14 Bacon 



ence should be a surer obligation than ,dutv_taught and 

 understood, it is to affirm, that a blind man may tread surer 

 by aTguide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is 

 without all controversy, that learning doth make thejninds 

 of men gentle, generous, mam able. 1 and pliant to govern 

 ment; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and 

 mutinous : and the evidence of time doth clear this asser 

 tion, considering that the most barbarous, rude. and_un- 

 jearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, 



/7} And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was 

 well punished for his blasphemy againsOTearning, in the 

 same kind wherein he offendecf; 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 

 gLffpctp(j[_gravity, than according to the inwajd. sense of-his 

 .own opinion^ And as tor \/ ir g&quot; s verses fhrmgh it pleased 

 him to brave the world in taking to the Romans the art of 

 empire, and leaving to others the art of subjects; (yet so 

 much is manifest that the Romans ppyer 

 hejght of ejre. the time they 



^ 



of_other arts, i^or 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 historio 

 grapher, Titus Livius; the best antiquary, Marcus Varro;j 

 and the best, or second orator, Marcus Cicero, that to the t 

 memory of man are known} As for the accusation^ of^ 

 Socrates, the time must be remembered when it was prose 

 cuted; which was under the Thirty Tyrants, the most base, 

 bloody, and envious persons that have governed; which 

 revolution nf statp was no sooner over, but Socrates, whom 

 they had made a person criminal, was made a person hero- 

 jcalj and his memory accumulate with honours divine and 

 human; and those discourses of his whih-were then termed 

 corrupting of manners, were after acknowledged for 

 ejgn medicines of the&quot; mind and manners arM ^ hRv 

 received ever sincetill this day. Let this, therefore, serve 



1 The edition of 1605 reads amiable, that of 1633 maniable. The 

 latter word answers best to the Latin, artes teneros reddunt, 

 sequaces, cereos. 



