The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Advancement of Learning, by Francis Bacon (#4 in our series by Francis Bacon) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: The Advancement of Learning Author: Francis Bacon Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5500] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 16, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII
Transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
INTRODUCTION.
“The TVVOO Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and
aduancement of Learning, divine and humane. To the King.
At London. Printed for Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his
shop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne. 1605.” That was the
original title-page of the book now in the reader’s hand - a living
book that led the way to a new world of thought. It was the book
in which Bacon, early in the reign of James the First, prepared the
way for a full setting forth of his New Organon, or instrument of knowledge.
The Organon of Aristotle was a set of treatises in which Aristotle had
written the doctrine of propositions. Study of these treatises
was a chief occupation of young men when they passed from school to
college, and proceeded from Grammar to Logic, the second of the Seven
Sciences. Francis Bacon as a youth of sixteen, at Trinity College,
Cambridge, felt the unfruitfulness of this method of search after truth.
He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Keeper,
and was born at York House, in the Strand, on the 22nd of January, 1561.
His mother was the Lord Keeper’s second wife, one of two sisters,
of whom the other married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh.
Sir Nicholas Bacon had six children by his former marriage, and by his
second wife two sons, Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about two
years the elder. The family home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury,
near St. Albans, from which town, in its ancient and its modern style,
Bacon afterwards took his titles of Verulam and St. Albans.
Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity College, Cambridge,
when Antony was fourteen years old and Francis twelve. Francis
remained at Cambridge only until his sixteenth year; and Dr. Rawley,
his chaplain in after-years, reports of him that “whilst he was
commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship
hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislike
of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author,
to whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness
of the way, being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong
for disputatious and contentions, but barren of the production of works
for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his
dying day.” Bacon was sent as a youth of sixteen to Paris
with the ambassador Sir Amyas Paulet, to begin his training for the
public service; but his father’s death, in February, 1579, before
he had completed the provision he was making for his youngest children,
obliged him to return to London, and, at the age of eighteen, to settle
down at Gray’s Inn to the study of law as a profession.
He was admitted to the outer bar in June, 1582, and about that time,
at the age of twenty-one, wrote a sketch of his conception of a New
Organon that should lead man to more fruitful knowledge, in a little
Latin tract, which he called “Temporis Partus Maximus” (“The
Greatest Birth of Time”).
In November, 1584, Bacon took his seat in the House of Commons as member
for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In October, 1586, he sat for
Taunton. He was member afterwards for Liverpool; and he was one
of those who petitioned for the speedy execution of Mary Queen of Scots.
In October, 1589, he obtained the reversion of the office of Clerk of
the Council in the Star Chamber, which was worth £1,600 or £2,000
a year; but for the succession to this office he had to wait until 1608.
It had not yet fallen to him when he wrote his “Two Books of the
Advancement of Learning.” In the Parliament that met in
February, 1593, Bacon sat as member for Middlesex. He raised difficulties
of procedure in the way of the grant of a treble subsidy, by just objection
to the joining of the Lords with the Commons in a money grant, and a
desire to extend the time allowed for payment from three years to six;
it was, in fact, extended to four years. The Queen was offended.
Francis Bacon and his brother Antony had attached themselves to the
young Earl of Essex, who was their friend and patron. The office
of Attorney-General became vacant. Essex asked the Queen to appoint
Francis Bacon. The Queen gave the office to Sir Edward Coke, who
was already Solicitor-General, and by nine years Bacon’s senior.
The office of Solicitor-General thus became vacant, and that was sought
for Francis Bacon. The Queen, after delay and hesitation, gave
it, in November, 1595, to Serjeant Fleming. The Earl of Essex
consoled his friend by giving him “a piece of land” - Twickenham
Park - which Bacon afterwards sold for £1,800 - equal, say, to
£12,000 in present buying power. In 1597 Bacon was returned
to Parliament as member for Ipswich, and in that year he was hoping
to marry the rich widow of Sir William Hatton, Essex helping; but the
lady married, in the next year, Sir Edward Coke. It was in 1597
that Bacon published the First Edition of his Essays. That was
a little book containing only ten essays in English, with twelve “Meditationes
Sacræ,” which were essays in Latin on religious subjects.
From 1597 onward to the end of his life, Bacon’s Essays were subject
to continuous addition and revision. The author’s Second
Edition, in which the number of the Essays was increased from ten to
thirty-eight, did not appear until November or December, 1612, seven
years later than these two books on the “Advancement of Learning;”
and the final edition of the Essays, in which their number was increased
from thirty-eight to fifty-eight, appeared only in 1625; and Bacon died
on the 9th of April, 1626. The edition of the Essays published
in 1597, under Elizabeth, marked only the beginning of a course of thought
that afterwards flowed in one stream with his teachings in philosophy.
In February, 1601, there was the rebellion of Essex. Francis Bacon
had separated himself from his patron after giving him advice that was
disregarded. Bacon, now Queen’s Counsel, not only appeared
against his old friend, but with excess of zeal, by which, perhaps,
he hoped to win back the Queen’s favour, he twice obtruded violent
attacks upon Essex when he was not called upon to speak. On the
25th of February, 1601, Essex was beheaded. The genius of Bacon
was next employed to justify that act by “A Declaration of the
Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle
of Essex and his Complices.” But James of Scotland, on whose
behalf Essex had intervened, came to the throne by the death of Elizabeth
on the 24th of March, 1603. Bacon was among the crowd of men who
were made knights by James I., and he had to justify himself under the
new order of things by writing “Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie
in certain Imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex.”
He was returned to the first Parliament of James I. by Ipswich and St.
Albans, and he was confirmed in his office of King’s Counsel in
August, 1604; but he was not appointed to the office of Solicitor-General
when it became vacant in that year.
That was the position of Francis Bacon in 1605, when he published this
work, where in his First Book he pointed out the discredits of learning
from human defects of the learned, and emptiness of many of the studies
chosen, or the way of dealing with them. This came, he said, especially
by the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge,
as if there were sought in it “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.” The rest of the First Book was given to an argument
upon the Dignity of Learning; and the Second Book, on the Advancement
of Learning, is, as Bacon himself described it, “a general and
faithful perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof
lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry
of man; to the end that such a plot made and recorded to memory may
both minister light to any public designation and also serve to excite
voluntary endeavours.” Bacon makes, by a sort of exhaustive
analysis, a ground-plan of all subjects of study, as an intellectual
map, helping the right inquirer in his search for the right path.
The right path is that by which he has the best chance of adding to
the stock of knowledge in the world something worth labouring for; and
the true worth is in labour for “the glory of the Creator and
the relief of man’s estate.”
H. M.
THE FIRST BOOK OF FRANCIS BACON; OF THE PROFICIENCE AND ADVANCEMENT
OF LEARNING, DIVINE AND HUMAN.
To the King.
There were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices
and freewill offerings; the one proceeding upon ordinary observance,
the other upon a devout cheerfulness: in like manner there belongeth
to kings from their servants both tribute of duty and presents of affection.
In the former of these I hope I shall not live to be wanting, according
to my most humble duty and the good pleasure of your Majesty’s
employments: for the latter, I thought it more respective to make choice
of some oblation which might rather refer to the propriety and excellency
of your individual person, than to the business of your crown and state.
Wherefore, representing your Majesty many times unto my mind, and beholding
you not with the inquisitive eye of presumption, to discover that which
the Scripture telleth me is inscrutable, but with the observant eye
of duty and admiration, leaving aside the other parts of your virtue
and fortune, I have been touched - yea, and possessed - with an extreme
wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the philosophers call
intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your
memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your
judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution: and I have often
thought that of all the persons living that I have known, your Majesty
were the best instance to make a man of Plato’s opinion, that
all knowledge is but remembrance, and that the mind of man by Nature
knoweth all things, and hath but her own native and original notions
(which by the strangeness and darkness of this tabernacle of the body
are sequestered) again revived and restored: such a light of Nature
I have observed in your Majesty, and such a readiness to take flame
and blaze from the least occasion presented, or the least spark of another’s
knowledge delivered. And as the Scripture saith of the wisest
king, “That his heart was as the sands of the sea;” which,
though it be one of the largest bodies, yet it consisteth of the smallest
and finest portions; so hath God given your Majesty a composition of
understanding admirable, being able to compass and comprehend the greatest
matters, and nevertheless to touch and apprehend the least; whereas
it should seem an impossibility in Nature for the same instrument to
make itself fit for great and small works. And for your gift of
speech, I call to mind what Cornelius Tacitus saith of Augustus Cæsar:
Augusto profluens, et quæ principem deceret,
eloquentia fuit. For if we note it well, speech that is uttered
with labour and difficulty, or speech that savoureth of the affectation
of art and precepts, or speech that is framed after the imitation of
some pattern of eloquence, though never so excellent; all this hath
somewhat servile, and holding of the subject. But your Majesty’s
manner of speech is, indeed, prince-like, flowing as from a fountain,
and yet streaming and branching itself into Nature’s order, full
of facility and felicity, imitating none, and inimitable by any.
And as in your civil estate there appeareth to be an emulation and contention
of your Majesty’s virtue with your fortune; a virtuous disposition
with a fortunate regiment; a virtuous expectation (when time was) of
your greater fortune, with a prosperous possession thereof in the due
time; a virtuous observation of the laws of marriage, with most blessed
and happy fruit of marriage; a virtuous and most Christian desire of
peace, with a fortunate inclination in your neighbour princes thereunto:
so likewise in these intellectual matters there seemeth to be no less
contention between the excellency of your Majesty’s gifts of Nature
and the universality and perfection of your learning. For I am
well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all,
but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been
since Christ’s time any king or temporal monarch which hath been
so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human.
