highest to obtain to a venera- 
 tion and adoration as a god. This unto the Christians is as the 
 forbidden fruit. But we speak now separately of human testi- 
 mony ; according to which, that which the Grecians call apo- 
 theosis, and the Latins relatio inter divos, was the supreme honour 
 which man could attribute unto man ; specially when it was 
 given, not by a formal decree or Act of State, as it was used 
 among the Eoman Emperors, but by an inward assent and be- 
 lief. Which honour, being so high, had also a degree or middle 
 term : for there were reckoned, above human honours, honours 
 heroical and divine ; in the attribution and distribution of which 
 honours we see antiquity made this difference : that whereas 
 founders and uniters of States and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of 
 tjrrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in 
 civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of worthies or 
 demi-gods ; such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minos, Eomulus, 
 and the like ; on the other side, such as were inventors and au- 
 thors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's 
 life, were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves ; as 
 was Ceres, Bacchus, Mercurius, Apollo, and others : and justly ; 
 for the merit of the former is confined within the circle of an 
 age or a nation ; and is like fruitful showers, which, though 
 they be profitable and good, yet serve but for that season, and 
 for a latitude of ground where they fall ; but the other is indeed 
 like the benefits of Heaven, which are permanent and universal. 
 The former again is mixed with strife and perturbation ; but 
 the latter hath the true character of Divine Presence, coming in 
 aura leni, without noise or agitation. 
 
 Neither is certainly that other merit of learning, in repressing 
 the inconveniences which grow from man to man, much inferior 
 to the former, of relieving the necessities which arise from na- 
 ture ; which merit was lively set forth by the ancients in that 
 feigned relation of Orpheus' theatre, where all beasts and birds 
 assembled ; and forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, 
 some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together lis- 
 tening unto the airs and accords of the harp ; the sound whereof 
 
DIGNITY AKD VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 629 
 
 no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but 
 every beast returned to Ms own nature: wherein is aptly de- 
 scribed the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage 
 and unreclaimed desires, of profit, of lust, of revenge ; which as 
 long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly 
 touched with eloquence and persuasion of iDooks, of sermons, of 
 harangues, so long is society and peace maintained ; but if these 
 instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them 
 not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion. 
 
 But this appeareth more manifestly, when kings themselves, 
 or persons of authority under them, or other governors in com- 
 monwealths and popular Estates,^ are endued with learning. 
 For, although he might be thought partial to his own profession, 
 that said "Then should people and Estates be happy, when 
 either kings were philosophers, or philosophers kings"; yet so 
 much is verified by experience, that under learned princes and 
 governors there have been ever the best times ; for howsoever 
 Mngs may have their imperfections in their passions and cus- 
 toms ; yet if they be illuminate by learning, they have those 
 notions of religion, policy, and morality, which do preserve 
 them and refrain them from all ruinous and peremptory errors 
 and excesses ; whispering evermore in their ears, when coun- 
 sellors and servants stand mute and silent. And senators or 
 counsellors likewise, which be learned, do proceed upon more 
 safe and substantial principles, than counsellors which are only 
 men of experience ; the one sort keeping dangers afar off, 
 whereas the other discover them not till they come near hand, 
 and then trust to the agility of their wit to ward or avoid them. 
 
 It were too long to go over the particular remedies which 
 learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind ; some- 
 times purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the ob- 
 structions, sometimes helping digestion, sometimes increasing 
 appetite, sometirhes healing the wounds and exulcera^ons 
 thereof, and the like ; and therefore I will conclude with' that 
 which hath rationem totius ; which is, that it disposeth the 
 constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the de- 
 fects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of growth 
 and reformation. Eor the unlearned man knows not what it 
 is to descend into himself, or to call himself to account, nor 
 the pleasure of that suavissima vita, indies sentire se fieri me- 
 liorem.^ The good parts he hath he will learn to show to 
 the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase 
 
 2 Estate and state were used indiscriminately in Bacon's time. 
 
 3 " The greatest delight of life is to feel that one is growing better everj 
 day." 
 
630 BACOK. 
 
 them. The faults he hath he will learn how to hide and coloui 
 them, but not much to amend them ; like an ill mower, that 
 mows on still, and never whets his scythe. Whereas with the 
 learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the 
 correction and amendment of his mind with the use and em- 
 ployment thereof. Nay, further ; in general and in sum, cer- 
 tain it is that Veritas and Bonitas differ but as the seal and the 
 print : for Truth prints Goodness, and they be the clouds of 
 error which descend in the storms of passions and perturbations. 
 
