24 BACON'S ESSAYS 



XI 

 OF GREAT PLACE 



MEN in great place are thrice servants : servants of the 

 sovereign or state ; servants of fame ; and servants of 

 business. So as they have no freedom ; neither in their 

 persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a 

 strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty : or to 

 seek power over others and to lose power over a man's 

 self. The rising unto place is laborious; and by pains 

 men come to greater pains ; and it is sometimes base ; and 

 by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is 

 slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least 

 an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing. Cum non sis qui 

 fueris, non esse cur velis vivere. Nay, retire men cannot 

 when they would, neither will they when it were reason ; 

 but are impatient of privateness, even in age and sickness, 

 which require the shadow ; like old townsmen, that will be 

 still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer 

 age to scorn. Certainly great persons had need to borrow 

 other men's opinions, to think themselves happy ; for if 

 they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it : but if 

 they think with themselves what other men think of them, 

 and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are 

 happy as it were by report ; when perhaps they find the 

 contrary within For they are the first that find their own 

 griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults. 



Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to them- 

 selves, and while they are in the puzzle of business they 

 have no time to tend their health either of body or mind. 

 Illi mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus 

 moritur sibi. In place there is licence to do good and 

 evil ; whereof the latter is a curse : for in evil the best 

 condition is not to will ; the second not to can. But 

 power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring. 

 For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet towards 

 men are little better than good dreams, except they be put 

 in act ; and that cannot be without power and place, as the 