For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succession
of the Emperors of Rome, of which Cæsar the Dictator (who lived
some years before Christ) and Marcus Antoninus were the best learned,
and so descend to the Emperors of Græcia, or of the West, and
then to the lines of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest,
and he shall find this judgment is truly made. For it seemeth
much in a king if, by the compendious extractions of other men’s
wits and labours, he can take hold of any superficial ornaments and
shows of learning, or if he countenance and prefer learning and learned
men; but to drink, indeed, of the true fountains of learning - nay,
to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a king, and in a
king born - is almost a miracle. And the more, because there is
met in your Majesty a rare conjunction, as well of divine and sacred
literature as of profane and human; so as your Majesty standeth invested
of that triplicity, which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient
Hermes: the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination
of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher.
This propriety inherent and individual attribute in your Majesty deserveth
to be expressed not only in the fame and admiration of the present time,
nor in the history or tradition of the ages succeeding, but also in
some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument, bearing a character
or signature both of the power of a king and the difference and perfection
of such a king.
Therefore I did conclude with myself that I could not make unto your
Majesty a better oblation than of some treatise tending to that end,
whereof the sum will consist of these two parts: the former concerning
the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the
merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof; the
latter, what the particular acts and works are which have been embraced
and undertaken for the advancement of learning; and again, what defects
and undervalues I find in such particular acts: to the end that though
I cannot positively or affirmatively advise your Majesty, or propound
unto you framed particulars, yet I may excite your princely cogitations
to visit the excellent treasure of your own mind, and thence to extract
particulars for this purpose agreeable to your magnanimity and wisdom.
I. (1) In the entrance to the former of these - to clear the way and,
as it were, to make silence, to have the true testimonies concerning
the dignity of learning to be better heard, without the interruption
of tacit objections - I think good to deliver it from the discredits
and disgraces which it hath received, all from ignorance, but ignorance
severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of
divines, sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of politics, and sometimes
in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.
(2) I hear the former sort say that knowledge is of those things which
are to be accepted of with great limitation and caution; that the aspiring
to overmuch knowledge was the original temptation and sin whereupon
ensued the fall of man; that knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent,
and, therefore, where it entereth into a man it makes him swell; Scientia
inflat; that Solomon gives a censure, “That there is no end
of making books, and that much reading is weariness of the flesh;”
and again in another place, “That in spacious knowledge there
is much contristation, and that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth
anxiety;” that Saint Paul gives a caveat, “That we be not
spoiled through vain philosophy;” that experience demonstrates
how learned men have been arch-heretics, how learned times have been
inclined to atheism, and how the contemplation of second causes doth
derogate from our dependence upon God, who is the first cause.
(3) To discover, then, the ignorance and error of this opinion, and
the misunderstanding in the grounds thereof, it may well appear these
men do not observe or consider that it was not the pure knowledge of
Nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give
names unto other creatures in Paradise as they were brought before him
according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall;
but it was the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man
to give law unto himself, and to depend no more upon God’s commandments,
which was the form of the temptation. Neither is it any quantity
of knowledge, how great soever, that can make the mind of man to swell;
for nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God and
the contemplation of God; and, therefore, Solomon, speaking of the two
principal senses of inquisition, the eye and the ear, affirmeth that
the eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing; and
if there be no fulness, then is the continent greater than the content:
so of knowledge itself and the mind of man, whereto the senses are but
reporters, he defineth likewise in these words, placed after that calendar
or ephemerides which he maketh of the diversities of times and seasons
for all actions and purposes, and concludeth thus: “God hath made
all things beautiful, or decent, in the true return of their seasons.
Also He hath placed the world in man’s heart, yet cannot man find
out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end”
- declaring not obscurely that God hath framed the mind of man as a
mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful
to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light;
and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude
of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and
decrees which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed.
And although he doth insinuate that the supreme or summary law of Nature
(which he calleth “the work which God worketh from the beginning
to the end”) is not possible to be found out by man, yet that
doth not derogate from the capacity of the mind; but may be referred
to the impediments, as of shortness of life, ill conjunction of labours,
ill tradition of knowledge over from hand to hand, and many other inconveniences,
whereunto the condition of man is subject. For that nothing parcel
of the world is denied to man’s inquiry and invention, he doth
in another place rule over, when he saith, “The spirit of man
is as the lamp of God, wherewith He searcheth the inwardness of all
secrets.” If, then, 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 it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality
of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if 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 immediately addeth to the
former clause; for so he saith, “Knowledge bloweth up, but charity
buildeth up;” not unlike unto that which he deilvereth in another
place: “If I spake,” saith he, “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. And as for that
censure of Solomon concerning the excess of writing and reading books,
and the anxiety of spirit which redoundeth from knowledge, and that
admonition of St. Paul, “That we be not seduced by vain philosophy,”
let those places be rightly understood; and they do, indeed, excellently
set forth the true bounds and limitations whereby human knowledge is
confined and circumscribed, and yet without any such contracting or
coarctation, but that it may comprehend all the universal nature of
things; for these limitations are three: the first, “That we do
not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality;”
the second, “That we make application of our knowledge, to give
ourselves repose and contentment, and not distaste or repining;”
the third, “That we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature
to attain to the mysteries of God.” For as touching the
first of these, Solomon doth excellently expound himself in another
place of the same book, where he saith: “I saw well that knowledge
recedeth as far from ignorance as light doth from darkness; and that
the wise man’s eyes keep watch in his head, whereas this fool
roundeth about in darkness: but withal I learned that the same mortality
involveth them both.” And for the second, certain it is
there is no vexation or anxiety of mind which resulteth from knowledge
otherwise than merely by accident; for all knowledge and wonder (which
is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself; but
when men fall to framing conclusions out of their knowledge, applying
it to their particular, and ministering to themselves thereby weak fears
or vast desires, there groweth that carefulness and trouble of mind
which is spoken of; for then knowledge is no more Lumen siccum,
whereof Heraclitus the profound said, Lumen siccum optima anima;
but it becometh Lumen madidum, or maceratum, being steeped
and infused in the humours of the affections. And as for the third
point, it deserveth to be a little stood upon, and not to be lightly
passed over; for if any man shall think by view and inquiry into these
sensible and material things to attain that light, whereby he may reveal
unto himself the nature or will of God, then, indeed, is he spoiled
by vain philosophy; for the contemplation of God’s creatures and
works produceth (having regard to the works and creatures themselves)
knowledge, but having regard to God no perfect knowledge, but wonder,
which is broken knowledge. And, therefore, it was most aptly said
by one of Plato’s school, “That the sense of man carrieth
a resemblance with the sun, which (as we see) openeth and revealeth
all the terrestrial globe; but then, again, it obscureth and concealeth
the stars and celestial globe: so doth the sense discover natural things,
but it darkeneth and shutteth up divine.” And hence it is
true that it hath proceeded, that divers great learned men have been
heretical, whilst they have sought to fly up to the secrets of the Deity
by this waxen wings of the senses. And as for 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 you lie for God, as one man will lie
for another, to gratify him?” For 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 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 men 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 he 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 proficience 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.
II. (1) And as for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politics,
they be of this nature: that learning doth soften men’s minds,
and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that
it doth mar and pervert men’s dispositions for matter of government
and policy, in making them too curious and irresolute by variety of
reading, or too peremptory or positive by strictness of rules and axioms,
or too immoderate and overweening by reason of the greatness of examples,
or too incompatible and differing from the times by reason of the dissimilitude
of examples; or at least, that it doth divert men’s travails from
action and business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness;
and that it doth bring into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst
every man is more ready to argue than to obey and execute. Out
of this conceit Cato, surnamed the Censor, one of the wisest men indeed
that ever lived, when Carneades the philosopher came in embassage to
Rome, and that the young men of Rome began to flock about him, being
allured with the sweetness and majesty of his eloquence and learning,
gave counsel in open senate that they should give him his despatch with
all speed, lest he should infect and enchant the minds and affections
of the youth, and at unawares bring in an alteration of the manners
and customs of the state. Out of the same conceit or humour did
Virgil, turning his pen to the advantage of his country and the disadvantage
of his own profession, make a kind of separation between policy and
government, and between arts and sciences, in the verses so much renowned,
attributing and challenging the one to the Romans, and leaving and yielding
the other to the Grecians: Tu regere imperio popules, Romane,
memento, Hæ tibi erunt artes, &c. So likewise
we see that Anytus, the accuser of Socrates, laid it as an article of
charge and accusation against him, that he did, with the variety and
power of his discourses and disputatious, withdraw young men from due
reverence to the laws and customs of their country, and that he did
profess a dangerous and pernicious science, which was to make the worse
matter seem the better, and to suppress truth by force of eloquence
and speech.
