io8 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Hook 



controversy, that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, 

 generous, man i able, and pliant to government ; whereas ignorance 

 makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous ; and the evidence of 

 time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, 

 rude, and unlearned times, have been most subject to tumults, sedi 

 tions, and changes. 



And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, 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 arts 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 Cxsars, which had the art of government in greatest perfection, 

 there lived the best poet, Virgilius Maro ; the best historiographer, 

 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 prosecuted ; 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 heroical, 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 sovereign medicines of the mind and manners, 

 and so have been received ever since, till this day Let this therefore 

 serve for answer to politicians, which, in their humorous severity, or 

 in their feigned gravity, have presumed to throw imputations upon 

 learning ; which rcdargution, nevertheless, (save that we know not 

 whether our labours may extend to other ages) were not needful for 

 the present, in regard of the love r.nd reverence towards learning, 

 which the example and countenance of two so learned princes, Queen 

 Elizabeth and your majesty, being as Castor and Pollux, lucida sidcm, 

 stars of excellent light and most benign influence, hath wrought in all 

 men of place and authority in our nation. 



Now therefore we come to that third sort of discredit, or diminu 

 tion of credit, that groweth unto learning from learned men them 

 selves, which commonly cleaveth fastest : it is either from their 

 fortune, or from their manners, or from the nature of their studies. 

 For the first, it is not in their power ; and the second is accidental ; 

 the third only is proper to be handled : but because we are not in 

 hand with true measure, but with popular estimation and conceit, it 

 is not amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The derogations, 

 therefore, which grow to learning from the fortune or condition of 



