Advancement of Learning 55 



and private virtue: first, it is an assured truth, which is 

 contained in the verses : 



Scilicet ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, 

 Emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros. 1 



It taketh away the wildness and barbarism and fierceness *-*. 

 of men s minds; but indeed the accent had need be upon * 

 fideliter : for a little superficial learning doth rather work 

 a contrary effect. It taketh away all levity, temerity, and 

 insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficul 

 ties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both 

 sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the 

 mind, and to accept of nothing but examined and tried. 

 It taketh away vain admiration of anything, which is the 

 root of all weakness: for all things are admired either 

 because they are new, or because they are great. For 

 novelty, no man that wadeth in learning or contemplation 

 thoroughly, but will find that printed in his heart Nil novi 

 super terrain. 3 Neither can any man marvel at the play of 

 puppets, that goeth behind the curtain, and adviseth well 

 of the motion. And for magnitude, as Alexander the Great, 

 after that he was used to great armies, and the great con 

 quests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when he received 

 letters out of Greece, of some fights and services there, 

 which were commonly for a passage or a fort, or some walled 

 town at the most, he said, // seemed to him that he was 

 advertised of the Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, that the old 

 tales went of. 3 So certainly, if a man meditate much upon 

 the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it 

 (the divineness of souls except,) will not seem much other 

 than an ant-hill, whereas some ants carry corn, and some 

 carry their young, and some go empty, and all to-and-fro a 

 little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of 

 death, or adverse fortune; which is one of the greatest 

 impediments of virtue, and imperfections of manners. For 

 if a man s mind be deeply seasoned with the consideration 

 of the mortality and corruptible nature of things, he will 

 easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day and 

 saw a woman weeping for her pitcher of earth that was 



1 Ov. Ep. Pont. ii. ix. 47. 2 Eccl. i. 9. 



tivo/j.axia,. Plut. Ages. c. 15. 