(2) But these and the like imputations have rather a countenance of
gravity than any ground of justice: for experience doth warrant that,
both in persons and in times, there hath been a meeting and concurrence
in learning and arms, flourishing and excelling in the same men and
the same ages. For as ‘for men, there cannot be a better
nor the hike instance as of that pair, Alexander the Great and Julius
Cæsar, the Dictator; whereof the one was Aristotle’s scholar
in philosophy, and the other was Cicero’s rival in eloquence;
or if any man had rather call for scholars that were great generals,
than generals that were great scholars, let him take Epaminondas the
Theban, or Xenophon the Athenian; whereof the one was the first that
abated the power of Sparta, and the other was the first that made way
to the overthrow of the monarchy of Persia. And this concurrence
is yet more visible in times than in persons, by how much an age is
greater object than a man. For both in Egypt, Assyria, Persia,
Græcia, and Rome, the same times that are most renowned for arms
are, likewise, most admired for learning, so that the greatest authors
and philosophers, and the greatest captains and governors, have lived
in the same ages. Neither can it otherwise he: for as in man the
ripeness of strength of the body and mind cometh much about an age,
save that the strength of the body cometh somewhat the more early, so
in states, arms and learning, whereof the one correspondeth to the body,
the other to the soul of man, have a concurrence or near sequence in
times.
(3) And for matter of policy and government, that learning, should rather
hurt, than enable thereunto, is a thing very improbable; we see it is
accounted an error to commit a natural body to empiric physicians, which
commonly have a few pleasing receipts whereupon they are confident and
adventurous, but know neither the causes of diseases, nor the complexions
of patients, nor peril of accidents, nor the true method of cures; we
see it is a like error to rely upon advocates or lawyers which are only
men of practice, and not grounded in their books, who are many times
easily surprised when matter falleth out besides their experience, to
the prejudice of the causes they handle: so by like reason it cannot
be but a matter of doubtful consequence if states be managed by empiric
statesmen, not well mingled with men grounded in learning. But
contrariwise, it is almost without instance contradictory that ever
any government was disastrous that was in the hands of learned governors.
For howsoever it hath been ordinary with politic men to extenuate and
disable learned men by the names of pedantes; yet in the records
of time it appeareth in many particulars that the governments of princes
in minority (notwithstanding the infinite disadvantage of that kind
of state) - have nevertheless excelled the government of princes of
mature age, even for that reason which they seek to traduce, which is
that by that occasion the state hath been in the hands of pedantes:
for so was the state of Rome for the first five years, which are so
much magnified, during the minority of Nero, in the hands of Seneca,
a pedenti; so it was again, for ten years’ space or more,
during the minority of Gordianus the younger, with great applause and
contentation in the hands of Misitheus, a pedanti: so was it
before that, in the minority of Alexander Severus, in like happiness,
in hands not much unlike, by reason of the rule of the women, who were
aided by the teachers and preceptors. Nay, let a man look into
the government of the Bishops of Rome, as by name, into the government
of Pius Quintus and Sextus Quintus in our times, who were both at their
entrance esteemed but as pedantical friars, and he shall find that such
Popes do greater things, and proceed upon truer principles of state,
than those which have ascended to the papacy from an education and breeding
in affairs of state and courts of princes; for although men bred in
learning are perhaps to seek in points of convenience and accommodating
for the present, which the Italians call ragioni di stato, whereof
the same Pius Quintus could not hear spoken with patience, terming them
inventions against religion and the moral virtues; yet on the other
side, to recompense that, they are perfect in those same plain grounds
of religion, justice, honour, and moral virtue, which if they be well
and watchfully pursued, there will be seldom use of those other, no
more than of physic in a sound or well-dieted body. Neither can
the experience of one man’s life furnish examples and precedents
for the event of one man’s life. For as it happeneth sometimes
that the grandchild, or other descendant, resembleth the ancestor more
than the son; so many times occurrences of present times may sort better
with ancient examples than with those of the later or immediate times;
and lastly, the wit of one man can no more countervail learning than
one man’s means can hold way with a common purse.
(4) And as for those particular seducements or indispositions of the
mind for policy and government, which learning is pretended to insinuate;
if it be granted that any such thing be, it must be remembered withal
that learning ministereth in every of them greater strength of medicine
or remedy than it offereth cause of indisposition or infirmity.
For if by a secret operation it make men perplexed and irresolute, on
the other side by plain precept it teacheth them when and upon what
ground to resolve; yea, and how to carry things in suspense, without
prejudice, till they resolve. If it make men positive and regular,
it teacheth them what things are in their nature demonstrative, and
what are conjectural, and as well the use of distinctions and exceptions,
as the latitude of principles and rules. If it mislead by disproportion
or dissimilitude of examples, it teacheth men the force of circumstances,
the errors of comparisons, and all the cautions of application; so that
in all these it doth rectify more effectually than it can pervert.
And these medicines it conveyeth into men’s minds much more forcibly
by the quickness and penetration of examples. For let a man look
into the errors of Clement VII., so lively described by Guicciardini,
who served under him, or into the errors of Cicero, painted out by his
own pencil in his Epistles to Atticus, and he will fly apace from being
irresolute. Let him look into the errors of Phocion, and he will
beware how he be obstinate or inflexible. Let him but read the
fable of Ixion, and it will hold him from being vaporous or imaginative.
Let him look into the errors of Cato II., and he will never be one of
the Antipodes, to tread opposite to the present world.
(5) And for the conceit that learning should dispose men to leisure
and privateness, and make men slothful: it were a strange thing if that
which accustometh the mind to a perpetual motion and agitation should
induce slothfulness, whereas, contrariwise, it may be truly affirmed
that no kind of men love business for itself but those that are learned;
for other persons love it for profit, as a hireling that loves the work
for the wages; or for honour, as because it beareth them up in the eyes
of men, and refresheth their reputation, which otherwise would wear;
or because it putteth them in mind of their fortune, and giveth them
occasion to pleasure and displeasure; or because it exerciseth some
faculty wherein they take pride, and so entertaineth them in good-humour
and pleasing conceits towards themselves; or because it advanceth any
other their ends. So that as it is said of untrue valours, that
some men’s valours are in the eyes of them that look on, so such
men’s industries are in the eyes of others, or, at least, in regard
of their own designments; only learned men love business as an action
according to nature, as agreeable to health of mind as exercise is to
health of body, taking pleasure in the action itself, and not in the
purchase, so that of all men they are the most indefatigable, if it
be towards any business which can hold or detain their mind.
(6) And if any man be laborious in reading and study, and yet idle in
business and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or softness
of spirit, such as Seneca speaketh of: Quidam tam sunt umbratiles,
ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est; and not of learning:
well may it be that such a point of a man’s nature may make him
give himself to learning, but it is not learning that breedeth any such
point in his nature.
(7) And that learning should take up too much time or leisure: I answer,
the most active or busy man that hath been or can be, hath (no question)
many vacant times of leisure while he expecteth the tides and returns
of business (except he be either tedious and of no despatch, or lightly
and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that may be better done
by others), and then the question is but how those spaces and times
of leisure shall be filled and spent; whether in pleasure or in studies;
as was well answered by Demosthenes to his adversary Æschines,
that was a man given to pleasure, and told him “That his orations
did smell of the lamp.” “Indeed,” said Demosthenes,
“there is a great difference between the things that you and I
do by lamp-light.” So as no man need doubt that learning
will expel business, but rather it will keep and defend the possession
of the mind against idleness and pleasure, which otherwise at unawares
may enter to the prejudice of both.
(8) Again, for that other conceit that learning should undermine the
reverence of laws and government, it is assuredly a mere depravation
and calumny, without all shadow of truth. For to say that a blind
custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and
understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a guide
than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy
that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, manageable,
and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart,
and mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering
that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject
to tumults, seditious, and changes.
(9) And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was well punished
for his blasphemy against learning, in the same kind wherein he offended;
for when he was past threescore years old, he was taken with an extreme
desire to go to school again, and to learn the Greek tongue, to the
end to peruse the Greek authors; which doth well demonstrate that his
former censure of the Grecian learning was rather an affected gravity,
than according to the inward sense of his own opinion. And as
for Virgil’s verses, though it pleased him to brave the world
in taking to the Romans the art of empire, and leaving to others the
arts of subjects, yet so much is manifest - that the Romans never ascended
to that height of empire till the time they had ascended to the height
of other arts. For in the time of the two first Cæsars,
which had the art of government in greatest perfection, there lived
the best poet, Virgilius Maro; the best historiographer, Titus Livius;
the best antiquary, Marcus Varro; and the best or second orator, Marcus
Cicero, that to the memory of man are known. As for the accusation
of Socrates, the time must be remembered when it was prosecuted; which
was under the Thirty Tyrants, the most base, bloody, and envious persons
that have governed; which revolution of state was no sooner over but
Socrates, whom they had made a person criminal, was made a person heroical,
and his memory accumulate with honours divine and human; and those discourses
of his which were then termed corrupting of manners, were after acknowledged
for sovereign medicines of the mind and manners, and so have been received
ever since till this day. Let this, therefore, serve for answer
to politiques, which in their humorous severity, or in their feigned
gravity, have presumed to throw imputations upon learning; which redargution
nevertheless (save that we know not whether our labours may extend to
other ages) were not needful for the present, in regard of the love
and reverence towards learning which the example and countenance of
two so learned princes, Queen Elizabeth and your Majesty, being as Castor
and Pollux, lucida sidera, stars of excellent light and most
benign influence, hath wrought in all men of place and authority in
our nation.
III. (1) Now therefore we come to that third sort of discredit or diminution
of credit that groweth unto learning from learned men themselves, which
commonly cleaveth fastest: it is either from their fortune, or from
their manners, or from the nature of their studies. For the first,
it is not in their power; and the second is accidental; the third only
is proper to be handled: but because we are not in hand with true measure,
but with popular estimation and conceit, it is not amiss to speak somewhat
of the two former. The derogations therefore which grow to learning
from the fortune or condition of learned men, are either in respect
of scarcity of means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness
of employments.
