Book VI.

CHAPTER I.

Division o; the art of Transmitting into the doctrine concerning the Organ of Discourse, the doctrine concerning the Method of Discourse, and the doctrine concerning the Illustration of Discourse. Division of the doctrine concerning the organ of discourse into the doctrine concerning the Notations of Things, concerning Speech, and concerning Writing; whereof the two first constitute Grammar, and are divisions of it. Division of the doctrine concerning the notations of things into Hieroglyphics and Real Characters. Second division of Grammar into Literary and Philosophic. Reference of Poesy in respect of metre to the doctnne concerning Speech. Reference of the doctrine concerning Ciphers to the doctrine concerning Writing.

It is permitted to every man (excellent King) to make merry with himself and his own matters. Who knows then but this work of mine is copied from a certain old book found in the most famous library of St. Victor, of which Master Francis Rabelais made a catalogue ¹? For there is a book there entitled “The Ant-hill of Arts”. And certainly I have raised up here a little heap of dust, and stored under it a great many grains of sciences and arts; into which the ants may creep and rest for a while, and then prepare themselves for fresh labours. Now the wisest of kings refers sluggards to the ants; and for my part I hold all men for sluggards who care only to use what they have got, without preparing for new seedtimes and new harvests of knowledge.

Let us now proceed to the art of Transmitting, or of producing and expressing to others those things which have been invented, judged, and laid up in the memory; which I will call by a general name the Art of Transmission. This art includes all the arts which relate to words and discourse. For although reason be as it were the soul of discourse, yet in the handling of them reason and discourse should be kept separate, no less than soul and body. The art of transmission I will divide into three parts; the doctrine concerning the Organ of Discourse, the doctrine concerning the Method of Discourse, and the doctrine concerning the Illustration or adornment of Discourse.

The doctrine concerning the Organ of Discourse, which is also called Grammar, has two parts; one relating to Speech, the other to Writing: for Aristotle says rightly that “words are the images of thoughts and letters are the images of words” ². Both these I assign to Grammar. But to go a little higher up, before I come to Grammar and the parts thereof just mentioned, I must speak concerning the Organ of Transmission in general. For it seems that the art of transmission has some other children besides Words and Letters. This then may be laid down as a rule; that whatever can be divided into differences sufficiently numerous to explain the variety of notions (provided those differences be perceptible to the sense) may be made a vehicle to convey the thoughts of one man to another. For we see that nations which understand not one another's language carry on their commerce well enough by means of gestures. And in the practice of some who had been deaf and dumb from their birth and were otherwise clever, I have seen wonderful dialogues carried on between them and their friends who had learned to understand their gestures. Moreover it is now well known that in China and the provinces of the furthest East there are in use at this day certain real characters, not nominal; characters, I mean, which represent neither letters nor words, but things and notions ³; insomuch that a number of nations whose languages are altogether different, but who agree in the use of such characters (which are more widely received among them), communicate with each other in writing; to such an extent indeed that any book written in characters of this kind can be read off by each nation in their own language ⁴.

The Notes of Things then which carry a signification without the help or intervention of words, are of two kinds: one ex congruo, where the note has some congruity with the notion, the other ad placitum, where it is adopted and agreed upon at pleasure. Of the former kind are Hieroglyphics and Gestures; of the latter the Real Characters above mentioned. The use of Hieroglyphics is very old, and held in a kind of reverence, especially among the Egyptians, a very ancient nation. So that they seem to have been a kind of earlier born writing, and older than the very elements of letters, except perhaps among the Hebrews. Gestures are as transitory Hieroglyphics. For as uttered words fly away, but written words stand, so Hieroglyphics expressed in gestures pass, but expressed in pictures remain. For when Periander, being consulted with how to preserve a tyranny, bade the messenger follow him, and went into his garden and topped the highest flowers, hinting at the cutting off of the nobility ⁵, he made use of a Hieroglyphic just as much as if he had drawn it on paper. In the meantime it is plain that Hieroglyphics and Gestures have always some similitude to the thing signified, and are a kind of emblems. Whence I have called them “notes of things by congruity”. Real characters on the other hand have nothing emblematic in them, but are merely surds, no less than the elements of letters themselves, and are only framed ad placitum, and silently agreed on by custom. It is evident however that a vast multitude of them is wanted for writing; for there ought to be as many of them as there are radical words. This portion therefore of the doctrine of the Organ of Discourse, which relates to the Notes of Things, I set down as wanting. And although it may seem to be of no great use, since words and writing by letters are by far the most convenient organs of transmission; yet I thought good to make some mention of it here, as a thing not unworthy of consideration. For we are handling here the currency (so to speak) of things intellectual, and it is not amiss to know that as moneys may be made of other material besides gold and silver, so other Notes of Things may be coined besides words and letters.

Now therefore I pass on to Grammar, which is as it were the harbinger of other sciences; an office not indeed very noble, yet very necessary; especially as sciences in our age are principally drawn from the learned languages, and are not learned in our mother tongue. Nor must it be esteemed of little dignity, seeing that it serves for an antidote against the curse of the confusion of tongues. For man still strives to renew and reintegrate himself in those benedictions of which by his fault he has been deprived. And as he arms and defends himself against the first general curse of the barrenness of the earth, and of eating bread in the sweat of his face, by the invention of all other arts; so against this second curse of the confusion of tongues he calls in the aid of Grammar; whereof the use in a mother tongue is small; in a foreign tongue more; but most in such foreign tongues as have ceased to be vulgar tongues, and are only extant in books.

