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16 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [l. 5. 
own designments: only learned men love business as 
an action according to nature, as agreeable to health of 
mind 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: Qucdam tam sunt umbratiles, ut pultent 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 busi- 
ness (except he be either tedious and of no dispatch, 
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 pleasures or in studies; as was 
well answered by Demosthenes to his adversary Aischines, 
that was a man given to pleasure and told him Zhat his 
orations did smell of the lamp ; Indeed (said Demosthenes) 
there ts a great difference between the things that you and I 
do by lamp-light. So as no man need doubt that learning 
will expulse 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 
