|
|
Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England
Contents:
Show Summary
Hide Summary
Historical SummaryThe thoughtfulness, insight, wit, and eloquence of Bacon can be seen in the following, — one of the most familiar of his Essays.
ARBER, English Reprints; Bacon’s Essays, pp. 7–13. World History IV.
FRANCIS BACON AND WALTER RALEIGH
259. Bacon’s Essay on Studies
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament is in discourse; and for ability is in the judgment and disposition of business: for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: "Abeunt studio in mores"; nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and the like. So if a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics, for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not able to distinguish or find difference, let him study the schoolmen, for they are Cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers’ cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.
Contents:
Chicago: "Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh," Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England in Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, ed. Edward Potts Cheyney (1861-1947) (Boston: Ginn, 1935, 1922), 436–437. Original Sources, accessed December 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GX4HUAMLLBZEG8T.
MLA: . "Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh." Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, in Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, edited by Edward Potts Cheyney (1861-1947), Boston, Ginn, 1935, 1922, pp. 436–437. Original Sources. 21 Dec. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GX4HUAMLLBZEG8T.
Harvard: , 'Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh' in Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England. cited in 1922, Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, ed. , Ginn, 1935, Boston, pp.436–437. Original Sources, retrieved 21 December 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GX4HUAMLLBZEG8T.
|