ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 341 



government of states, though learned men acquit themselves 

 well when advanced to the helm, yet this promotion hap 

 pens to few of them; but for the present subject, the pru 

 dence of business, upon which our lives principally turn, 

 there are no books extant about it, except a few civil ad 

 monitions, collected into a little volume or two, by no means 

 adequate to the copiousness of the subject. But if books 

 were written upon this subject as upon others, we doubt not 

 that learned men, furnished with tolerable experience, would 

 far excel the unlearned, furnished with much greater experi 

 ence, and outshoot them in their own bow. 



Nor need we apprehend that the matter of this science is 

 too various to fall under precept, for it is much less exten 

 sive than the doctrine of government, which yet we find 

 very well cultivated. There seem to have been some pro 

 fessors of this kind of prudence among the Eomans in their 

 best days; for Cicero declares it was the custom, a little be 

 fore his time, among the Senators most famous for knowl 

 edge and experience, as Coruncanius, Curius, Laelius, etc., 

 to walk the forum at certain hours, where they offered them 

 selves to be consulted by the people, not so much upon law, 

 but upon business of all kinds; as the marriage of a daugh 

 ter, the education of a son, the purchasing of an estate, and 

 other occasions of common life. 1 Whence it appears, that 

 there is a certain prudence of advising even in private affairs, 

 and derivable from a universal knowledge of civil business, 

 experience, and general observation of similar cases. So 

 we find the book which Q. Cicero wrote to his brother, De 

 Petitione Consulatus (the only treatise, so far as we know, 

 extant upon any particular business), though it regarded 

 chiefly the giving advice upon that present occasion, yet 

 contains many particular axioms of politics, which were not 

 only of temporary use, but prescribe a certain permanent 

 rule for popular elections. But in this kind, there is noth 

 ing any way comparable to the aphorisms of Solomon, of 

 whom the Scripture bears testimony, that &quot;his heart was as 



1 Orat. iii. 33. 