Grammar likewise is of two sorts; the one being Literary, the other Philosophical. The one is used simply for languages, that they may be learned more quickly or spoken more correctly and purely; the other ministers in a certain degree to philosophy. And here I am reminded that Caesar wrote some books on “Analogy”; and a doubt occurs to me, whether they handled this kind of philosophical grammar of which I speak. I suspect however that they did not contain anything very subtle or lofty; but only laid down precepts for a chaste and perfect style, not vitiated or polluted either by a bad habit of speech, or by any particular affectation; in which style himself excelled ⁶, Taking the hint however from this, I have thought of a kind of grammar which should diligently inquire, not the analogy of words with one another, but the analogy between words and things, or reason; not going so far however as that interpretation which belongs to Logic. Certainly words are the footsteps of reason, and the footsteps tell something about the body. I will therefore give some sketch of what I mean. But I must first say that I by no means approve of that curious inquiry, which nevertheless so great a man as Plato did not despise ⁷; namely concerning the imposition and original etymology of names; on the supposition that they were not arbitrarily fixed at first, but derived and educed by reason and according to significance; a subject elegant indeed, and pliant as wax to be shaped and turned, and (as seeming to explore the recesses of antiquity) not without a kind of reverence,—but yet sparingly true and bearing no fruit. But the noblest species of grammar, as I think, would be this: if some one well seen in a great number of tongues, learned as well as vulgar, would handle the various properties of languages; showing in what points each excelled, in what it failed. For so not only may languages be enriched by mutual exchanges, but the several beauties of each may be combined (as in the Venus of Apelles⁸) into a most beautiful image and excellent model of speech itself, for the right expressing of the meanings of the mind. And at the same time there will be obtained in this way signs of no slight value but well worthy of observation (which a man would hardly think perhaps) concerning the dispositions and manners of peoples and nations, drawn from their languages. I like well that remark of Cicero's that the Greeks had no word to express the Latin ineptus; “because,” says he, “that vice was so familiar among the Greeks that they did not perceive it in themselves”⁹; a censure worthy of the Roman gravity. And how came it that the Greeks used such liberty in composition of words, the Romans on the contrary were so strict and sparing in it? One may plainly collect from this fact that the Greeks were fitter for arts, the Romans for business: for the distinctions of arts are hardly expressed without composition of words; whereas for the transaction of business simpler words are wanted. Then again the Hebrews have such a dislike to these compositions that they had rather abuse a metaphor than introduce a compound word: and the words they use are so few and so little mixed, that one may plainly perceive from their very language that they were a Nazarite nation, separated from the rest of the nations. And is it not a fact worthy of observation (though it may be a little shock to the spirits of us moderns) that the ancient languages were full of declensions, cases, conjugations, tenses, and the like, while the modern are nearly stripped of them, and perform most of their work lazily by prepositions and verbs auxiliary? Surely a man may easily conjecture (how well so ever we think of ourselves) that the wits of the early ages were much acuter and subtler than our own ¹⁰. There are numberless observations of this kind, enough to fill a good volume. And therefore it is not amiss to distinguish Philosophic Grammar from Grammar Simple and Literary, and to set it down as wanting.

To Grammar also I refer all accidents of words, of what kind soever; such as Sound, Measure, Accent. The primary formation of simple letters indeed (that is, by what percussion of the tongue, by what opening of the mouth, by what meeting of the lips, by what effort of the throat, the sound of each letter is produced) does not belong to Grammar, but is part of the doctrine concerning Sounds, and to be handled under Sense and the Sensible. The sound which I speak of as belonging to Grammar relates only to sweetnesses and harshnesses. Of these some are common to all nations; for there is no language that does not in some degree shun the hiatus caused by vowels coming together, and the harshnesses caused by consonants coming together. There are others again which are respective, being found pleasing to the ears of some nations and displeasing to others. The Greek language abounds in diphthongs; the Latin is much more sparing of them. The Spanish dislikes thin letters, and changes them immediately into those of a middle tone ¹¹. Languages derived from the Goths delight in aspirates ¹². Many things of this kind might be mentioned; but these are perhaps more than enough.

The Measure of words has produced a vast body of art; namely Poesy, considered with reference not to the matter of it (of which I have spoken above) but to the style and form of words: that is to say, metre or verse; wherein the art we have is a very small thing, but the examples are large and innumerable. Neither should that art (which the grammarians call Prosody) be confined to the teaching of the kinds and measures of verse. Precepts should be added as to the kinds of verse which best suit each matter or subject. The ancients used hexameter for histories and eulogies; elegiac for complaints; iambic for invectives; lyric for odes and hymns. Nor have modern poets been wanting in this wisdom, so far as their own languages are concerned. The fault has been, that some of them, out of too much zeal for antiquity, have tried to train the modern languages into the ancient measures (hexameter, elegiac, sapphic, etc.¹³); measures incompatible with the structure of the languages themselves, and no less offensive to the ear. In these things the judgment of the sense is to be preferred to the precepts of art,—as the poet says,

Cœnæ fercula nostræ Mallem convivis quam placuisse cocis ¹⁴.

And it is not art, but abuse of art, when instead of perfecting nature it perverts her. But for poesy (whether we speak of stories or metre) it is (as I said before) like a luxuriant plant, that comes of the lust of the earth, without any formal seed. Wherefore it spreads everywhere and is scattered far and wide,—so that it would be vain to take thought about the defects of it. With this therefore we need not trouble ourselves. And with regard to Accents of words, it is too small a matter to speak of; unless perhaps it be thought worth remarking, that while the accentuation of words has been exquisitely observed, the accentuation of sentences has not been observed at all. And yet it is common to all mankind almost to drop the voice at the end of a period, to raise it in asking a question, and other things of the kind not a few. And so much for the part of Grammar which relates to Speech.