(2) Concerning want, and that it is the case of learned men usually
to begin with little, and not to grow rich so fast as other men, by
reason they convert not their labours chiefly to lucre and increase,
it were good to leave the commonplace in commendation of povery to some
friar to handle, to whom much was attributed by Machiavel in this point
when he said, “That the kingdom of the clergy had been long before
at an end, if the reputation and reverence towards the poverty of friars
had not borne out the scandal of the superfluities and excesses of bishops
and prelates.” So a man might say that the felicity and
delicacy of princes and great persons had long since turned to rudeness
and barbarism, if the poverty of learning had not kept up civility and
honour of life; but without any such advantages, it is worthy the observation
what a reverent and honoured thing poverty of fortune was for some ages
in the Roman state, which nevertheless was a state without paradoxes.
For we see what Titus Livius saith in his introduction: Cæterum
aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit aut nulla unquam respublica nec
major, nec sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec
in quam tam sero avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint; nec ubi tantus ac
tam diu paupertati ac parsimoniæ honos fuerit. We see
likewise, after that the state of Rome was not itself, but did degenerate,
how that person that took upon him to be counsellor to Julius Cæsar
after his victory where to begin his restoration of the state, maketh
it of all points the most summary to take away the estimation of wealth:
Verum hæc et omnia mala pariter cum honore pecuniæ desinent;
si neque magistratus, neque alia vulgo cupienda, venalia
erunt. To conclude this point: as it was truly said that Paupertas
est virtutis fortuna, though sometimes it come from vice, so it
may be fitly said that, though some times it may proceed from misgovernment
and accident. Surely Solomon hath pronounced it both in censure,
Qui festinat ad divitias non erit insons; and in precept, “Buy
the truth, and sell it not; and so of wisdom and knowledge;” judging
that means were to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied
to means. And as for the privateness or obscureness (as it may
be in vulgar estimation accounted) of life of contemplative men, it
is a theme so common to extol a private life, not taxed with sensuality
and sloth, in comparison and to the disadvantage of a civil life, for
safety, liberty, pleasure, and dignity, or at least freedom from indignity,
as no man handleth it but handleth it well; such a consonancy it hath
to men’s conceits in the expressing, and to men’s consents
in the allowing. This only I will add, that learned men forgotten
in states and not living in the eyes of men, are like the images of
Cassius and Brutus in the funeral of Junia, of which, not being represented
as many others were, Tacitus saith, Eo ipso præfulgebant quod
non visebantur.
(3) And for meanness of employment, that which is most traduced to contempt
is that the government of youth is commonly allotted to them; which
age, because it is the age of least authority, it is transferred to
the disesteeming of those employments wherein youth is conversant, and
which are conversant about youth. But how unjust this traducement
is (if you will reduce things from popularity of opinion to measure
of reason) may appear in that we see men are more curious what they
put into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned; and what mould they
lay about a young plant than about a plant corroborate; so as this weakest
terms and times of all things use to have the best applications and
helps. And will you hearken to the Hebrew rabbins? “Your
young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:”
say they, youth is the worthier age, for that visions are nearer apparitions
of God than dreams? And let it be noted that howsoever the condition
of life of pedantes hath been scorned upon theatres, as the ape
of tyranny; and that the modern looseness or negligence hath taken no
due regard to the choice of schoolmasters and tutors; yet the ancient
wisdom of the best times did always make a just complaint, that states
were too busy with their laws and too negligent in point of education:
which excellent part of ancient discipline hath been in some sort revived
of late times by the colleges of the Jesuits; of whom, although in regard
of their superstition I may say, Quo meliores, eo deteriores;
yet in regard of this, and some other points concerning human learning
and moral matters, I may say, as Agesilaus said to his enemy Pharnabazus,
Talis quum sis, utunam noster esses. And that much
touching the discredits drawn from the fortunes of learned men.
(4) As touching the manners of learned men, it is a thing personal and
individual: and no doubt there be amongst them, as in other professions,
of all temperatures: but yet so as it is not without truth which is
said, that Abeunt studua in mores, studies have an influence
and operation upon the manners of those that are conversant in them.
(5) But upon an attentive and indifferent review, I for my part cannot
find any disgrace to learning can proceed from the manners of learned
men; not inherent to them as they are learned; except it be a fault
(which was the supposed fault of Demosthenes, Cicero, Cato II., Seneca,
and many more) that because the times they read of are commonly better
than the times they live in, and the duties taught better than the duties
practised, they contend sometimes too far to bring things to perfection,
and to reduce the corruption of manners to honesty of precepts or examples
of too great height. And yet hereof they have caveats enough in
their own walks. For Solon, when he was asked whether he had given
his citizens the best laws, answered wisely, “Yea, of such as
they would receive:” and Plato, finding that his own heart could
not agree with the corrupt manners of his country, refused to bear place
or office, saying, “That a man’s country was to be used
as his parents were, that is, with humble persuasions, and not with
contestations.” And Cæsar’s counsellor put in
the same caveat, Non ad vetera instituta revocans quæ jampridem
corruptis moribus ludibrio sunt; and Cicero noteth this error directly
in Cato II. when he writes to his friend Atticus, Cato optime sentit,
sed nocet interdum reipublicæ; loquitur enim tanquam in republicâ
Platonis, non tanquam in fæce Romuli. And the
same Cicero doth excuse and expound the philosophers for going too far
and being too exact in their prescripts when he saith, Isti ipse
præceptores virtutis et magistri videntur fines officiorum paulo
longius quam natura vellet protulisse, ut cum ad ultimum animo
contendissemus, ibi tamen, ubi oportet, consisteremus:
and yet himself might have said, Monitis sum minor ipse meis;
for it was his own fault, though not in so extreme a degree.
(6) Another fault likewise much of this kind hath been incident to learned
men, which is, that they have esteemed the preservation, good, and honour
of their countries or masters before their own fortunes or safeties.
For so saith Demosthenes unto the Athenians: “If it please you
to note it, my counsels unto you are not such whereby I should grow
great amongst you, and you become little amongst the Grecians; but they
be of that nature as they are sometimes not good for me to give, but
are always good for you to follow.” And so Seneca, after
he had consecrated that Quinquennium Neronis to the eternal glory
of learned governors, held on his honest and loyal course of good and
free counsel after his master grew extremely corrupt in his government.
Neither can this point otherwise be, for learning 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 likewise
to their masters under God (as kings and the states that they serve)
in those words, Ecce tibi lucrefeci, and not Ecce mihi lucrefeci;
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 state, so they may save themselves in the cockboat of
their own fortune; whereas men that feel the weight of duty and know
the limits of self-love use to make good their places and duties, though
with peril; and if they stand in seditious and violent alterations,
it is rather the reverence which many times both adverse parts do give
to honesty, than any versatile advantage of their own carriage.
But for this point of tender sense and fast obligation of duty which
learning doth endue the mind withal, howsoever fortune may tax it, and
many in the depth of their corrupt principles may despise it, yet it
will receive an open allowance, and therefore needs the less disproof
or excuse.
(7) Another fault incident commonly to learned men, which may be more
properly defended than truly denied, is that they fail sometimes in
applying themselves to particular persons, which want of exact application
ariseth from two causes - the one, because the largeness of their mind
can hardly confine itself to dwell in the exquisite observation or examination
of the nature and customs of one person, for it is a speech for a lover,
and not for a wise man, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus.
Nevertheless I shall yield that he that cannot contract the sight of
his mind as well as disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty.
But there is a second cause, which is no inability, but a rejection
upon choice and judgment. For the honest and just bounds of observation
by one person upon another extend no further but to understand him sufficiently,
whereby not to give him offence, or whereby to be able to give him faithful
counsel, or whereby to stand upon reasonable guard and caution in respect
of a man’s self. But to be speculative into another man
to the end to know how to work him, or wind him, or govern him, proceedeth
from a heart that is double and cloven, and not entire and ingenuous;
which as in friendship it is want of integrity, so towards princes or
superiors is want of duty. For the custom of the Levant, which
is that subjects do forbear to gaze or fix their eyes upon princes,
is in the outward ceremony barbarous, but the moral is good; for men
ought not, by cunning and bent observations, to pierce and penetrate
into the hearts of kings, which the Scripture hath declared to be inscrutable.
(8) There is yet another fault (with which I will conclude this part)
which is often noted in learned men, that they do many times fail to
observe decency and discretion in their behaviour and carriage, and
commit errors in small and ordinary points of action, so as the vulgar
sort of capacities do make a judgment of them in greater matters by
that which they find wanting in them in smaller. But this consequence
doth oft deceive men, for which I do refer them over to that which was
said by Themistocles, arrogantly and uncivilly being applied to himself
out of his own mouth, but, being applied to the general state of this
question, pertinently and justly, when, being invited to touch a lute,
he said, “He could not fiddle, but he could make a small town
a great state.” So no doubt many may be well seen in the
passages of government and policy which are to seek in little and punctual
occasions. I refer them also to that which Plato said of his master
Socrates, whom he compared to the gallipots of apothecaries, which on
the outside had apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sovereign
and precious liquors and confections; acknowledging that, to an external
report, he was not without superficial levities and deformities, but
was inwardly replenished with excellent virtues and powers. And
so much touching the point of manners of learned men.
