222 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



To proceed now from imperial and military virtue to 

 moral and private virtue : first, it is an assured truth which 

 is contained in the verses, 



Scilicet ingenuas didicisse fide liter artes 

 Emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros ; 



It taketh away the wildness and barbarism and fierceness 

 of men's minds : but indeed the accent had need be upon 

 fide liter : for a little superficial learning doth rather work a 

 contrary effect. It taketh away all levity, temerity, and in- 

 solency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, 

 and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, 

 and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the mind, 

 and to accept of nothing but examined and tried. It 

 taketh away vain admiration of any thing, which is the root 

 of all weakness. For all things are admired, either because 

 they are new, or because they are great. For novelty, no 

 man that wadeth in learning or contemplation throughly, 

 but will find that printed in his heart Nil novi super terram. 

 Neither can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that 

 goeth behind the curtain and adviseth well of the motion. 

 And for magnitude, as Alexander the Great after that he 

 was used to great armies and the great conquests of the 

 spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of 

 Greece of some fights and services there, which were com- 

 monly for a passage or a fort or some walled town at the 

 most, he said, c It seemed to him that he was advertised of 

 the battles of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales 

 went of ' : so certainly if a man meditate much upon the 

 universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it (the 

 divineness of souls except) will not seem much other than 

 an ant-hill, whereas some ants carry corn, and some carry 

 their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little 

 heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death 

 or adverse fortune ; which is one of the greatest impedi- 

 ments of virtue and imperfections of manners. For if a 

 man's mind be deeply seasoned with the consideration of the 

 mortality and corruptible nature of things, he will easily 

 concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day and saw a 



