3 6 BACON 



It were tedious to enumerate the particular remedies which 

 learning affords for all the diseases of the mind, sometimes by 

 purging the morbific humors, sometimes by opening obstruc- 

 tions, helping digestion, increasing the appetite, and sometimes 

 healing exulcerations, etc. But, to sum up all, it disposes the 

 mind not to fix or settle in defects, but to remain ever suscepti- 

 ble of improvement and reformation ; for the illiterate person 

 knows not what it is to descend into himself, or call himself to 

 an account, nor the agreeableness of that life which is daily 

 sensible of its own improvement ; he may perhaps learn to show 

 and employ his natural talents, but not increase them ; he will 

 learn to hide and color his faults, but not to amend them, like an 

 unskilful mower, who continues to mow on without whetting 

 his scythe. The man of learning, on the contrary, always joins 

 the correction and improvement of his mind with "the use and 

 employment thereof. To conclude, truth and goodness differ 

 but as the seal and the impression ; for truth imprints goodness, 

 whilst the storms of vice and perturbation break from the clouds 

 of error and falsehood. 



From moral virtue we proceed to examine whether any power 

 be equal to that afforded by knowledge. Dignity of command 

 is always proportionable to the dignity of the commanded. To 

 have command over brutes as a herdsman is a mean thing ; to 

 have command over children as a schoolmaster is a matter of 

 small honor ; and to have command over slaves is rather a dis- 

 grace than an honor. Nor is the command of a tyrant much 

 better over a servile and degenerate people ; whence honors in 

 free monarchies and republics have ever been more esteemed 

 than in tyrannical governments, because to rule a willing people 

 is more honorable than to compel. But the command of 

 knowledge is higher than the command over a free people, as 

 being a command over the reason, opinion, and understanding 

 of men, which are the noblest faculties of the mind that govern 

 the will itself ; for there is no power on earth that can set up a 

 throne in the spirits of men but knowledge and learning; 

 whence the detestable and extreme pleasure wherewith arch- 

 heretics, false prophets, and impostors are transported upon 

 finding they have a dominion over the faith and consciences of 

 men, a pleasure so great, that if once tasted scarce any torture 

 or persecution can make them forego it. But as this is what 

 the Apocalypse calls the depths of Satan,g so the just and lawful 



