ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



losophy, and the other Cicero s rival in eloquence; and 

 again, Bpaminondas and Xenophon, the one whereof first 

 abated the power of Sparta, and the other first paved the 

 way for subverting the Persian monarchy. This concur 

 rence of learning and arms, is yet more visible in times 

 than in persons, as an age exceeds a man. For in Egypt, 

 Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, the times most famous 

 for arms are likewise most admired for learning ; so that the 

 greatest authors and philosophers, the greatest leaders and 

 governors, have lived in the same ages. Nor can it well 

 be otherwise; for as the fulness of human strength, both 

 in body and mind, conies nearly at an age; so arms and 

 learning, one whereof corresponds to the body, the other 

 to the soul, have a near concurrence in point of time. 



2. And that learning should rather prove detrimental 

 than serviceable in the art of government, seems very im 

 probable. It is wrong to trust the natural body to empirics, 

 who commonly have a few receipts whereon they rely, but 

 who know neither the causes of diseases, nor the constitu 

 tions of patients, nor the danger of accidents, nor the true 

 methods of cure. And so it must needs be dangerous to 

 have the civil body of States managed by empirical states 

 men, unless well mixed with others who are grounded in 

 learning. On the contrary, it is almost without instance, 

 that any government was unprosperous under learned gov 

 ernors. For however common it has been with politicians 

 to discredit learned men, by the name of pedants, yet it 

 appears from history, that the governments of princes in 

 minority have excelled the governments of princes in ma 

 turity, merely because the management was in learned 

 hands. The State of Rome for the first five years, so much 

 magnified, during the minority of Nero, was in the hands 

 of Seneca, a pedant: so it was for ten years, during the 

 minority of Gordianus the younger, with great applause in 

 the hands of Misitheus, a pedant; and it was as happy 

 before that, in the minority of Alexander Severus, under 

 the rule of women, assisted by preceptors. And to look 