(9) But in the meantime I have no purpose to give allowance to some
conditions and courses base and unworthy, wherein divers professors
of learning have wronged themselves and gone too far; such as were those
trencher philosophers which in the later age of the Roman state were
usually in the houses of great persons, being little better than solemn
parasites, of which kind, Lucian maketh a merry description of the philosopher
that the great lady took to ride with her in her coach, and would needs
have him carry her little dog, which he doing officiously and yet uncomely,
the page scoffed and said, “That he doubted the philosopher of
a Stoic would turn to be a Cynic.” But, above all the rest,
this gross and palpable flattery whereunto many not unlearned have abased
and abused their wits and pens, turning (as Du Bartas saith) Hecuba
into Helena, and Faustina into Lucretia, hath most diminished the price
and estimation of learning. Neither is the modern dedication of
books and writings, as to patrons, to be commended, for that books (such
as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no patrons but truth
and reason. And the ancient custom was to dedicate them only to
private and equal friends, or to entitle the books with their names;
or if to kings and great persons, it was to some such as the argument
of the book was fit and proper for; but these and the like courses may
deserve rather reprehension than defence.
(10) Not that I can tax or condemn the morigeration or application of
learned men to men in fortune. For the answer was good that Diogenes
made to one that asked him in mockery, “How it came to pass that
philosophers were the followers of rich men, and not rich men of philosophers?”
He answered soberly, and yet sharply, “Because the one sort knew
what they had need of, and the other did not.” And of the
like nature was the answer which Aristippus made, when having a petition
to Dionysius, and no ear given to him, he fell down at his feet, whereupon
Dionysius stayed and gave him the hearing, and granted it; and afterwards
some person, tender on the behalf of philosophy, reproved Aristippus
that he would offer the profession of philosophy such an indignity as
for a private suit to fall at a tyrant’s feet; but he answered,
“It was not his fault, but it was the fault of Dionysius, that
had his ears in his feet.” Neither was it accounted weakness,
but discretion, in him that would not dispute his best with Adrianus
Cæsar, excusing himself, “That it was reason to yield to
him that commanded thirty legions.” These and the like,
applications, and stooping to points of necessity and convenience, cannot
be disallowed; for though they may have some outward baseness, yet in
a judgment truly made they are to be accounted submissions to the occasion
and not to the person.
IV. (1) Now I proceed to those errors and vanities which have intervened
amongst the studies themselves of the learned, which is that which is
principal and proper to the present argument; wherein my purpose is
not to make a justification of the errors, but by a censure and separation
of the errors to make a justification of that which is good and sound,
and to deliver that from the aspersion of the other. For we see
that it is the manner of men to scandalise and deprave that which retaineth
the state and virtue, by taking advantage upon that which is corrupt
and degenerate, as the heathens in the primitive Church used to blemish
and taint the Christians with the faults and corruptions of heretics.
But nevertheless I have no meaning at this time to make any exact animadversion
of the errors and impediments in matters of learning, which are more
secret and remote from vulgar opinion, but only to speak unto such as
do fall under or near unto a popular observation.
(2) There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning
hath been most traduced. For those things we do esteem vain which
are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth or no
use; and those persons we esteem vain which are either credulous or
curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: so that in reason
as well as in experience there fall out to be these three distempers
(as I may term them) of learning - the first, fantastical learning;
the second, contentious learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain
imaginations, vain altercations, and vain affectations; and with the
last I will begin. Martin Luther, conducted, no doubt, by a higher
Providence, but in discourse of reason, finding what a province he had
undertaken against the Bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions
of the Church, and finding his own solitude, being in nowise aided by
the opinions of his own time, was enforced to awake all antiquity, and
to call former times to his succours to make a party against the present
time. So that the ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity,
which had long time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and
revolved. This, by consequence, did draw on a necessity of a more
exquisite travail in the languages original, wherein those authors did
write, for the better understanding of those authors, and the better
advantage of pressing and applying their words. And thereof grew,
again, a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an admiration
of that kind of writing, which was much furthered and precipitated by
the enmity and opposition that the propounders of those primitive but
seeming new opinions had against the schoolmen, who were generally of
the contrary part, and whose writings were altogether in a differing
style and form; taking liberty to coin and frame new terms of art to
express their own sense, and to avoid circuit of speech, without regard
to the pureness, pleasantness, and (as I may call it) lawfulness of
the phrase or word. And again, because the great labour then was
with the people (of whom the Pharisees were wont to say, Execrabilis
ista turba, quæ non novit legem), for the winning and
persuading of them, there grew of necessity in chief price and request
eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and forciblest access
into the capacity of the vulgar sort; so that these four causes concurring
- the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the schoolmen, the
exact study of languages, and the efficacy of preaching - did bring
in an affectionate study of eloquence and copy of speech, which then
began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began
to hunt more after words than matter - more after the choiceness of
the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and
the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of
their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter,
worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth
of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius,
the Portugal bishop, to be in price. Then did Sturmius spend such
infinite and curious pains upon Cicero the Orator and Hermogenes the
Rhetorician, besides his own books of Periods and Imitation, and the
like. Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham with their lectures
and writings almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young
men that were studious unto that delicate and polished kind of learning.
Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing echo, Decem annos
consuumpsi in legendo Cicerone; and the echo answered in Greek,
One, Asine. Then grew the learning of the schoolmen
to be utterly despised as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination
and bent of those times was rather towards copy than weight.
(3) Here therefore [is] the first distemper of learning, when men study
words and not matter; whereof, though I have represented an example
of late times, yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus
in all time. And how is it possible but this should have an operation
to discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned
men’s works like the first letter of a patent or limited 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, and 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.
(4) But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be condemned,
to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible
and plausible elocution. For hereof we have great examples in
Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree;
and hereof likewise there is great use, for surely, to the severe inquisition
of truth and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance
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 the like, then shall
he find it prepared to his hands in those authors which write in that
manner. But the excess of this is so justly contemptible, that
as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus’ minion, in
a temple, said in disdain, Nil sacri 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 distemper of learning.
(5) The second which followeth is in nature worse than the former: for
as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise
vain matter is worse than vain words: wherein it seemeth the reprehension
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 profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones
falsi nominis scientiæ. For 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 subtle, idle, unwholesome,
and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, 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 colleges,
and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no
great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin 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 according 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, admirable
for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
(6) This same unprofitable subtility or 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 handling 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 confutation
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, Verborum minutiis
rerum frangit pondera, so a man may truly say of the schoolmen,
Quæstionum minutiis scientiarum frangunt soliditatem.
For were it not better for a man in 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,
examples, as upon particular confutations and solutions of every scruple,
cavillation, and objection; breeding for the most part 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 rest; 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 succinctam latrantibus inguina
monstris: so the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good
and proportionable; 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 knowledge must fall under
popular contempt, the people being apt to contemn truths 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
subtleties, and matters of no use or moment, they easily fall upon that
judgment of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba ista sunt senum otiosorum.
(7) 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 learning 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 works, and adored the deceiving
and deformed images which the unequal mirror of their own minds, or
a few received authors or principles, did represent unto them.
And thus much for the second disease of learning.
(8) 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 deceived; 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 -
“Percontatorem 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 creduntque:
so great an affinity hath fiction and belief.
(9) This facility of credit and accepting or admitting things weakly
authorised or warranted is of two kinds according to the subject: for
it is either a belief of history, or, as the lawyers speak, matter of
fact; or else of matter of art and opinion. As to the former,
we see the experience and inconvenience of this error in ecclesiastical
history; which hath too easily received and registered reports and narrations
of miracles wrought by martyrs, hermits, or monks of the desert, and
other holy men, and their relics, shrines, chapels and images: which
though they had a passage for a time by the ignorance of the people,
the superstitious simplicity of some and the politic toleration of others
holding them but as divine poesies, yet after a period of time, when
the mist began to clear up, they grew to be esteemed but as old wives’
fables, impostures of the clergy, illusions of spirits, and badges of
Antichrist, to the great scandal and detriment of religion.
(10) So in natural history, we see there hath not been that choice and
judgment used as ought to have been; as may appear in the writings of
Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and divers of the Arabians, being fraught
with much fabulous matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously
untrue, to the great derogation of the credit of natural philosophy
with the grave and sober kind of wits: wherein the wisdom and integrity
of Aristotle is worthy to be observed, that, having made so diligent
and exquisite a history of living creatures, hath mingled it sparingly
with any vain or feigned matter; and yet on the other side hath cast
all prodigious narrations, which he thought worthy the recording, into
one book, excellently discerning that matter of manifest truth, such
whereupon observation and rule was to be built, was not to be mingled
or weakened with matter of doubtful credit; and yet again, that rarities
and reports that seem uncredible are not to be suppressed or denied
to the memory of men.
(11) And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts and
opinions, it is likewise of two kinds; either when too much belief is
attributed to the arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art.
