OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [ll. 5. 



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: Quidam tarn sunt umbratiles, ut putent 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 ^Eschines, 

 that was a man given to pleasure and told him That his 

 orations did smell of the lamp ; Indeed (said Demosthenes) 

 there is a great difference between the things that you and I 



I do by lamp-light. So as no man need doubt that learning 

 ijwill 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 