 ITrom moral virtue let us pass on to matter of power and com- 
 mandment, and consider whether in right reason there be any 
 comparable with that wherewith knowledge investeth and 
 crowneth man's nature. We see the dignity of the command- 
 ment is according to the dignity of the commanded: to have 
 commandment over beasts, as herdmen have, is a thing con- 
 temptible; to have commandment over children, as schoolmas- 
 ters have, is a matter of small honour; to have commandment 
 over galley-slaves is a disparagement rather than an honour. 
 Neither is the commandment of tyrants much better, over 
 people which have put off the generosity* of their minds: and 
 therefore it was ever holden that honours in free monarchies 
 and commonwealths had a sweetness more than in tyrannies, 
 because the commandment extendeth more over the wills of 
 men, and not only over their deeds and services. But yet the 
 commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the command- 
 ment over the will; for it is a commandment over the reason, 
 belief, and understanding of man, which is the highest part of 
 the mind, and giveth law to the will itself. For there is no 
 power on Earth which setteth up a throne or chair of Estate in 
 the spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations, imagina- 
 tions, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning. And 
 therefore we see the detestable and extreme pleasure that arch- 
 heretics, and false prophets, and impostors are transported 
 with, when they once find in themselves that they have a supe- 
 riority in the faith and conscience of men ; so great as, if they 
 have once tasted of it, it is seldom seen that any torture or per- 
 secution can make them relinquish or abandon it. But as this 
 is that which the author of the Eevelation calleth the depth or 
 profoundness of Satan, so, by argument of contraries, the just 
 and lawful sovereignty over men's understanding, by force of 
 truth rightly interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to 
 the similitude of the Divine rule. 
 
 Again, for the pleasure and delight of knowledge and learn- 
 ing, it far surpasseth all other in Nature. For, shall the pleas- 
 
 4 OeneroHty in the Latin sense ot nobleness, excellence, or TnagTiammity. 
 
DiairiTx akd valtte of kn-owlbdgb. 6^1 
 
 ures of the affections so exceed the pleasure of the sense, as 
 much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a song or 
 a dinner? and must not of consequence the pleasures of the 
 intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affec- 
 tions? We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and, after 
 they be used, their verdure departeth ; which showeth well 
 they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures ; and that it 
 was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality. And 
 therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious 
 princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, 
 but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable ; 
 and therefore it appeareth to be good in itself simply, without 
 fallacy or accident. 
 
 Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man 
 excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts ; that by 
 learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, 
 where in body he cannot come ; and the like ; let us conclude 
 with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in 
 that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immor- 
 tality or continuance : for to this tendeth generation, and rais- 
 ing of Houses and families ; to this tend buildings, foundations, 
 and monuments ; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, 
 and celebration ; and in effect the strength of all other human 
 desires. We see then how far the monuments of wit and learn- 
 ing are more durable than the monuments of power or of the 
 hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty- 
 five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or 
 letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, 
 cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible 
 to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Csesar, 
 no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years ; 
 for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of 
 the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and knowl- 
 edges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and 
 capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be 
 called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds 
 in^ the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions 
 and opinions in succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of 
 the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and com- 
 modities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote 
 regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are let- 
 ters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seaa 
 of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, 
 illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other I Nay, fur- 
 
 6 In and inio were often used interchangeably. 
 
632 BACON. 
 
 ther ; we see some of the philosophers which were least divine, 
 and most immersed in the senses, and denied generally the im- 
 mortality of the soul, yet came to this point, that whatsoever 
 motions the spirit of man could act and perform without the 
 organs of the body, they thought might remain after death ; 
 which were only those of the understanding, and not of the 
 affections; so immortal and incorruptible a thing did knowledge 
 seem unto them to be. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 If such be the capacity and receipt of the mind of man, it 
 is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or 
 quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make 
 the mind swell or out-compass itself: no ; but it is merely 
 the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantitymore or less, 
 Lf it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it 
 some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that 
 venom, which is ventosity^ or swelling. This corrective spice, 
 the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, 
 which the Apostle addeth: f or so he saith, "Khowledgebloweth 
 up, but charity buildeth up " ; not unlike unto that which he 
 delivereth in another place: "If I spake with the tongues of 
 men and angels, and had not charity, it were but as a tinkling 
 cymbal"; not but that it is an excellent thing to speak with 
 the tongues of men and angels, but because, if it be severed 
 from charity, and not referred to the good of men and mankind, 
 it hath rather a sounding and unworthy glory, than a meriting 
 and substantial virtue. 
 