The sciences themselves, which have had better intelligence and confederacy
with the imagination of man than with his reason, are three in number:
astrology, natural magic, and alchemy; of which sciences, nevertheless,
the ends or pretences are noble. For astrology pretendeth to discover
that correspondence or concatenation which is between the superior globe
and the inferior; natural magic pretendeth to call and reduce natural
philosophy from variety of speculations to the magnitude of works; and
alchemy pretendeth to make separation of all the unlike parts of bodies
which in mixtures of natures are incorporate. But the derivations
and prosecutions to these ends, both in the theories and in the practices,
are full of error and vanity; which the great professors themselves
have sought to veil over and conceal by enigmatical writings, and referring
themselves to auricular traditions and such other devices, to save the
credit of impostures. And yet surely to alchemy this right is
due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Æsop makes
the fable; that, when he died, told his sons that he had left unto them
gold buried underground in his vineyard; and they digged over all the
ground, and gold they found none; but by reason of their stirring and
digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage
the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath
brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and
experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of
man’s life.
(12) And 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 furthest, and
time leeseth 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 industries 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, therefore,
although the position be good, Oportet discentem credere, yet
it must be coupled with this, Oportet edoctum judicare; for disciples
do owe unto masters only a temporary belief and a suspension of their
own judgment till they be fully instructed, and not an absolute resignation
or perpetual captivity; and therefore, 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 discover truth. Thus have I gone over these three
diseases of learning; besides 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 traducement, and, therefore, are not to be passed over.
V. (1) The first of these is the extreme affecting of two extremities:
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 seeketh 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 quænam sit via recta et bona et
ambulate in ea. Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men
should make a stand thereupon and discover what is the best way; but
when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression. And
to speak truly, Antiquitas sæculi juventus mundi.
These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not
those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation
backward from ourselves.
(2) Another error induced by the former is a distrust that anything
should be now to be found out, which the world should have missed and
passed over so long time: as if the same objection were to be made to
time that Lucian maketh to Jupiter and other the heathen gods; of which
he wondereth that they begot so many children in old time, and begot
none in his time; and asketh whether they were become septuagenary,
or whether the law Papia, made against old men’s
marriages, had restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt lest time
is become past children and generation; wherein contrariwise we see
commonly the levity and unconstancy of men’s judgments, which,
till a matter be done, wonder that it can be done; and as soon as it
is done, wonder again that it was no sooner done: as we see in the expedition
of Alexander into Asia, which at first was prejudged as a vast and impossible
enterprise; and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to make no more of it
than this, Nil aliud quàm bene ausus vana contemnere.
And the same happened to Columbus in the western navigation. But
in intellectual matters it is much more common, as may be seen in most
of the propositions of Euclid; which till they be demonstrate, they
seem strange to our assent; but being demonstrate, our mind accepteth
of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak), as if we had known
them before.
(3) Another error, that hath also some affinity with the former, is
a conceit that of former opinions or sects after variety and examination
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 rejection 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.
(4) Another error, of a diverse nature from all the former, is the over-early
and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods; from which
time commonly sciences receive small or no augmentation. But as
young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a further
stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it
is in growth; but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it
may, perchance, be further polished, and illustrate and accommodated
for use and practice, but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance.
(5) Another error which doth succeed that which we last mentioned is,
that after the distribution of particular arts and sciences, men have
abandoned universality, or philosophia prima, which cannot but
cease and stop all progression. For no perfect discovery can be
made upon a flat or a level; neither is it possible to discover the
more remote and deeper parts of any science if you stand but upon the
level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.
(6) Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence, and a kind
of adoration of the mind and understanding of man; by means whereof,
men have withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature,
and the observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in
their own reason and conceits. 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 volume 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.
(7) Another error that hath some connection with this latter is, that
men have used to infect their meditations, opinions, and doctrines with
some conceits which they have most admired, or some sciences which they
have most applied, and given all things else a tincture according to
them, utterly untrue and improper. So hath Plato intermingled
his philosophy with theology, and Aristotle with logic; and the second
school of Plato, Proclus and the rest, with the mathematics; for these
were the arts which had a kind of primogeniture with them severally.
So have the alchemists made a philosophy out of a few experiments of
the furnace; and Gilbertus our countryman hath made a philosophy out
of the observations of a loadstone. So Cicero, when reciting the
several opinions of the nature of the soul, he found a musician that
held the soul was but a harmony, saith pleasantly, Hic ab arte sua
non recessit, &c. But of these conceits Aristotle
speaketh seriously and wisely when he saith, Qui respiciunt ad pauca
de facili pronunciant.
(8) Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion
without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways
of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action 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.
(9) Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery of
knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and
not ingenuous and faithful; in a sort as may be soonest believed, and
not easiest examined. It is true, that in compendious 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, Nil tam metuens quam ne dubitare aliqua
de revideretur: nor, on the other side, into Socrates, his 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.
(10) 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 commentor, to be a sharp champion or defender, to be a methodical
compounder or abridger, and so the patrimony of knowledge cometh to
be sometimes improved, but seldom augmented.
(11) But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing
of the last or furthest end of knowledge. For men have 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 dignify 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 Jupiter,
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,
“Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit.” {1}
Neither is my meaning, as was spoken of Socrates, to call philosophy
down from heaven to converse upon the earth - that is, to leave natural
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.
(12) Thus have I described and opened, as by a kind of dissection, those
peccant humours (the principal of them) which have not only given impediment
to the proficience of learning, but have given also occasion to the
traducement thereof: wherein, if I have been too plain, it must be remembered,
fidelia vulnera amantis, sed dolosa oscula malignantis.
This I think I have gained, that I ought to be the better believed in
that which I shall say pertaining to commendation; because I have proceeded
so freely in that which concerneth censure. And yet I have no
purpose to enter into a laudative of learning, or to make a hymn to
the Muses (though I am of opinion that it is long since their rites
were duly celebrated), but my intent is, without varnish or amplification
justly to weigh the dignity of knowledge in the balance with other things,
and to take the true value thereof by testimonies and arguments, divine
and human.
VI. (1) First, therefore, 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 may be observed with sobriety;
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.
(2) 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 anything 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.
(3) To proceed, to that which is next in order from God, to spirits:
we find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy
of that supposed Dionysius, the senator of Athens, the first place or
degree is given to the angels of love, which are termed seraphim; the
second to the angels of light, which are termed cherubim; and the third,
and so following places, to thrones, principalities, and the rest, which
are all angels of power and ministry; so as this angels of knowledge
and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination.
(4) To descend from spirits and intellectual forms to sensible and material
forms, we read the first form that was created was light, which hath
a relation and correspondence in nature and corporal things to knowledge
in spirits and incorporal things.
(5) So in the distribution of days we see the day wherein God did rest
and contemplate His own works was blessed above all the days wherein
He did effect and accomplish them.
(6) 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 contemplation; that is, when the
end of work is but for exercise and experiment, not for necessity; for
there being then no reluctation of the creature, nor sweat of the brow,
man’s employment 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,
as was touched before, not the natural knowledge of creatures, but the
moral knowledge 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.
(7) To pass on: in the first event or occurrence after the fall of man,
we see (as the Scriptures have infinite mysteries, not violating at
all the truth of this story or letter) an image of the two estates,
the contemplative state and the active state, figured in the two persons
of Abel and Cain, and in the two simplest and most primitive trades
of life; that of the shepherd (who, by reason of his leisure, rest in
a place, and lying in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative
life), and that of the husbandman, where we see again the favour and
election of God went to the shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground.
(8) So in the age before the flood, the holy records within those few
memorials which are there entered and registered have vouchsafed to
mention and honour the name of the inventors and authors of music and
works in metal. In the age after the flood, the first great judgment
of God upon the ambition of man was the confusion of tongues; whereby
the open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge was chiefly
imbarred.
(9) 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 knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity
of knowledge.” Take a view of the ceremonial law of Moses;
you shall find, besides the prefiguration of Christ, the badge or difference
of the people of God, the exercise and impression of obedience, and
other divine uses 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 contagious 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 philosophy.
(10) So likewise in that excellent hook of Job, if it be revolved
with diligence, it will be found pregnant and swelling with natural
philosophy; as for example, cosmography, and the roundness of the world,
Qui extendit aquilonem super vacuum, et appendit terram super
nihilum; wherein the pensileness of the earth, the pole of the north,
and the finiteness or convexity of heaven are manifestly touched.
So again, matter of astronomy: Spiritus ejus ornavit cælos,
et obstetricante manu ejus eductus est Coluber tortuoses.
And in another place, Nunquid conjungere valebis micantes stellas
Pleiadas, aut gyrum Arcturi poteris dissipare? Where
the fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distance, is with great
elegancy noted. And in another place, Qui facit Arcturum,
et Oriona, et Hyadas, et interiora Austri; where again
he takes knowledge of the depression of the southern pole, calling it
the secrets of the south, because the southern stars were in that climate
unseen. Matter of generation: Annon sicut lac mulsisti me,
et sicut caseum coagulasti me? &c. Matter of minerals:
Habet argentum venarum suarum principia; et auro locus est in quo
conflatur, ferrum de terra tollitur, et lapis solutus
calore in æs vertitur; and so forwards in that chapter.
(11) 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; considering the great commandment of wits and means, whereby nothing
needeth to be hidden from them.
(12) 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 this Holy Spirit was chiefly figured
and expressed in the similitude and gift of tongues, which are but vehicula
scientiæ.
(13) So in the election of those instruments, which it pleased God to
use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that at the first
He did employ persons altogether unlearned, otherwise than by inspiration,
more evidently to declare His immediate working, and to abase all human
wisdom or 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 or 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.
