258 BACON 



exit,g as if conscious to himself that he had acted his part well 

 upon the stage of life. And this part of doctrine also is to be 

 reckoned as deficient, not but that it has been much used and 

 beaten in practice, though not taken notice of in books. Where- 

 fore, according to our custom, we shall here set down some 

 heads upon the subject, under the title of the Self-politician, or 

 the art of rising in life. 



It may seem a new and odd kind of thing to teach men 

 how to make their fortunes a doctrine which everyone would 

 gladly learn before he finds the difficulties of it ; for the things 

 required to procure fortune are not fewer or less difficult than 

 those to procure virtue. It is as rigid and hard a thing to be- 

 come a true politician as a true moralist, yet the treating of this 

 subject nearly concerns the merit and credit of learning. It is 

 of great importance to the honor of learning, that men of busi- 

 ness should know erudition is not like a lark, which flies high 

 and delights in nothing but singing, but that it is rather like a 

 hawk, which soars aloft indeed, but can stoop when she finds it 

 convenient to pounce upon her prey. Again, this also regards 

 the perfection of learning ; for the true rule of a perfect inquiry 

 is, that nothing can be found in the material globe which has 

 not its correspondent in the crystalline globe the understand- 

 ing, or that there is nothing found in practice which has not 

 its particular doctrine and theory. But learning esteems the 

 building of a private fortune as a work of an inferior kind; 

 for no man's private fortune can be an end any way worthy 

 of his existence ; nay, it frequently happens that men of eminent 

 virtues renounce their fortune to pursue the things of a sublimer 

 nature. Yet even private fortune, as it is the instrument of vir- 

 tue and doing good, is a particular doctrine, worthy of con- 

 sideration. 



This doctrine has its precepts, some whereof are summary 

 or collective, and others scattered and various. The collective 

 precepts are founded in a just knowledge I. of ourselves ; and, 

 2. of others. Let this, therefore, be the first whereon the 

 knowledge of the rest principally turns, that we procure to 

 ourselves, as far as possible, the window once required by 

 Momus, who, seeing so many corners and recesses in the 

 structure of the human heart, found fault that it should want 

 a window, through which those dark and crooked turnings 

 might be viewed.^ This window may be procured by dili- 