 Asfor the conceit^ that too much knowledge should incline 
 a man to atheism, and that the ignorance of second causes 
 should make a more devout dependence upon God, which is 
 the first cause ; first, it is good to ask the question which Job 
 asked of his friends : " "Will ybu lie for God, as one man will do 
 for another, to gratify him ? " Por certain it is that God worketh 
 nothing in Nature but by second causes : and if they would 
 have it otherwise believed, it is mere imposture, as it were in 
 favour towards God ; and nothing else but to offer to the 
 
 6 VeTvtoaity is windiness : here it haa the sense of blown up with pride or 
 concd,t, 
 
 7 In Bacon's time, conceit was always used in a good sense, — conc^tioTi, 
 imagination^ or Judgjneni. 
 
MISCELLAHEOITS. 633 
 
 Author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie. But, further, it 
 is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little 
 or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of 
 man to atheism, but a further proceeding therein doth bring the 
 mind back again to religion. For, in the entrance of philosophy, 
 when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer 
 themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there it may 
 induce some oblivion of the highest cause ; but when a man 
 passeth on further, and seeth the dependence of causes, and the 
 works of Providence ; then, according to the allegory of the 
 poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of Nature's 
 chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair. To 
 conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety 
 or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain, that a man can 
 search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word, 
 or in the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy; but 
 rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proflcience in 
 both : only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and 
 not to swelling ; to use, and not to ostentation ; and again, that 
 they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings 
 together. 
 
 Leakntng endueth men's minds with a true sense of the 
 frailty of their persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and the 
 dignity of their soul and vocation : so that it is impossible for 
 them to esteem that any greatness of their own fortune can be 
 a true or worthy end of their being and ordainment ; and 
 therefore are desirous to give their account to God, and so like- 
 wise to their masters under God : whereas the corrupter sort of 
 mere politiques, that have not their thoughts established by 
 learning in the love and apprehension of duty, nor never look 
 abroad into universality, do refer all things to themselves, and 
 thrust themselves into the centre of the world, as if all lines 
 should meet in them and their fortunes ; never caring in all 
 tempests what becomes of the ship of Estate, so they may save 
 themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune. 
 
 PoEST is a part of learning in measure of words for the most 
 part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and 
 doth truly refer to the imagination ; which, being not tied to 
 the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which Nature hath 
 severed, and sever that which Nature hath joined. It is taken 
 in two senses in respect of words or matter. In the first sense 
 it is but a character of style, and belongeth to arts of speech. 
 Jn the letter it is one of the principal portions of learning, and 
 
634 BACON-. 
 
 is nothing else but feigned history, wMcli may be styled' as 
 well in prose as in verse. 
 
 The use of this feigned history hath been tcr give soma 
 shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points 
 wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in 
 proportion inferior to the soul ; by reason whereof there is, 
 agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more 
 exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found 
 in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events 
 of true history have not that magnitude which satisfleth the 
 mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more 
 heroical. Because true history propoundeth the successes and 
 issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and 
 vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and 
 more according to revealed providence. Because true history 
 representeth actions and events more ordinary and less inter- 
 changed, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and 
 more unexpected and alternative variations. So as it appeareth 
 that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, 
 and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have 
 some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect 
 the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of 
 the mind ; ' whereas reason doth buckle ^^ and bow the mind 
 unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinua- 
 tions and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined 
 also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath 
 had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, 
 where other learning stood excluded. 
 
 As all works do show forth the power and skill of the work- 
 man, and not his image, so it is of the works of God, which do 
 show the omnipotency and wisdom of the Maker, but not His 
 image. And therefore therein the heathen opinion difEereth 
 from the sacred truth ; for they supposed the world to be the 
 image of God, and man to be an extract or compendious image 
 of the world ; but the Scriptures never vouchsafe to attribute to 
 the world that honour, as to be the image of God, but only thf- 
 work qf His hands ; neither do they speak of any other image of 
 
 8 stuped is here used in the sense of written, or penned, as the stUua was the 
 inatrument of writing, the ancient pen. 
 
 9 Sir Philip Sydney describes poetry as " the sweet food of sweetly-uttered 
 knowledge," which " lifts the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoy- 
 ing its own divine essence." 
 
 10 To Imclcle is to bend. Shakespeare uses it intransitiyely in 2 Henry IV., i., 
 1. : "And as a wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, like strengthless hinges, 
 i^c}llf under life," ^c. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 635 
 
 God but man. "WTieref ore, by the contemplation of Nature to 
 induce and enforce the acknowledgment of God, and to demon- 
 strate His power, providence, and goodness, is an excellent argu- 
 ment, and hath been excellently handled by divers. But, on the 
 other side, out of the contemplation of Nature, or ground of 
 human knowledges, to induce any verity or persuasion concern, 
 ing the points of faith, is in my judgment not safe. For the 
 heathen themselves conclude as much in that excellent and 
 divine fable of the golden chain, —that "men and gods were 
 not able to draw Jupiter down to the Earth ; but, contrariwise, 
 Jupiter was able to draw them up to Heaven." So as we ought 
 not to attempt to draw down or submit the mysteries of God to 
 our reason ; but, contrariwise, to raise and advance our reason 
 to the Divine truth. 
 