(14) So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers of
the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learning of
this heathen; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor Julianus (whereby
it was interdicted unto Christians to be admitted into schools, lectures,
or exercises of learning) was esteemed and accounted a more pernicious
engine and machination against the Christian Faith than were all the
sanguinary prosecutions 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 learning,
which otherwise had been extinguished, as if no such thing had ever
been.
(15) And we see before our eyes, that in the age of ourselves and our
fathers, when it pleased God to call the Church of Rome to account for
their degenerate manners and ceremonies, and sundry doctrines obnoxious
and framed to uphold the same abuses; at one and the same time it was
ordained by the Divine Providence that there should attend withal a
renovation and new spring of all other knowledges. And on the
other side we see the Jesuits, who partly in themselves, and partly
by the emulation and provocation of their example, have much quickened
and strengthened the state of learning; we see (I say) what notable
service and reparation they have done to the Roman see.
(16) Wherefore, to conclude this part, let it be observed, that there
be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and illustration,
which philosophy and human learning do perform to faith and religion.
The one, because they are an effectual inducement to the exaltation
of the glory of God. For 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. For
our Saviour saith, “You err, not knowing the Scriptures, 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 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 therefore for divine
testimony and evidence concerning the true dignity and value of learning.
VII. (1) 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 veneration and adoration as a God.
This unto the Christians is as the forbidden fruit. But we speak
now separately of human testimony, according to which - that which the
Grecians call apotheosis, 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 Roman Emperors), but by an inward assent and belief.
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 tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent
persons in civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of worthies
or demigods, such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minus, Romulus, and the
like; on the other side, such as were inventors and authors 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.
(2) 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 nature, 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 listening unto the airs and
accords of the harp, the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned
by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein
is aptly described 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 books, 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.
(3) But this appeareth more manifestly when kings themselves, or persons
of authority under them, or other governors in commonwealths 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
kings may have their imperfections in their passions and customs, 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 counsellors and servants stand mute and silent. And
senators or counsellors, likewise, which be learned, to 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.
(4) Which felicity of times under learned princes (to keep still
the law of brevity, by using the most eminent and selected examples)
doth best appear in the age which passed from the death of Domitianus
the emperor until the reign of Commodus; comprehending a succession
of six princes, all learned, or singular favourers and advancers of
learning, which age for temporal respects was the most happy and flourishing
that ever the Roman Empire (which then was a model of the world) enjoyed
- a matter revealed and prefigured unto Domitian in a dream the night
before he was slain: for he thought there was grown behind upon his
shoulders a neck and a head of gold, which came accordingly to pass
in those golden times which succeeded; of which princes we will make
some commemoration; wherein, although the matter will be vulgar, and
may be thought fitter for a declamation than agreeable to a treatise
infolded as this is, yet, because it is pertinent to the point in hand
- Neque semper arcum tendit Apollo - and to name them only were
too naked and cursory, I will not omit it altogether. The first
was Nerva, the excellent temper of whose government is by a glance in
Cornelius Tacitus touched to the life: Postquam divus Nerva res oluim
insociabiles miscuisset, imperium et libertatem. And
in token of his learning, the last act of his short reign left to memory
was a missive to his adopted son, Trajan, proceeding upon some inward
discontent at the ingratitude of the times, comprehended in a verse
of Homer’s -
“Telis, Phœbe, tuis, lacrymas ulciscere nostras.”
(5) Trajan, who succeeded, was for his person not learned; but if we
will hearken to the speech of our Saviour, that saith, “He that
receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall have a prophet’s
reward,” he deserveth to be placed amongst the most learned princes;
for there was not a greater admirer of learning or benefactor of learning,
a founder of famous libraries, a perpetual advancer of learned men to
office, and familiar converser with learned professors and preceptors
who were noted to have then most credit in court. On the other
side how much Trajan’s virtue and government was admired and renowned,
surely no testimony of grave and faithful history doth more lively set
forth than that legend tale of Gregorius Magnum, Bishop of Rome, who
was noted for the extreme envy he bare towards all heathen excellency;
and yet he is reported, out of the love and estimation of Trajan’s
moral virtues, to have made unto God passionate and fervent prayers
for the delivery of his soul out of hell, and to have obtained it, with
a caveat that he should make no more such petitions. In this prince’s
time also the persecutions against the Christians received intermission
upon the certificate of Plinius Secundus, a man of excellent learning
and by Trajan advanced.
(6) Adrian, his successor, was the most curious man that lived, and
the most universal inquirer: insomuch as it was noted for an error in
his mind that he desired to comprehend all things, and not to reserve
himself for the worthiest things, falling into the like humour that
was long before noted in Philip of Macedon, who, when he would needs
overrule and put down an excellent musician in an argument touching
music, was well answered by him again - “God forbid, sir,”
saith he, “that your fortune should be so bad as to know these
things better than I.” It pleased God likewise to use the
curiosity of this emperor as an inducement to the peace of His Church
in those days; for having Christ in veneration, not as a God or Saviour,
but as a wonder or novelty, and having his picture in his gallery matched
with Apollonius (with whom in his vain imagination he thought its had
some conformity), yet it served the turn to allay the bitter hatred
of those times against the Christian name, so as the Church had peace
during his time. And for his government civil, although he did
not attain to that of Trajan’s in glory of arms or perfection
of justice, yet in deserving of the weal of the subject he did exceed
him. For Trajan erected many famous monuments and buildings, insomuch
as Constantine the Great in emulation was wont to call him Parietaria,
“wall-flower,” because his name was upon so many walls;
but his buildings and works were more of glory and triumph than use
and necessity. But Adrian spent his whole reign, which was peaceable,
in a perambulation or survey of the Roman Empire, giving order and making
assignation where he went for re-edifying of cities, towns, and forts
decayed, and for cutting of rivers and streams, and for making bridges
and passages, and for policing of cities and commonalties with new ordinances
and constitutions, and granting new franchises and incorporations; so
that his whole time was a very restoration of all the lapses and decays
of former times.
(7) Antoninus Pius, who succeeded him, was a prince excellently learned,
and had the patient and subtle wit of a schoolman, insomuch as in common
speech (which leaves no virtue untaxed) he was called Cymini
Sector, a carver or a divider of cummin seed, which is
one of the least seeds. Such a patience he had and settled spirit
to enter into the least and most exact differences of causes, a fruit
no doubt of the exceeding tranquillity and serenity of his mind, which
being no ways charged or encumbered, either with fears, remorses, or
scruples, but having been noted for a man of the purest goodness, without
all fiction or affectation, that hath reigned or lived, made his mind
continually present and entire. He likewise approached a degree
nearer unto Christianity, and became, as Agrippa said unto St. Paul,
“half a Christian,” holding their religion and law in good
opinion, and not only ceasing persecution, but giving way to the advancement
of Christians.
(5) There succeeded him the first Divi fratres, the two adoptive
brethren - Lucius Commodus Verus, son to Ælius Verus, who delighted
much in the softer kind of learning, and was wont to call the poet Martial
his Virgil; and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: whereof the latter, who obscured
his colleague and survived him long, was named the “Philosopher,”
who, as he excelled all the rest in learning, so he excelled them likewise
in perfection of all royal virtues; insomuch as Julianus the emperor,
in his book entitled Cærsares, being as a pasquil or satire
to deride all his predecessors, feigned that they were all invited to
a banquet of the gods, and Silenus the jester sat at the nether end
of the table and bestowed a scoff on everyone as they came in; but when
Marcus Philosophus came in, Silenus was gravelled and out of countenance,
not knowing where to carp at him, save at the last he gave a glance
at his patience towards his wife. And the virtue of this prince,
continued with that of his predecessor, made the name of Antoninus so
sacred in the world, that though it were extremely dishonoured in Commodus,
Caracalla, and Heliogabalus, who all bare the name, yet, when Alexander
Severus refused the name because he was a stranger to the family, the
Senate with one acclamation said, Quomodo Augustus, sic et Antoninus.
In such renown and veneration was the name of these two princes in those
days, that they would have had it as a perpetual addition in all the
emperors’ style. In this emperor’s time also the Church
for the most part was in peace; so as in this sequence of six princes
we do see the blessed effects of learning in sovereignty, painted forth
in the greatest table of the world.
(9) But for a tablet or picture of smaller volume (not presuming to
speak of your Majesty that liveth), in my judgment the most excellent
is that of Queen Elizabeth, your immediate predecessor in this part
of Britain; a prince that, if Plutarch were now alive to write lives
by parallels, would trouble him, I think, to find for her a parallel
amongst women. This lady was endued with learning in her sex singular,
and rare even amongst masculine princes - whether we speak of learning,
of language, or of science, modern or ancient, divinity or humanity
- and unto the very last year of her life she accustomed to appoint
set hours for reading, scarcely any young student in a university more
daily or more duly. As for her government, I assure myself (I
shall not exceed if I do affirm) that this part of the island never
had forty-five years of better tines, and yet not through the calmness
of the season, but through the wisdom of her regiment. For if
there be considered, of the one side, the truth of religion established,
the constant peace and security, the good administration of justice,
the temperate use of the prerogative, not slackened, nor much strained;
the flourishing state of learning, sortable to so excellent a patroness;
the convenient estate of wealth and means, both of crown and subject;
the habit of obedience, and the moderation of discontents; and there
be considered, on the other side, the differences of religion, the troubles
of neighbour countries, the ambition of Spain, and opposition of Rome,
and then that she was solitary and of herself; these things, I say,
considered, as I could not have chosen an instance so recent and so
proper, so I suppose I could not have chosen one more remarkable or
eminent to the purpose now in hand, which is concerning the conjunction
of learning in the prince with felicity in the people.