As for Writing, it is performed either by the common alphabet (which is used by everybody) or by a secret and private one, agreed upon by particular persons: which they call ciphers. And with regard to the common orthography itself, a controversy and question has been raised among us,—namely, whether words ought to be written as they are pronounced, or in the usual way. But this apparently reformed style of writing (viz. in which the spelling should agree with the pronunciation) belongs to the class of unprofitable subtleties. For the pronunciation itself is continually changing; it does not remain fixed; and the derivations of words, especially from foreign tongues, are thereby completely obscured. And as the spelling of words according to the fashion is no check at all upon the fashion of pronunciation, but leaves it free, to what purpose is this innovation¹⁵?

Let us proceed then to Ciphers ¹⁶. Of these there are many kinds: simple ciphers; ciphers mixed with non-significant characters; ciphers containing two different letters in one character; wheel-ciphers; key-ciphers; word-ciphers; and the like. But the virtues required in them are three; that they be easy and not laborious to write; that they be safe, and impossible to be deciphered; and lastly that they be, if possible, such as not to raise suspicion. For if letters fall into the hands of those who have power either over the writers or over those to whom they are addressed, although the cipher itself may be safe and impossible to decipher, yet the matter comes under examination and question; unless the cipher be such as either to raise no suspicion or to elude inquiry. Now for this elusion of inquiry, there is a new and useful contrivance for it, which as I have it by me, why should I set it down among the desiderata, instead of propounding the thing itself? It is this: let a man have two alphabets, one of true letters, the other of non-significants; and let him infold in them two letters at once; one carrying the secret, the other such a letter as the writer would have been likely to send, and yet without anything dangerous. Then if any one be strictly examined as to the cipher, let him offer the alphabet of non-significants for the true letters, and the alphabet of true letters for non-significants. Thus the examiner will fall upon the exterior letter; which finding probable, he will not suspect anything of another letter within. But for avoiding suspicion altogether, I will add another contrivance, which I devised myself when I was at Paris in my early youth, and which I still think worthy of preservation. For it has the perfection of a cipher, which is to make anything signify anything; subject however to this condition, that the infolding writing shall contain at least five times as many letters as the writing infolded: no other condition or restriction whatever is required. The way to do it is this: First let all the letters of the alphabet be resolved into transpositions of two letters only. For the transposition of two letters through five places will yield thirty-two differences; much more twenty-four, which is the number of letters in our alphabet¹⁷. Here is an example of such an alphabet.

Example of an Alphabet in two letters ¹⁸.

As for the fear that, if such a reformation were adopted, works composed previously would become unintelligible, it has been ascertained by many experiments that children who have learned to read books printed phonetically in the new alphabet easily teach themselves to read books printed in the ordinary way; and therefore, even if the new system should become universal for all new books, no one would have any difficulty in mastering the old ones.—J. S.]

Nor is it a slight thing which is thus by the way effected. For hence we see how thoughts may be communicated at any distance of place by means of any objects perceptible either to the eye or ear, provided only that those objects are capable of two differences; as by bells, trumpets, torches, gunshots, and the like. But to proceed with our business: when you prepare to write, you must reduce the interior epistle to this biliteral alphabet. Let the interior epistle be

Have by you at the same time another alphabet in two forms; I mean one in which each of the letters of the common alphabet, both capital and small, is exhibited in two different forms,—any forms that you find convenient.

Example of an Alphabet in two forms¹⁹.

Then take your interior epistle, reduced to the biliteral shape, and adapt to it letter by letter your exterior epistle in the biform character; and then write it out. Let the exterior epistle be,

I add another larger example of the same cipher,—of the writing of anything by anything.

The interior epistle; for which I have selected the Spartan despatch, formerly sent in the Scytale.

All is lost. Mindarus is killed. The soldiers want food. We can neither get hence, nor stay longer here.

The exterior epistle, taken from Cicero's first letter, and containing the Spartan despatch within it.

In all duty or rather piety towards you I satisfy everybody except myself. Myself I never satisfy. For so great are the services which you have rendered me, that seeing you did not rest in your endeavours on my behalf till the thing was done, I feel as if life had lost all its sweetness, because 1 cannot do as much in this cause of yours. The occasions are these: Ammonius, the king's ambassador, openly besieges us with money: the business is carried on through the same creditors who were employed in it when you were here, etc.

The doctrine of Ciphers carries along with it another doctrine, which is its relative. This is the doctrine of deciphering, or of detecting ciphers, though one be quite ignorant of the alphabet used or the private understanding between the parties: a thing requiring both labour and ingenuity, and dedicated, as the other likewise is, to the secrets of princes. By skilful precaution indeed it may be made useless; though as things are it is of very great use. For if good and safe ciphers were introduced, there are very many of them which altogether elude and exclude the decipherer, and yet are sufficiently convenient and ready to read and write. But such is the rawness and unskilfulness of secretaries and clerks in the courts of kings, that the greatest matters are commonly trusted to weak and futile ciphers.

It may be suspected perhaps that in this enumeration and census, as I may call it, of arts, my object is to swell the ranks of the sciences thus drawn up on parade, that the numbers of them may raise admiration; whereas in so short a treatise, though the numbers may perhaps be displayed, the force and value of them can hardly be explained. But I am true to my design, and in framing this globe of knowledge I do not choose to omit even the smaller and more remote islands. And though my handling of these things be cursory, it is not (as I think) superficial; but out of a large mass of matter I pick out with a fine point the kernels and marrows of them. Of this however I leave those to judge who are most skilful in such arts. For whereas most of those who desire to be thought multiscient are given to parade the terms and externals of arts, thereby making themselves the admiration of those who do not understand those arts and the scorn of those who do; I hope that my labours will have the contrary fate, and arrest the judgment of those who are most skilful in the several arts, and be less cared for by the rest. As for those arts which may appear to be of a lower order, if any one thinks that I make somewhat too much of them, let him look round, and he will see that men who are great and famous in their own countries, when they come up to the metropolis and seat of empire are almost lost in the crowd, and of no mark ²⁰; and in like manner it is not strange that these lighter arts when placed by the side of the principal and superior ones appear of less dignity; although to such as have spent their chief study upon them they seem great and illustrious things. And so much for the Organ of discourse.

