2 8o BACON 



Christian Europe, the only nation that still retains and professes this 

 discipline is the Spanish. But it is so plain, that every one advances 

 farthest in what he studies most, as to require no enforcing. It is suf- 

 ficient to intimate, that unless a nation professedly studies and practises 

 arms and military discipline, so as to make them a principal business, 

 it must not expect that any remarkable greatness of empire will come 

 of its own accord. On the contrary, it is the most certain oracle of 

 time, that those nations which have longest continued in the study and 

 profession of arms, as the Romans and the Turks have principally 

 done, make the most surprising progress in enlarging the bounds of 

 empire. And again, those nations which have flourished, though but 

 for a single age, in military glory, yet during that time have obtained 

 such a greatness of empire as has remained with them long after, when 

 their martial discipline was slackened. 



It bears some relation to the foregoing precept, that " a state should 

 have such laws and customs as may readily administer just causes, or 

 at least pretexts, of taking arms." For there is such a natural notion 

 of justice imprinted in men's minds, that they will not make war, which 

 is attended with so many calamities, unless for some weighty or at 

 least some specious reason. The Turks are never unprovided of a 

 cause of war, viz., the propagation of their law and religion. The 

 Romans, though it was a high degree of honor for their emperors to 

 extend the borders of their empire, yet never undertook a war for that 

 sole end. Let it, therefore, be a rule to all nations that aim at empire, 

 to have a quick and lively sensibility of any injury done to their fron- 

 tier subjects, merchants, or public ministers. And let them not sit too 

 long quiet after the first provocation. Let them also be ready and 

 cheerful in sending auxiliaries to their friends and allies, which the 

 Romans constantly observed, insomuch that if an invasion were made 

 upon any of their allies, who also had a defensive league with others, 

 and the former begged assistance severally, the Romans would ever 

 be the first to give it, and not suffer the honor of the benefit to be 

 snatched from them by others. As for the wars anciently waged from 

 a certain conformity or tacit correspondence of states, I cannot see on 

 what law they stood. Such were the wars undertaken by the Romans 

 for restoring liberty to Greece; such were those of the Lacedaemonians 

 and Athenians, for establishing or overturning democracies or oli- 

 garchies; and such sometimes are those entered into by republics or 

 kingdoms, under pretext of protecting the subjects of other nations, 

 or delivering them from tyranny. It may suffice for the present pur- 

 pose, that no state expect any greatness of empire, unless it be im- 

 mediately ready to seize any just occasion of a war. 



No one body, whether natural or political, can preserve its health 

 without exercise; and honorable war is the wholesome exercise of a 

 kingdom or commonwealth. Civil wars, indeed, are like the heat of 

 a fever, but a war abroad is like the heat of motion wholesome; for 

 men's minds are enervated and their manners corrupted by sluggish 

 and inactive peace. And, however it may be as to the happiness of a 

 state, it is doubtless best for its greatness to be as it were always in 