(10) Neither hath learning an influence and operation only upon civil
merit and moral virtue, and the arts or temperature of peace and peaceable
government; but likewise it hath no less power and efficacy in enablement
towards martial and military virtue and prowess, as may be notably represented
in the examples of Alexander the Great and Cæsar the Dictator
(mentioned before, but now in fit place to be resumed), of whose virtues
and acts in war there needs no note or recital, having been the wonders
of time in that kind; but of their affections towards learning and perfections
in learning it is pertinent to say somewhat.
(11) Alexander was bred and taught under Aristotle, the great philosopher,
who dedicated divers of his books of philosophy unto him; he was attended
with Callisthenes and divers other learned persons, that followed him
in camp, throughout his journeys and conquests. What price and
estimation he had learning in doth notably appear in these three particulars:
first, in the envy he used to express that he bare towards Achilles,
in this, that he had so good a trumpet of his praises as Homer’s
verses; secondly, in the judgment or solution he gave touching that
precious cabinet of Darius, which was found among his jewels (whereof
question was made what thing was worthy to be put into it, and he gave
his opinion for Homer’s works); thirdly, in his letter to Aristotle,
after he had set forth his books of nature, wherein he expostulateth
with him for publishing the secrets or mysteries of philosophy; and
gave him to understand that himself esteemed it more to excel other
men in learning and knowledge than in power and empire. And what
use he had of learning doth appear, or rather shine, in all his speeches
and answers, being full of science and use of science, and that in all
variety.
(12) And herein again it may seem a thing scholastical, and somewhat
idle to recite things that every man knoweth; but yet, since the argument
I handle leadeth me thereunto, I am glad that men shall perceive I am
as willing to flatter (if they will so call it) an Alexander, or a Cæsar,
or an Antoninus, that are dead many hundred years since, as any that
now liveth; for it is the displaying of the glory of learning in sovereignty
that I propound to myself, and not a humour of declaiming in any man’s
praises. Observe, then, the speech he used of Diogenes, and see
if it tend not to the true state of one of the greatest questions of
moral philosophy: whether the enjoying of outward things, or the contemning
of them, be the greatest happiness; for when he saw Diogenes so perfectly
contented with so little, he said to those that mocked at his condition,
“were I not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.”
But Seneca inverteth it, and saith, “Plus erat, quod hic nollet
accipere, quàm quod ille posset dare.” There
were more things which Diogenes would have refused than those were which
Alexander could have given or enjoyed.
(13) Observe, again, that speech which was usual with him, - “That
he felt his mortality chiefly in two things, sleep and lust;”
and see if it were not a speech extracted out of the depth of natural
philosophy, and liker to have come out of the mouth of Aristotle or
Democritus than from Alexander.
(14) See, again, that speech of humanity and poesy, when, upon the bleeding
of his wounds, he called unto him one of his flatterers, that was wont
to ascribe to him divine honour, and said, “Look, this is very
blood; this is not such a liquor as Homer speaketh of, which ran from
Venus’ hand when it was pierced by Diomedes.”
(15) See likewise his readiness in reprehension of logic in the speech
he used to Cassander, upon a complaint that was made against his father
Antipater; for when Alexander happened to say, “Do you think these
men would have come from so far to complain except they had just cause
of grief?” and Cassander answered, “Yea, that was the matter,
because they thought they should not be disproved;” said Alexander,
laughing, “See the subtleties of Aristotle, to take a matter both
ways, pro et contra, &c.”
(16) But note, again, how well he could use the same art which he reprehended
to serve his own humour: when bearing a secret grudge to Callisthenes,
because he was against the new ceremony of his adoration, feasting one
night where the same Callisthenes was at the table, it was moved by
some after supper, for entertainment sake, that Callisthenes, who was
an eloquent man, might speak of some theme or purpose at his own choice;
which Callisthenes did, choosing the praise of the Macedonian nation
for his discourse, and performing the same with so good manner as the
hearers were much ravished; whereupon Alexander, nothing pleased, said,
“It was easy to be eloquent upon so good a subject; but,”
saith he, “turn your style, and let us hear what you can say against
us;” which Callisthenes presently undertook, and did with that
sting and life that Alexander interrupted him, and said, “The
goodness of the cause made him eloquent before, and despite made him
eloquent then again.”
(17) Consider further, for tropes of rhetoric, that excellent use of
a metaphor or translation, wherewith he taxeth Antipater, who was an
imperious and tyrannous governor; for when one of Antipater’s
friends commended him to Alexander for his moderation, that he did not
degenerate as his other lieutenants did into the Persian pride, in uses
of purple, but kept the ancient habit of Macedon, of black. “True,”
saith Alexander; “but Antipater is all purple within.”
Or that other, when Parmenio came to him in the plain of Arbela and
showed him the innumerable multitude of his enemies, specially as they
appeared by the infinite number of lights as it had been a new firmament
of stars, and thereupon advised him to assail them by night; whereupon
he answered, “That he would not steal the victory.”
(18) For matter of policy, weigh that significant distinction, so much
in all ages embraced, that he made between his two friends Hephæstion
and Craterus, when he said, “That the one loved Alexander, and
the other loved the king:” describing the principal difference
of princes’ best servants, that some in affection love their person,
and other in duty love their crown.
(19) Weigh also that excellent taxation of an error, ordinary with counsellors
of princes, that they counsel their masters according to the model of
their own mind and fortune, and not of their masters. When upon
Darius’ great offers Parmenio had said, “Surely I would
accept these offers were I as Alexander;” saith Alexander, “So
would I were I as Parmenio.”
(20) Lastly, weigh that quick and acute reply which he made when he
gave so large gifts to his friends and servants, and was asked what
he did reserve for himself, and he answered, “Hope.”
Weigh, I say, whether he had not cast up his account aright, because
hope must be the portion of all that resolve upon great enterprises;
for this was Cæsar’s portion when he went first into Gaul,
his estate being then utterly overthrown with largesses. And this
was likewise the portion of that noble prince, howsoever transported
with ambition, Henry Duke of Guise, of whom it was usually said that
he was the greatest usurer in France, because he had turned all his
estate into obligations.
(21) To conclude, therefore, as certain critics are used to say hyperbolically,
“That if all sciences were lost they might be found in Virgil,”
so certainly this may be said truly, there are the prints and footsteps
of learning in those few speeches which are reported of this prince,
the admiration of whom, when I consider him not as Alexander the Great,
but as Aristotle’s scholar, hath carried me too far.
(22) As for Julius Cæsar, the excellency of his learning needeth
not to be argued from his education, or his company, or his speeches;
but in a further degree doth declare itself in his writings and works:
whereof some are extant and permanent, and some unfortunately perished.
For first, we see there is left unto us that excellent history of his
own wars, which he entitled only a Commentary, wherein all succeeding
times have admired the solid weight of matter, and the real passages
and lively images of actions and persons, expressed in the greatest
propriety of words and perspicuity of narration that ever was; which
that it was not the effect of a natural gift, but of learning and precept,
is well witnessed by that work of his entitled De Analogia, being
a grammatical philosophy, wherein he did labour to make this same Vox
ad placitum to become Vox ad licitum, and to reduce custom
of speech to congruity of speech; and took as it were the pictures of
words from the life of reason.
(23) So we receive from him, as a monument both of his power and learning,
the then reformed computation of the year; well expressing that he took
it to be as great a glory to himself to observe and know the law of
the heavens, as to give law to men upon the earth.
(24) So likewise in that book of his, Anti-Cato, it may
easily appear that he did aspire as well to victory of wit as victory
of war: undertaking therein a conflict against the greatest champion
with the pen that then lived, Cicero the orator.
(25) So, again, in his book of Apophthegms, which he collected, we see
that he esteemed it more honour to make himself but a pair of tables,
to take the wise and pithy words of others, than to have every word
of his own to be made an apophthegm or an oracle, as vain princes, by
custom of flattery, pretend to do. And yet if I should enumerate
divers of his speeches, as I did those of Alexander, they are truly
such as Solomon noteth, when he saith, Verba sapientum tanquam aculei,
et tanquam clavi in altum defixi: whereof I will only recite three,
not so delectable for elegancy, but admirable for vigour and efficacy.
(26) As first, it is reason he be thought a master of words, that could
with one word appease a mutiny in his army, which was thus: The Romans,
when their generals did speak to their army, did use the word Milites,
but when the magistrates spake to the people they did use the word
Quirites. The soldiers were in tumult, and seditiously
prayed to be cashiered; not that they so meant, but by expostulation
thereof to draw Cæsar to other conditions; wherein he being resolute
not to give way, after some silence, he began his speech, Ego Quirites,
which did admit them already cashiered - wherewith they were so
surprised, crossed, and confused, as they would not suffer him to go
on in his speech, but relinquished their demands, and made it their
suit to be again called by the name of Milites.
(27) The second speech was thus: Cæsar did extremely affect the
name of king; and some were set on as he passed by in popular acclamation
to salute him king. Whereupon, finding the cry weak and poor,
he put it off thus, in a kind of jest, as if they had mistaken his surname:
Non Rex sum, sed Cæsar; a speech that, if it be
searched, the life and fulness of it can scarce be expressed.
For, first, it was a refusal of the name, but yet not serious; again,
it did signify an infinite confidence and magnanimity, as if he presumed
Cæsar