The Proficience and Advancement of Learning | Page 8

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