24 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. {IIl.6. 
than any versatile advantage of their own carriage. But. 
for this point of tender sense and fast obligation of duty 
which learning doth endue the mind withal, howsoever 
fortune may tax it, and many in the depth of their corrupt 
principles may despise it, yet it will receive an open 
allowance, and therefore needs the less disproof or ex- 
cusation. * 
4. Another fault incident commonly to learned: men, 
which may be more probably defended than truly denied, 
is, that they fail sometimes in applying themselves to 
particular persons : : which want —ofexact application 
ariseth from two causes ; ; the one, because the largeness 
of their-mind can hardly confine itself to dwell in the 
exquisite observation or examination of the nature and 
customs of one person: for it is a speech for a lover, and 
not for a wise man, Sa/zs magnum alter altert theatrum 
sumus. Nevertheless I shall yield, that he that cannot 
contract the sight of his mind as well as disperse and 
dilate it, wanteth a great faculty. But there is a second 
cause, which is no inability, but a rejection upon choice 
and judgement. For the honest and just bounds of ob- 
servation by one person upon another, extend no further 
but to understand him sufficiently, whereby not to give 
him offence, or whereby to be able to give him faithful 
counsel, or whereby to stand upon reasonable guard and 
caution in respect of a man’s self. But to be speculative 
into another man to the end to know how to work him, or 
wind him, or govern him, proceedeth from a heart that is 
double and cloven and not entire and ingenuous; which 
as in friendship it is want of integrity, so towards princes 
or superiors is want of duty. For the custom of the 
Levant, which is that subjects do forbear to gaze or 
fix their eyes upon princes, is in the outward ceremony 