 Op all other means the most compendious and summary, 
 and, again, the most noble and effectual, to the reducing of the 
 mind unto virtue and good estate, is the electing and propound- 
 ing unto a man's self good and virtuous ends of his life, such 
 as may be in a reasonable sort within his compass to attain. 
 For, if these two things be supposed, that a man set before him 
 honest and good ends, and again, that he be resolute, constant, 
 and true unto them ; it will follow that he shall mould himself 
 into all virtue at once. And this indeed is like a work of 
 Nature ; whereas the other course is like the work of the hand. 
 For so, when a carver makes an image, he shapes only that part 
 whereupon he worketh ; as, if he be upon the face, that part 
 which shall be the body is but a rude stone still, till such time 
 as he comes to it. But, contrariwise, when Nature makes a 
 flower or living creature, she formeth rudiments of all the parts 
 at one time. So, in obtaining virtue by habit, while a man 
 practiseth temperance, he doth not profit much to fortitude, 
 nor the like : but when he dedicateth and applieth himself to 
 good ends, look, what virtue soever the pursuit and passage 
 towards those ends doth commend unto him, he is invested of 
 a precedent disposition to conform himself thereunto. Which 
 state of mind Aristotle doth excellently express himself, that 
 it ought not to be called virtuous, but divine. But the heathen 
 and profane passages have but a shadow of that divine state 
 of mind which religion and the holy faith doth conduct men 
 unto, by imprinting upon their souls charity, which is excel- 
 lently called the bond of perfection, because it comprehendeth 
 and fasteneth all virtues together. Certainly, if a man's mind 
 be truly inflamed with charity, it doth work him suddenly into 
 greater perfection than £^1} the doctrine of morality can do. 
 
636 BACOir. 
 
 As dead flies cause the best ointment to send forth an ill odowr, so 
 doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and Jumowr. — 
 The condition of men eminent for virtue is, as this aphorism ex- 
 cellently observes, exceeding hard and miserable, because their 
 errors, though ever so small, are not overlooked. But, as in a 
 clear diamond every little grain or speck strikes the eye dis- 
 agreeably, though it would scarce be observed in a duller stone ; 
 so, in men of eminent virtue, their smallest vices are readily 
 spied, talked of, and severely censured ; whilst, in an ordinary 
 man, they would either have lain concealed, or been easily ex- 
 cused. Whence a little folly in a very wise man, a small slip in 
 a very good man, and a little indecency in a polite and elegant 
 man, greatly diminish their characters and reputations. It 
 might, therefore, be no bad policy, for men of uncommon ex- 
 cellencies to inturmix with their actions a few absurdities, that 
 may be com^jAi ted without vice ; in order to reserve a liberty, 
 and confound the observation of little defects. 
 
 A PEtTDENT man looks well to his steps ; but a fool turns aside to 
 deceit. — There are two kinds of prudence ; the one true and 
 sound; the other degenerate and false : the latter Solomon 
 calls by the name of folly. The candidate for the former has 
 an eye to his footings, looking out for dangers, contriving 
 remedies, and, by the assistance of good men, defending him- 
 self against the bad : he is wary in entering upon business, and 
 not unprovided of a retreat ; watchful for opportunities; 
 powerful against opposition, &c. Butihe follower of the other 
 is wholly patched up of fallacy and cunning ; placing all his 
 hope in the circumventing of others, and forming them to his 
 fancy. And this the aphorism justly rejects as a vicious, and 
 even a weak kind of prudence. For, first, it is by no means a 
 thing in our own power, nor depending upon any constant rule ; 
 but is daily inventing of new stratagems, as the old ones fail 
 and grow useless. Secondly, he who has once the character of 
 a crafty, tricking man, is entirely deprived of a principal instru- 
 ment of business, trust ; whence he will find nothing succeed to 
 his wish. Lastly, however specious and pleasing these arts 
 may seem, yet they are often frustrated ; as was well observed 
 by Tacitus, when he said that crafty and bold counsels, though 
 pleasant in the expectation, are hard to execute, and unhappy 
 ip. the event. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 2206.H88 
 
 Essays. 
 
 3 1924 013 117 563 
 

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