Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
Yet beware of being too material when there is any impediment, or
obstruction in men’s wills; for preoccupation of mind[295] ever
requireth preface of speech, like a fomentation to make the unguent
enter.
Above all things, order and distribution, and singling out of parts,
is the life of dispatch, so as the distribution be not too subtile;
for he that doth not divide will never enter well into business; and
he that divideth too much will never come out of it clearly. To choose
time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the
air. There be three parts of business,—the preparation; the debate, or
examination; and the perfection. Whereof, if you look for dispatch, let
the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of
few. The proceeding, upon somewhat conceived in writing, doth for the
most part facilitate dispatch; for though it should be wholly rejected,
yet that negative is more pregnant of direction than an indefinite, as
ashes are more generative than dust.
XXVI.—OF SEEMING WISE.
It hath been an opinion, that the French are wiser than they seem,
and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be
between nations, certainly it is so between man and man; for, as the
apostle saith of godliness, “Having a show of godliness, but denying
the power thereof,”[296] so certainly there are, in points of wisdom
and sufficiency, that do nothing, or little very solemnly,—“magno
conatu nugas.”[297] It is a ridiculous thing, and fit for a satire to
persons of judgment, to see what shifts these formalists have, and
what prospectives to make superficies to seem body, that hath depth
and bulk. Some are so close and reserved, as they will not show their
wares but by a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat; and
when they know within themselves they speak of that they do not well
know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of that which they may
not well speak. Some help themselves with countenance and gesture, and
are wise by signs; as Cicero saith of Piso, that when he answered him,
he fetched one of his brows up to his forehead, and bent the other
down to his chin: “Respondes, altero ad frontem sublato, altero ad
mentum depresso supercilio; crudelitatem tibi non placere.”[298] Some
think to bear it by speaking a great word, and being peremptory; and
go on, and take by admittance that which they cannot make good. Some,
whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise or make light of
it as impertinent or curious, and so would have their ignorance seem
judgment. Some are never without a difference, and commonly by amusing
men with a subtilty, blanch the matter; of whom A. Gellius saith,
“Hominem delirum, qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera.”[299]
Of which kind also Plato, in his Protagoras, bringeth in Prodicus in
scorn, and maketh him make a speech that consisteth of distinctions
from the beginning to the end.[300] Generally such men, in all
deliberations, find ease to be[301] of the negative side, and affect a
credit to object and foretell difficulties; for when propositions are
denied, there is an end of them, but if they be allowed, it requireth
a new work; which false point of wisdom is the bane of business. To
conclude, there is no decaying merchant, or inward beggar,[302] hath
so many tricks to uphold the credit of their wealth, as these empty
persons have to maintain the credit of their sufficiency. Seeming wise
men may make shift to get opinion, but let no man choose them for
employment; for certainly, you were better take for business a man
somewhat absurd than over-formal.
XXVII.—OF FRIENDSHIP.
It had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and
untruth together in few words than in that speech: “Whosoever is
delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god:”[303] for it
is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards
society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most
untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature,
except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love
and desire to sequester a man’s self for a higher conversation; such
as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen;
as Epimenides,[304] the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the
Sicilian; and Apollonius, of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of
the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. But little do men
perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is
not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a
tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with
it a little: “Magna civitas, magna solitudo:”[305] because in a great
town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for
the most part, which is in less neighborhoods: but we may go further,
and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want
true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in
this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and
affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beasts, and not
from humanity.
A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the
fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do
cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are
the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the
mind. You may take sarza[306] to open the liver, steel to open the
spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum[307] for the brain,
but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may
impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever
lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or
confession.
It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and
monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak; so
great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety
and greatness; for princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune
from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit,
except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to
be as it were companions, and almost equals to themselves, which many
times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such
persons the name of favorites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of
grace or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth the true use and
cause thereof, naming them “participes curarum;”[308] for it is that
which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not
by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic
that ever reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of
their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed
others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which
is received between private men.
L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed
the Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla’s
overmatch; for when he had carried the consulship for a friend of
his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent
thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and,
in effect, bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising
than the sun setting.[309] With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus had
obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir
in remainder after his nephew; and this was the man that had power
with him to draw him forth to his death; for when Cæsar would have
discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a
dream of Calphurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his
chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his
wife had dreamt a better dream;[310] and it seemeth his favor was so
great, as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of
Cicero’s Philippics, calleth him _venefica_, “witch,” as if he had
enchanted Cæsar.[311] Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to
that height, as, when he consulted with Mæcenas about the marriage of
his daughter Julia, Mæcenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must
either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life; there was
no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus
had ascended to that height, as they two were termed and reckoned
as a pair of friends. Tiberius, in a letter to him, saith, “Hæc pro
amicitiâ nostrâ non occultavi;”[312] and the whole senate dedicated
an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great
dearness of friendship between them two. The like, or more, was between
Septimius Severus and Plautianus; for he forced his eldest son to
marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain Plautianus
in doing affronts to his son; and did write, also, in a letter to the
senate, by these words: “I love the man so well, as I wish he may
over-live me.”[313] Now, if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a
Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of
an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise,[314] of such
strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves,
as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own
felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an
half-piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire; and yet,
which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet
all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.
It is not to be forgotten what Comineus[315] observeth of his first
master, Duke Charles the Hardy,[316] namely, that he would communicate
his secrets with none, and, least of all, those secrets which troubled
him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith, that towards his latter
time, that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding.
Surely, Comineus might have made the same judgment, also, if it had
pleased him, of his second master, Louis the Eleventh, whose closeness
was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true:
“Cor ne edito,” “eat not the heart.”[317] Certainly, if a man would
give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto
are cannibals of their own hearts; but one thing is most admirable
(wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which
is, that this communicating of a man’s self to his friend works two
contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves;
for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he
joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend,
but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a
man’s mind of like virtue as the alchemists used to attribute to their
stone for man’s body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still
to the good and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying in aid of
alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of
nature; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural
action; and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent
impression; and even so it is of minds.
The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the
understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship
maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests,
but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and
confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of
faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before
you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught
with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break