16 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



tion, which otherwise would wear ; or because it 

 putteth them in mind of their fortune, and giveth 

 them occasion to pleasure and displeasure ; or because 

 it exerciseth some faculty wherein they take pride, 

 and so entertaineth them in good humour and pleasing 

 conceits toward themselves ; or because it advanceth 

 any other their ends. So that as it is said of untrue 

 valours, that some men s valours are in the eyes of 

 them that look on ; so such men s industries are in 

 the eyes of others, or at least in regard of their own 

 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 hi 

 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 business (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 Aeschines, 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 do by 



