The Proficience and Advancement of Learning | Page 9

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 AEschines, 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 Caesars, 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,