X 6 BACON 



learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned 

 men's works appear like the first letter of a patent, which, 

 though finely flourished, is still but a letter. Pygmalion's frenzy 

 seems a good emblem of this vanity ; y for words are but the 

 images of matter, and unless they have life of reason and in- 

 vention, to fall in love with them is to fall in love with a 

 picture. 



Yet the illustrating the obscurities of philosophy with sen- 

 sible and plausible elocution is not hastily to be condemned; 

 for hereof we have eminent examples in Xenophon, Cicero, 

 Seneca, Plutarch, and Plato; and the thing itself is of great 

 use; for although it be some hindrance to the severe inquiry 

 after truth, and the further progress in philosophy, that it should 

 too early prove satisfactory to the mind, and quench the desire 

 of further search, before a just period is made ; yet when we have 

 occasion for learning and knowledge in civil life, as for con- 

 ference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, we find it 

 ready prepared to our hands in the authors who have wrote in 

 this way. But the excess herein is so justly contemptible, that 

 as Hercules, when he saw the statue of Adonis, who was the de- 

 light of Venus, in the temple, said with indignation, " There is 

 no divinity in thee" ; so all the followers of Hercules in learn- 

 ing, that is, the more severe and laborious inquirers after truth, 

 will despise these delicacies and affectations as trivial and 

 effeminate. 



The luxuriant style was succeeded by another, which, though 

 more chaste, has still its vanity, as turning wholly upon pointed 

 expressions and short periods, so as to appear concise and 

 round rather than diffusive ; by which contrivance the whole 

 looks more ingenious than it is. Seneca used this kind of style 

 profusely, but Tacitus and Pliny with greater moderation. It 

 has also begun to render itself acceptable in our time. But to 

 say the truth, its admirers are only the men of a middle genius, 

 who think it adds a dignity to learning; whilst those of solid 

 judgment justly reject is as a certain disease of learning, since it 

 is no more than a jingle, or peculiar quaint affectation of words. 

 And so much for the first disease of learning. 



The second disease is worse in its nature than the former ; for 

 as the dignity of matter exceeds the beauty of words, so vanity 

 in matter is worse than vanity in words ; whence the precept of 

 St. Paul is at all times seasonable : " Avoid profane and vain 



