3o ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. [bOOK 1. 



If it be objected, that learning takes up much time, which 

 might be better employed, I answer that the most active or 

 busy men have many vacant hours, while they expect the 

 tides and returns of business; and then the question is, how 

 those spaces of leisure shall be filled up, whether with plea 

 sure or study 1 ? Demosthenes being taunted by ^Eschines, a 

 man of pleasure, that his speeches smelt of the lamp, very 

 pertly retorted, &quot; There is great difference between the objects 

 which you and I pursue by lamp-light.&quot; b No fear, therefore, 

 that learning should displace business, for it rather keeps 

 and defends the mind against idleness and pleasure, which 

 might otherwise enter to the prejudice both of business and 

 learning. 5. For the allegation that learning should under 

 mine the reverence due to laws and government, it i a mere 

 calumny, without shadow of truth; for to say that blind 

 custom of obedience should be a safer obligation than duty, 

 taught and understood, is to say that a blind man may tread 

 surer by a guide than a man with his eyes open can by a 

 light. And, doubtless, learning makes the mind gentle and 

 pliable to government, whereas ignorance renders it churlish 

 and mutinous; and it is always found that the most bar 

 barous, rude, and ignorant times have been most tumultuous, 

 changeable, and seditious. 



G. As to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was punished 

 for his contempt of learning, in the kind wherein he of 

 fended, for when past threescore the humour took him to 

 learn Greek, which shows that his former censure of the 

 Grecian learning was rather an affected gravity than his 

 inward sense. And, indeed, the Romans never arrived at 

 their height of empire till they had arrived at their height 

 of arts; for in the time of the two first Ccesars, when their 

 government was in its greatest perfection, there lived the 

 best poet, Virgil; the best historiographer, Livy; the best 

 antiquary, Varro ; and the best, or second best orator, Cicero, 

 that the world has known. And as to the persecution of 

 Socrates, the time must be remembered in which it occurred, 

 viz., under the reign of the Thirty Tyrants, of all mortals the 

 bloodiest and basest that ever reigned, since the government 



Plutarch s Life of Demosthenes, not said of JEscmnes, bat 

 Pytheas. 

 * c Plutarch s M. Cato. 



