1 4 The Advancement of Learning 



/ ence should be a surer obligation than duty taught and 

 understood, it is to affirm, that a Wind man may tread surer 

 by a guide than a seeing man can by a Hght. And it is 

 without all controversy, that learning doth make the minds 

 of men gentle, generous, maniable,^ and pliant to govern- 

 ment ; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and 

 mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this asser- 

 tion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and un- 

 learned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, 

 and changes. 



9. And as to the judgment of Cato the Censoi, he was 

 well punished for his blasphemy against Learning, in the 

 same kind wherein he offended; for when he was past 

 threescore years old, he was taken with an extreme desire to 

 go to school again, and to learn the Greek tongue, to the end 

 to peruse the Greek authors; which doth well demonstrate 

 that his former censure of the Grecian learning was rather an 

 affected gravity, than according to the inward sense of his 

 own opinion. And as for Virgil's verses, though it pleased 

 him to brave the world in taking to the Romans the art of 

 empire, and leaving to others the art of subjects; yet so 

 much is manifest that the Romans never ascended to that 

 height of empire, till the time they had ascended to the height 

 of other arts. For in the time of the two first Caesars, 

 which had the art of government in greatest perfection, 

 there lived the best poet, Virgilius Maro; the best historio- 

 grapher, Titus Livius; the best antiquary, Marcus Varro; 

 and the best, or second orator, Marcus Cicero, that to the 

 memory of man are known. As for the accusation of 

 Socrates, the time must be remembered when it was prose- 

 cuted ; which was under the Thirty Tyrants, the most base, 

 bloody, and envious persons that have governed; which 

 revolution of state was no sooner over, but Socrates, whom 

 they had made a person criminal, was made a person hero- 

 ical, and his memory accumulate with honours divine and 

 human ; and those discourses of his which were then termed 

 corrupting of manners, were after acknowledged for sove- 

 reign medicines of the mind and manners, and so have been 

 received ever since till this day. Let this, therefore, serve 



* The edition of 1605 reads amiable, that of 1633 fnaniahle. The 

 latter word answers best to the Latin, artes — teneros reddunt, 

 sequaces, cereos. 



