ESSAYS CIVIL AND MORAL. 



I. OF TRUTH. 



WHAT is tnith ? said jesting Pilate ; and would not stay for an 

 answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness ; and count it a 

 bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in 

 acting. And though the sect of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet 

 there remain certain discoursing wits, whichare of the same veins, though 

 there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. 

 But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in findii.g 

 out of truth ; nor again, that when it is found, it imposcth upon men s 

 thoughts ; that doth bring lyes in favour : but a natural though cor 

 rupt love of the lye itself. One of the later school of the Grecians 

 examincth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in 

 it, that men should love lyes ; where neither they make for pleasure, 

 as with poets ; nor for advantage, as with the merchant ; but for the 

 lye s sake. But I cannot tell : this same truth is a naked and open 

 day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs 

 of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may 

 perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showcth best by day ; but it 

 will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best 

 in varied lights. A mixture of a lye doth ever add pleasure. Doth 

 any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men s minds, vain 

 opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, 

 and the like ; bul it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor 

 shrunken things; full of melancholy and indisposition, and unplcasing 

 to themselves ? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy, 

 vinum dacmonum ; because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but 

 with the shadow of a lye. But it is not the lye that passeth through 

 the mind, but the lye that sinkcth in, and settlcth in it, that doth the 

 hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus 

 m men s depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth 

 judge itself, tcacheth, that the inquiry of truth, which is the love- 

 making, or wooing of it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence 

 of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it ; is the sove 

 reign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works 

 of the days, was the light of the sense ; the last was the light of 

 reason ; ?Jid his sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his 

 Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos ; 

 then he breathed light into the face of man ; and still he brcathetn 

 and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beau 

 tified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excel 

 lently well : *Mt is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to sec 