CHAPTER II.

The doctrine of the Method of Discourse is made a substantive and principal part of the art of transmitting; and is named Wisdom of Transmission. Different kinds of Method are enumerated, with a note of their advantages and disadvantages.

LET us now come to the doctrine concerning the Method of discourse. This has been commonly handled as a part of Logic: and it also finds a place in Rhetoric, under the name of Disposition. But the placing of it in the train of other arts has led to the passing over of many things relating to it which it is useful to know. I have therefore thought fit to make the doctrine concerning Method a substantive and principal doctrine, under the general name of Wisdom of Transmission. The kinds of method being various, I will begin by enumerating rather than distributing them. And first, for the “ one and only method,” with its distribution of everything into two members, it is needless to speak of it ¹; for it was a kind of cloud that overshadowed knowledge for awhile and blew over: a thing no doubt both very weak in itself and very injurious to the sciences. For while these men press matters by the laws of their method, and when a thing does not aptly fall into those dichotomies, either pass it by or force it out of its natural shape, the effect of their proceeding is this,—the kernels and grains of the sciences leap out, and they are left with nothing in their grasp but the dry and barren husks². And therefore this kind of method produces empty abridgments, and destroys the solid substance of knowledge.

Let the first difference of Method then be this: it is either Magistral or Initiative. Observe however that in using the word “initiative,” I do not mean that the business of the latter is to transmit the beginnings only of sciences, of the former to transmit the entire doctrine. On the contrary I call that doctrine initiative (borrowing the term from the sacred ceremonies) which discloses and lays bare the very mysteries of the sciences. The magistral method teaches; the initiative intimates. The magistral requires that what is told should be believed; the initiative that it should be examined. The one transmits knowledge to the crowd of learners; the other to the sons, as it were, of science. The end of the one is the use of knowledges, as they now are; of the other the continuation and further progression of them. Of these methods the latter seems to be like a road abandoned and stopped up; for as knowledges have hitherto been delivered, there is a kind of contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver; for he who delivers knowledge desires to deliver it in such form as may be best believed, and not as may be most conveniently examined; and he who receives knowledge desires present satisfaction, without waiting for due inquiry; and so rather not to doubt, than not to err; glory making the deliverer careful not to lay open his weakness, and sloth making the receiver unwilling to try his strength. But knowledge that is delivered to others as a thread to be spun on ought to be insinuated (if it were possible) in the same method wherein it was originally invented. And this indeed is possible in knowledge gained by induction; but in this same anticipated and premature knowledge (which is in use) a man cannot easily say how he came to the knowledge which he has obtained. Yet certainly it is possible for a man in a greater or less degree to revisit his own knowledge, and trace over again the footsteps both of his cognition and consent; and by that means to transplant it into another mind just as it grew in his own. For it is in knowledges as it is in plants; if you mean to use the plant, it is no matter what you do with the root; but if you mean to remove it to grow, then it is safer to use roots than slips. So the method of transmitting knowledge which is now in use presents trunks as it were of sciences (and fair ones too), but without the roots; good for the carpenter but useless for the planter. But if you will have sciences grow, you need not much care about the body of the tree; only look well to this, that the roots be taken up uninjured, and with a little earth adhering to them. Of which kind of transmissior the method of the mathematicians has, in that subject, some shadow, but generally I do not see it either put in use or inquired of. Therefore I note it as deficient, and term it the Handing on of the Lamp, or Method of Delivery to Posterity³.

Another diversity of Method there is, which in intention has an affinity with the former, but is in reality almost contrary. For both methods agree in aiming to separate the vulgar among the auditors from the select; but then they are opposed in this, that the former makes use of a way of delivery more open than the common, the latter (of which I am now going to speak) of one more secret. Let the one then be distinguished as the Exoteric method, the other as the Acroamatic; a distinction observed by the ancients principally in the publication of books, but which I transfer to the method of delivery. Indeed this acroamatic or enigmatical method was itself used among the ancients, and employed with judgment and discretion. But in later times it has been disgraced by many, who have made it as a false and deceitful light to put forward their counterfeit merchandise. The intention of it however seems to be by obscurity of delivery to exclude the vulgar (that is the profane vulgar) from the secrets of knowledges, and to admit those only who have either received the interpretation of the enigmas through the hands of the teachers, or have wits of such sharpness and discernment as can pierce the veil.

Next comes another diversity of Method, of great consequence to science; which is the delivery of knowledge in aphorisms, or in methods. For it is specially to be noted, that it has become the fashion to make, out of a few axioms and observations upon any subject, a kind of complete and formal art, filling it up with some discourses, illustrating it with examples, and digesting it into method. But that other delivery by aphorisms has many excellent virtues whereto the methodical delivery does not attain. First it tries the writer, whether he be light and superficial in his knowledge, or solid. For aphorisms, not to be ridiculous, must be made out of the pith and heart of sciences. For illustration and excursion are cut off; variety of examples is cut off; deduction and connexion are cut off: descriptions of practice are cut off; so there is nothing left to make the aphorisms of but some good quantity of observation. And therefore a man will not be equal to the writing in aphorisms, nor indeed will he think of doing so, unless he feel that he is amply and solidly furnished for the work. But in methods,

——Tantum series juncturaque pollet, Tantum de medio sumptis accedit honoris ⁴,

that those things many times carry a show of I know not what excellent art, which if they were taken to pieces, separated, and stripped, would shrink to little or nothing. Secondly, methodical delivery is fit to win consent or belief, but of little use to give directions for practice; for it carries a kind of demonstration in circle, one part illuminating another, and therefore more satisfies the understanding; but as actions in common life are dispersed, and not arranged in order, dispersed directions do best for them. Lastly, aphorisms, representing only portions and as it were fragments of knowledge, invite others to contribute and add something in their turn; whereas methodical delivery, carrying the show of a total, makes men careless, as if they were already at the end.

