The First Book 1 3 



it is said of untrue valours, that some men's valours are in 

 the eyes of them that look on; so such men's industries are 

 in the eyes of others, or at least in regard of their own 

 designments: only learned men love business as an action - 

 according to nature, as agreeable to health of mind as ) 

 exercise is to health of body, taking pleasure in the action 

 itself, and not in the purchase : for that of all men they are 

 the most indefatigable, if it be towards any business which 

 can hold or detain their mind. 



6. And if any man be laborious in reading and study and yet 

 idle in business and action, it groweth from some weakness 

 of body or softness of spirit; such as Seneca speaketh of: 

 Quidam tarn sunt umhratiles, ut putent in turhido esse quicquid 

 in luce est ; ^ and not of Learning : well may it be that such 

 a point of a man's nature may make him give himself to 

 Learning, but it is not learning that breedeth any such point 

 in his nature. 



7. And that Learning should take up too much time or 

 leisure; I answer, the most active or busy man that hath 

 been or can be, hath, no question, many vacant times of 

 leisure, while he expecteth the times and returns of busi- 

 ness (except he be either tedious and of no dispatch, or . 

 lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that 

 may be better done by others:) and then the question is, 

 but how these spaces and times of leisure shall be filled 

 and spent ; whether in pleasures or in studies ; as was well 

 answered by Demosthenes to his adversary iEschines, that 

 was a man given to pleasure, and told him. That his orations 

 did smell of the lamp : Indeed (said Demosthenes) there is a 

 great difference between the things that you and I do by lamp- 

 light.^ So as no man need doubt that learning will expulse 

 business, but rather it will keep and defend the possession 

 of the mind against idleness and pleasure, which otherwise 

 at unawares may enter to the prejudice of both. 



8. Again, for that other conceit that Learning should 

 undermine the reverence of laws and government, it is 

 assuredly a mere depravation and calumny, without all 

 shadow of truth. For to say that a bhnd custom of obedi- 



* Seneca, Epist. 3, quoted from Pomponius, " Quidam adeo in 

 latebras refugenint, ut " etc. 



■ Plutarch. Libanius, Vit. Demosth. (Edition Dindorf, p. 6.) 

 Told of Pytheas, not of iEschines. 



