ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 81 



To proceed from imperial and military, to moral and 

 private virtue; it is certain that learning softens the bar 

 barity and fierceness of men s minds, according to the poet, 



&quot;Scilicet ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes 

 Emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros. &quot; m 



But then it must not be superficial, for this rather works a 

 contrary effect. Solid learning prevents all levity, temer 

 ity, and insolence, by suggesting doubts and difficulties, 

 and inuring the mind to balance the reasons on both sides, 

 and reject the first offers of things, or to accept of nothing 

 but what is first examined and tried. It prevents vain ad 

 miration, which is the root of all weakness: things being 

 admired either because they are new, or because they are 

 great. As for novelty, no man can wade deep in learning, 

 without discovering that he knows nothing thoroughly; nor 

 can we wonder at a puppet-show, if we look behind the 

 curtain. With regard to greatness; as Alexander, after 

 having been used to great armies, and the conquests of 

 large provinces in Asia, when he received accounts of bat 

 tles from Greece, which were commonly for a pass, a fort, 

 or some walled town, imagined he was but reading Homer s 

 battle of the frogs and the mice; so if a man considers the 

 universal frame, the earth and its inhabitants will seem to 

 him but as an anthill, where some carry grain, some their 

 young, some go empty, and all march but upon a little heap 

 of dust. 



Learning also conquers or mitigates the fear of death and 

 adverse fortune, which is one of the greatest impediments 

 to virtue and morality; for if a man s mind be deeply sea 

 soned with the consideration of the mortality and corrup 

 tibility of things, he will be as little affected as Epictetus, 

 who one day seeing a woman weeping for her pitcher that 

 was broken, and the next day a woman weeping for her son 

 that was dead, said calmly, &quot;Yesterday I saw a brittle thing 



117 Ovid, Ep, Pont, ii, Lx, 47, 



