CXXXli LIFE OF BACON. 



unto man s nature doth most aspire, which is, immortality 

 or continuance : for to this tendeth generation, and raising 

 of houses and families ; to this buildings, foundations, and 

 monuments ; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, 

 and celebration, and in effect the strength of all other 

 human desires. We see then how far the monuments of 

 wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of 

 power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer 

 continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the 

 loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite 

 palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and 

 destroyed ? It is not possible to have the true pictures or 

 statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Csesar ; no, nor of the kings 

 or great personages of much later years ; for the originals 

 cannot last, and the copies cannot but leese of the life 

 and truth : but the images of men s wits and knowledges 

 remain in books exempted from the wrong of time, and 

 capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to 

 be called images, because they generate still, and cast their 

 seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite 

 actions and opinions in succeeding ages ; so that, if the 

 invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth 

 riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth 

 the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, 

 how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, 

 pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so 

 distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations and 

 inventions, the one of the other?&quot; 



After having thus explained some of the blessings at 

 tendant upon knowledge, he concludes the first book with 

 lamenting that these blessings are not more generally 

 preferred, (a) 



(a) See ante, page xi. 