Next comes another diversity of Method, which is likewise of great weight; namely the delivery of knowledge by assertions with proofs, or by questions with determinations; the latter kind whereof, if it be immoderately followed, is as prejudicialto the advancement of learning as it is detrimental to the fortunes and progress of an army to go about to besiege every little fort or hold. For if the field be kept, and the sum of the enterprise pursued, those smaller things will come in of themselves; although it is true that to leave a great and fortified town in the rear would not be always safe. In like manner in the transmission of knowledge confutations should be refrained from; and only employed to remove strong preoccupations and prejudgments, and not to excite and provoke the lighter kind of doubts.

Next comes another diversity of Method, namely that the method used should be according to the subject-matter which is handled. For there is one method of delivery in the mathematics (which are the most abstracted and simple of knowledges), another in politics (which are the most immersed and compounded). And (as I have already said) uniformity of method is not compatible with multiformity of matter. Wherefore as I approved of particular Topics for invention, so to a certain extent I allow likewise of Particular Methods for transmission. Next comes another diversity of Method, which in the delivery of knowledge is to be used with discretion. This is regulated according to the informations and anticipations already infused and impressed on the minds of the learners con-cerning the knowledge which is to be delivered. For that knowledge which comes altogether new and strange to men's minds is to be delivered in another form than that which is akin and familiar to opinions already taken in and received. And therefore Aristotle, when he thinks to tax Democritus, does in truth commend him, where he says, “If we shall indeed dispute, and not follow after similitudes”⁵, etc.; thus making it a charge against Democritus, that he was too fond of comparisons. For those whose conceits are already seated in popular opinions, need but to dispute and prove; whereas those whose conceits are beyond popular opinions, have a double labour; first to make them understood, and then to prove them; so that they are obliged to have recourse to similitudes and metaphors to convey their meaning. We see therefore in the infancy of learning, and in rude times, when these conceits which are now old and trivial were new and unheard of, that the world was full of parables and similitudes. For else would men either have passed over without due mark or attention, or else rejected as paradoxical, that which was laid before them. For it is a rule in the art of transmission, that all knowledge which is not agreeable to anticipations or presuppositions must seek assistance from similitudes and comparisons ⁶.

And so much for the diversities of Method, which have not hitherto been pointed out by others. For as for those other methods,—Analytic, Systatic, Diæretic, also Cryptic, Homeric ⁷, and the like,—they are rightly invented and distributed, and I see no reason why I should dwell upon them.

Such then are the kinds of Method. Its parts are two; the one relating to the disposition of the whole work or argument of a book; the other to the limitation of propositions. For there belongs to architecture not only the frame of the whole building, but also the formation and shape of the several beams and columns thereof; and Method is as it were the architecture of the sciences. And herein Ramus merited better in reviving those excellent rules of propositions, (that they should be true, universally, primarily, and essentially ⁸), than he did in introducing his uniform method and dichotomies; and yet it comes ever to pass, I know not how, that in human affairs (according to the common fiction of the poets) “the most precious things have the most pernicious keepers.” Certainly the attempt of Ramus to amend propositions drove him upon those epitomes and shallows of knowledge. For he must have a lucky and a happy genius to guide him who shall attempt to make the axioms of sciences convertible, and shall not withal make them circular, or returning into themselves. Nevertheless I must confess that the intention of Ramus in this was excellent.

There still remain two limitations of propositions, besides that for making them convertible; the one regarding their extension, the other their production. Certainly sciences, if a man rightly observe it, have, besides profundity, two other dimensions, namely latitude and longitude. The profundity relates to their truth and reality; for it is they which give solidity. As to the other two, the latitude may be accounted and computed from one science to another; the longitude from the highest proposition to the lowest in the same science. The one contains the true bounds and limits of sciences, that the propositions thereof may be handled properly, not promiscuously, and repetition, excursion, and all confusion may be avoided; the other prescribes the rule how far and to what degree of particularity the propositions of a science should be deduced. For certainly something must be left to exercise and practice; since we should avoid the error of Antoninus Pius and not be “splitters of cummin seeds” in the sciences, nor multiply divisions to extreme minuteness. Therefore it is plainly worth inquiry how we are to guide ourselves in this matter. For we see that too remote generalities (unless they be deduced) give little information, and do but offer knowledge to the scorn of practical men; being of no more avail for practice, than an Ortelius's universal map is to direct the way between London and York. Certainly the best sort of rules are not unfitly compared to mirrors of steel, where you may see the images of things, but not before they are polished; so rules and precepts will help if they be laboured and polished by practice, but not otherwise. But if these rules could be made clear and crystalline from the first, it were best; because there would then be less need of continual labour and practice. And so much for the science of method, which I have called the Wisdom of Transmission. And yet I must not omit to mention, that some persons, more ostentatious than learned, have laboured about a kind of method not worthy to be called a legitimate method, being rather a method of imposture, which nevertheless would no doubt be very acceptable to certain meddling wits. The object of it is to sprinkle little drpps of a science about, in such a manner that any sciolist may make some show and ostentation of learning. Such was the Art of Lullius: such the Typocosmy traced out by some; being nothing but a mass and heap of the terms of all arts, to the end that they who are ready with the terms may be thought to understand the arts themselves. Such collections are like a flipper's or broker's shop, that has ends of everything, but nothing of worth ⁹.

CHAPTER III.

