238 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Book 



good conscience, and whether discretion and strict law are to be 

 mingled in the same courts, or kept apart in several courts ; again, 

 how the practice, profession, and erudition of law is to be censured 

 and governed; and many other points touching the administration, 

 and, as I may term it, animation of laws. Upon which I insist the 

 less, because I propose, if God give me leave, having begun a work of 

 this nature, in aphorisms, to propound it hereafter, noting it in the 

 mean time for deficient. 



And for your majesty s laws of England, I could say much of their 

 dignity, and somewhat of their defect ; but they cannot but excel the 

 civil laws in fitness for the government : for the civil law was, &quot; Non 

 hos quxsitum munus in usus ;&quot; it was not made for the countries 

 which it govcrneth : hereof I cease to speak, because I will not inter 

 mingle matter of action with matter of general learning. 



THUS have I concluded this portion of learning touching civil 

 knowledge, and with civil knowledge have concluded human philo 

 sophy ; and with human philosophy, philosophy in general ; and 

 being now at some pause, looking back into that I have passed 

 through, this writing seemed! to me, si nunquam fallit imago, as far 

 as a man can judge of his own work, not much better than that noise 

 or sound which musicians make while they are in tuning their instru 

 ments, which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the 

 music is sweeter afterwards. So have I been content to tune the 

 instrument of the Muses, that they may play that have better hands. 

 And surely, when I set before me the condition of these times, in 

 which learning hath made her third visitation or circuit in all the 

 qualities thereof ; as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this 

 age ; the noble helps and lights which we have by the travels of ancient 

 writers ; the art of printing, which communicatcth books to men of all 

 fortunes: the openness of the world by navigation, which hath dis 

 closed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural history ; 

 the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing men so 

 generally in civil business, as the states of Grrccia d icl/in respect 

 of their popularity and the state of Rome in respect of the 

 greatness of their monarchy ; the present disposition of these times 

 at this instant to peace ; the consumption of all that ever can be 

 said in controversies of religion, which have so much diverted men 

 from other sciences ; the perfection of your majesty s learning, which 

 as a phoenix may call whole vollics of wits to follow you ; and the 

 inseparable propriety of time which is ever more and more to disclose 

 truth ; I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period 

 of time will far surpass that of the Gnecinn and Roman learning : 

 only if men will know their own strength, and their own weakness 

 both ; and take, one from the other, light of invention, and not fire of 

 contradiction ; and esteem of the inquisition of truth, as of an enter 

 prise, and not as of a quality or ornament ; and employ wit and 

 magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things 

 vulgar and of popular estimation. As for my labours, if any man 



