The Advancement of Learning
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, seditions, 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