Of the foundations and office of Rhetoric. Three appendices of Rhetoric, which relate only to the Promptuary; Colours of Good and Evil, both Simple and Comparative; Antitheses of Things; Lesser Forms of Speeches.

I NOW come to the doctrine concerning the Illustration of Discourse. This is that which is called Rhetoric, or Oratory; a science certainly both excellent in itself, and excellently well laboured. Truly valued indeed, eloquence is doubtless inferior to wisdom. For what a distance there is between them is shown in the words spoken by God to Moses, when he declined the office assigned him on the ground that he was no speaker; “There is Aaron, he shall be thy speaker, thou shalt be to him as God”¹. Yet in profit and in popular estimation wisdom yields to eloquence; for so Solomon says; “The wise in heart shall be called prudent, but he that is sweet of speech shall compass greater things”²; plainly signifying that wisdom will help a man to a name or admiration, but that it is eloquence which prevails most in action and common life. But as to the labouring of this art, the emulation of Aristotle with the rhetoricians of his time, and the eager and vehement zeal of Cicero doing his utmost to ennoble it, coupled with his long experience, has made them in their works on rhetoric exceed themselves. Again, those most brilliant examples of the art which we have in the orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, added to the perfection and skill of the precepts, have doubled the progression in it. And therefore the deficiencies which I shall note will rather be in some collections which may as handmaids attend the art, than in the rules and use of the art itself. For when in treating of Logic I made mention of a certain Promptuary or Preparatory Store, I promised to produce fuller examples of it in Rhetoric.

Notwithstanding, to open and stir the earth a little, according to my custom, about the roots of this science; Rhetoric is subservient to the imagination, as Logic is to the understanding; and the duty and office of Rhetoric, if it be deeply looked into, is no other than to apply and recommend the dictates of reason to imagination, in order to excite the appetite and will. For we see that the government of reason is assailed and disordered in three ways; either by the illaqueation of sophisms, which pertains to Logic; or by juggleries of words, which pertain to Rhetoric; or by the violence of the Passions, which pertains to Ethics. For as in negotiations with others, men are usually wrought either by cunning or by importunity, or by vehemency; so likewise in this negotiation within ourselves, we are either undermined by fallacies of arguments, or solicited and importuned by assiduity of impressions and observations, or agitated and transported by violence of passions. And yet the nature of man is not so unfortunately built, as that those arts and faculties should have power to disturb reason, and no power to strengthen or establish it; on the contrary they are of much more use that way. For the end of logic is to teach a form of argument to secure reason, and not to entrap it; the end likewise of moral philosophy is to procure the affections to fight on the side of reason, and not to invade it; the end of rhetoric is to fill the imagination with observations and images, to second reason, and not to oppress it. For abuses of arts only come in indirectly, as things to guard against, not as things to practise.

And therefore it was great injustice in Plato (though springing out of a just hatred of the rhetoricians of his time) to place rhetoric among arts voluptuary; resembling it to cookery, which did as much to spoil wholesome meats, as by variety and delicacy of sauces to make unwholesome meats more palatable³. But God forbid that speech should not be much more conversant in adorning that which is good, than in colouring that which is evil; for this is a thing in use everywhere; there being no man but speaks more honestly than he thinks or acts. And it was excellently noted by Thucydides as a censure passed upon Cleon, that because he used always to hold on the bad side, therefore he was ever inveighing against eloquence and grace of speech; as well knowing that no man can speak fair of courses sordid and base; while it is easy to do it of courses just and honourable ⁴. For Plato said elegantly (though it has now grown into a commonplace) “that virtue, if she could be seen, would move great love and affection”⁵; and it is the business of rhetoric to make pictures of virtue and goodness, so that they may be seen. For since they cannot be showed to the sense in corporeal shape, the next degree is to show them to the imagination in as lively representation as possible, by ornament of words. For the method of the Stoics, who thought to thrust virtue upon men by concise and sharp maxims and conclusions, which have little sympathy with the imagination and will of man, has been justly ridiculed by Cicero ⁶.

Again, if the affections themselves were brought to order, and pliant and obedient to reason, it is true there would be no great use of persuasions and insinuations to give access to the mind, but naked and simple propositions and proofs would be enough But the affections do on the contrary make such secessions and raise such mutinies and seditions (according to the saying,

——Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor)⁷

that reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persausions did not win the imagination from the affections' part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and imagination against them. For it must be observed that the affections themselves carry ever an appetite to apparent good, and have this in common with reason; but the difference is that affection beholds principally the good which is present; reason looks beyond and beholds likewise the future and sum of all. And therefore the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly vanquished and overcome. But after eloquence and force of persuasion have made things future and remote appear as present, then upon the revolt of imagination to reason, reason prevails.

Let us conclude therefore that rhetoric can be no more blamed for knowing how to colour the worse side, than logic for teaching how to make fine sophisms. For who does not know that the principle of contraries is the same, though the use be opposite? It appears also that logic differs from rhetoric not only (as is commonly said) in that the one is like the fist, and the other like the open hand (that is, the one close, the other at large ⁸); but much more in this, that logic handles reason in truth and nature, and rhetoric handles it as it is planted in the opinions of the vulgar. And therefore Aristotle wisely places rhetoric between logic on the one side, and moral and civil knowledge on the other, as participating of both ⁹. For the proofs and demonstrations of logic are the same to all men; but the proofs and persuasions of rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors; so that like a musician accommodating his skill to different ears, a man should be

Orpheus in silvis, inter delphinas Arion¹⁰;

which application and variety of speech, in perfection of idea, ought to extend so far, that if a man should speak of the same thing to several persons, he should nevertheless use different words to each of them; though this politic and familiar part of eloquence in private discourse it is certain that the greatest orators commonly want; while in observing their well graced forms of speech, they lose that volubility of application, and those characters of style, which it would be better to use in addressing different individuals. And therefore it will not be amiss to recommend this of which I now speak to fresh inquiry, and calling it by the name of The Wisdom of Private Discourse to set it down among the deficients; being a thing which the more it is considered the more it will be valued. But whether it be placed in rhetoric or in policy, is a matter of little moment.

