56 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



It taketh away the wildness and barbarism and fierceness ot 

 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 difficulties, and acquaint 

 ing the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turnback 

 the first offers and conceits of the mind, and to accept of 

 nothing but examined and tried. It taketh away vain ad 

 miration 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 throughly but will find that printed in his 

 heart, Nil novi super terrain. Neither can any man marvel at 

 the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain, and ad- 

 viseth well of the motion. And for magnitude, as Alexander 

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

 great conquests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when lie 

 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 : &quot;It seemed to him that he was 

 advertised of the battles of the frogs and the mice, that the 

 old tales went of.&quot; 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 impedi 

 ments of virtue and imperfections of manners. For if a man s 

 mind be deeply seasoned with the consideration of the mor 

 tality 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 broken, and went 

 forth the next day and saw a woman weeping for her son that 

 was dead, and thereupon said, &quot; Heri vidifragilemfrangi, hodie 

 vidi mortaletn mori.&quot; And, therefore, Virgil did excellently 

 and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the con 

 quest of all fears together, as concomitantia. 



&quot; Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere cansas,, 

 Quiquo iiictns onuics, et inexorabik fa turn 

 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.&quot; 



(2) It were too long to go over the particular remedies 

 which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind : 

 sometimes purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the 