Let us now descend to the deficiencies in this art, which (as I said before) are rather as appendices than parts of the art itself, and all belong to the Promptuary. First therefore I do not find the wisdom and diligence of Aristotle well pursued and supplied. For he began to make a collection of the popular signs or colours of apparent good and evil, both simple and comparative; which are really the sophisms of rhetoric. Now these are of excellent use, especially for business and the wisdom of private discourse. But the labours of Aristotle ¹¹ regarding these colours are in three points defective; one, that he recounts a few only out of many; another, that he does not add the answers to them; and the third, that he seems to have conceived but a part of the use of them. For their use is not more for probation than for affecting and moving. For there are many forms which, though they mean the same, yet affect differently; as the difference is great in the piercing of that which is sharp and that which is flat, though the strength of the percussion be the same. Certainly there is no man who will not be more affected by hearing it said, “Your enemies will be glad of this,”

Hoc Ithacus velit, et magno mercentur Atridæ¹²,

than by hearing it said only, “This will be evil for you”. Therefore these points and stings of words are by no means to be neglected. But as I set this down as deficient, I will according to my custom support it by examples; for precepts would not give a sufficient illustration of the thing.

Examples of the Colours of Good and Evil, both Simple and Comparative.

SOPHISM.

1. What men praise and honour is good; what they dispraise and condemn is evil.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives in four ways; by reason of ignorance, of bad faith, of party spirit and factions, of the natural disposition of those who praise and blame. By reason of ignorance; for what is popular judgment worth as a test of good and evil? Better was Phocion's inference, who when the people applauded him more than usual, asked whether he had done wrong ¹³. By reason of bad faith, because in praising and blaming, men are commonly thinking of their own business, and not speaking what they think.

Laudet venales, qui vult extrudere, merces ¹⁴.

And again; “It is naught, it is naught (says the buyer); but when he is gone his way, he will vaunt”¹⁵. By reason of factions; for any man may see that men are wont to exalt those of their own party with immoderate praises, and depress below their desert those of the contrary. By reason of natural disposition; for some men are by nature formed and composed for servile adulation, while others on the contrary are crabbed and captious; so that in praising and blaming they do but gratify their own dispositions, with little regard to truth.

SOPHISM.

2. What is praised even by enemies, is a great good; but what is reproved even by friends, is a great evil.

This Sophism appears to rest on the ground that that which we speak unwillingly and against our wish and inclination may be supposed to be wrung from us by the force of truth.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives by reason of the cunning as well of enemies as of friends. For enemies sometimes bestow praise, not against their will, nor as being compelled thereto by the force of truth, but choosing such points for praise as may breed envy and dangers to the subjects of it. And hence there was a prevailing superstition amongst the Greeks, that when a man was praised by another with a malicious purpose to injure him, a pimple would grow upon his nose. It deceives likewise, because enemies sometimes bestow praises merely by way of preface, that they may afterwards calumniate more freely and maliciously. On the other hand, this Sophism deceives also by reason of the cunning of friends. For they too are wont sometimes to acknowledge and proclaim the faults of their friends, not because truth compels them, but choosing such faults as may do them least injury; as if in other respects they were excellent men. It deceives again, because friends also use reprehensions (as I have said that enemies bestow praises) by way of prefaces, whereby they may presently be the more large in commendation.

SOPHISM.

3. That which it is good to be deprived of, is in itself an evil; that which it is bad to be deprived of, is in itself a good.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives in two ways, by reason either of the comparative degrees of good and evil, or of the succession of good to good, or evil to evil. By reason of comparison: if it was for the good of mankind to be deprived of acorns as food, it does not follow that that food was bad; acorns were good, but corn is better ¹⁶. Nor if it was bad for the Syracusans to be deprived of the elder Dionysius, does it follow that he was good, but that he was not so bad as Dionysius the younger. By reason of succession:—for when a good thing is taken away it is not always succeeded by a bad thing, but sometimes by a greater good; as when the flower falls and the fruit succeeds. Neither when a bad thing is taken away is it always succeeded by a good thing, but sometimes by a worse. For by the removal of his enemy Clodius, Milo lost the “seedbed of his glory”¹⁷.

SOPHISM.

4. That which approaches to good or evil, is itself good or evil; but that which is remote from good is evil, that from evil, good.

It is commonly found that things which agree in nature are placed together, and that things of a contrary nature are placed apart; for everything delights to associate with itself that which is agreeable, and to repel that which is disagreeable.

ANSWER.

But this Sophism deceives in three ways; by reason, 1st of destitution, 2ndly of obscuration, and 3rdly of protection. By reason of destitution; for it happens that those things which are most abundant and excellent in their own kind attract everything as far as may be to themselves, spoiling and as it were starving all things in their neighbourhood. Thus you will never find flourishing underwood near great trees. And rightly was it said “that the servants of a rich man are the greatest slaves”. So also the lower order of courtiers were pleasantly compared to the vigils of festivals, that are next the feast days, but are themselves devoted to fasting. By reason of obscuration; for all things that are excellent in their own kind have this,—that though they do not impoverish and starve the things next to them, yet they obscure and overshadow them; as astronomers remark of the sun, that it is good in aspect, but evil in conjunction and approximation. By reason of protection; for it is not only for consort and similarity of nature that things unite and collect together; but evil also (especially in civil matters) betakes itself to good for concealment and protection. And hence malefactors seek the protection of sanctuaries, and vice itself resorts to the shadow of virtue;

Sæpe latet vitium proximitate boni¹⁸.

So on the other hand good draws near to evil, not for company, but to convert and reform it. And therefore physicians attend more on the sick than the healthy; and it was objected to our Saviour that he conversed with publicans and sinners.

SOPHISM.

5. That to which the other parties or sects agree in giving the second place (each putting itself first) seems to be the best; for it seems that in taking the first place they are moved by zeal and partiality, but in bestowing the second by truth and merit.

So Cicero argues that the sect of the Academics, which maintained the impossibility of comprehending truth, was the best of the philosophies. “For (said he) ask a Stoic which is the best philosophy, and he will prefer his own to the rest; then ask him which is the next best, and he will acknowledge the Academic. So again the Epicurean (who will hardly deign to look at a Stoic), after he has placed his own philosophy at the head, will place the Academic next”¹⁹. In like manner when a place is vacant, if the prince were to ask each candidate whom he would most recommend next to himself, it is probable that their second votes would meet in the most able and deserving man.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives by reason of envy. For next to themselves and their own party, men generally incline to those who are weakest and least formidable, and have given them least trouble; in despite of those who have most insulted or inconvenienced them.

SOPHISM.

6. That which is better in perfection, is better altogether.

To this belong the common forms; “Let us not wander in generalities,” “ Let us compare particular with particular,” etc.

ANSWER.

This Sophism appears forcible enough, and rather logical than rhetorical; but still it is sometimes deceptive. First, because there are not a few things which are very much exposed to danger, yet if they escape prove excellent; so that in kind they are inferior, as being oftener imperilled and lost, but individually they are more noble. Of this kind is a blossom in March, whereof the French proverb says: “A March blossom, and a Paris child, if one of them survive, it is worth ten others”²⁰. So that generally the blossom of May is superior to the blossom of March; but yet individually the best blossom of March is preferred to the best of May. It deceives secondly, by reason of the nature of things being more equal in some kinds or species, and more unequal in others; as it has been remarked that in general the hotter climates produce the sharper wits; but then the best wits of the colder climates surpass the sharpest of the hotter. So again in many armies if the matter were tried by duel between two champions, the victory would go on the one side, if by the whole army, on the other. For excellencies and superiorities are casual; whereas kinds are governed by nature or discipline. In kind again, metal is more precious than stone; but yet a diamond is more precious than gold.

SOPHISM.

7. That which keeps the matter open, is good; that which leaves no opening for retreat, is bad. For not to be able to retreat is to be in a way powerless; and power is a good.

Hence Æsop derived the fable of the two frogs, who in a great drought, when water was everywhere failing, consulted together what was to be done. The first said, “Let us leap down into a deep well, since it is not likely that the water will fail there.” But the other rejoined, “Yes, but if it chance that the water fail there also, how shall we be able to get up again?” And the ground of this Sophism is, that human actions are so uncertain and subject to such risks, that that appears the best course which has the most passages out of it. To this belong those forms which are in use,—“You will tie your hands and engage yourself,” “You will not be free to take what fortune may offer,” etc.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives, first because in human actions fortune insists that some resolution shall be taken. For, as it was prettily said by some one, “not to resolve is itself to resolve”; so that many times suspension of resolution involves us in more necessities than a resolution would. And it seems to be the same disease of mind which is found in misers, only transferred from the desire of keeping money to the desire of keeping freedom of will and power. For as the miser will enjoy nothing, because he will not diminish his store, so this kind of sceptic will execute nothing, because he will still keep all in his own hands. It deceives secondly, because necessity, and the casting of the die (as they call it), is a spur to the courage; as one says, “Being a match for them in the rest, your necessity makes you superior”²¹.

SOPHISM.

8. The evil which a man brings on himself by his own fault is greater; that which ts brought on him by external causes, is less.

The reason of this is that the sting of conscience doubles adversity, while on the other hand the being conscious that a man is clear and free from fault affords great consolation in calamity. And therefore the poets most exaggerate those sufferings, as coming near to despair, where a man accuses and torments himself;

Seque unum clamat, causamque caputque malorum²².

On the other hand the calamities of worthy persons are lightened and tempered by the consciousness of innocence and merit. Besides when the evil is inflicted by others, a man has something that he may freely complain of, whereby his griefs evaporate and do not suffocate the heart. For in things which come from human injury, we are wont to feel indignation, or to meditate revenge, or to implore, or if not to implore yet to expect, providential retribution; and even if the blow come from fortune, yet is there left a kind of expostulation with the fates themselves;

Atque Deos, atque astra vocat crudelia mater²³.

Whereas if the evil be derived from a man's own fault, the stings of pain strike inward, and more wound and lacerate the heart.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives, first by reason of hope, the great antidote of evils. For amendment of a fault is often in our power, but amendment of fortune is not. Hence Demosthenes more than once addressed his countrymen in words like these: “That which, having regard to the time passed, is the worst point and circumstance of all the rest, that as to the time to come is the best. What is that? Even this; that it is your own sloth, irresolution, and misgovernment that have brought your affairs into this ill condition. For had you ordered your means and forces to the best and done your parts every way to the full, and notwithstanding your matters had gone backwards as they do, there had been no hope left of recovery or reparation. But since it has been brought about chiefly by your own errors, you may fairly trust that by amending them you will recover your former condition”²⁴. So Epictetus discoursing on the degrees of mental tranquillity, puts those lowest who accuse others next those who accuse themselves, and highest of all those who accuse neither others nor themselves ²⁵. It deceives secondly, by reason of the innate pride of men's minds, which makes them unwilling to acknowledge their own errors. This to avoid, they exercise far more patience in bearing those ills which they have brought on themselves by their own fault. For as we see that when a fault is committed and it is not yet known who is to blame, men are exceeding angry and make much ado about it; but if afterwards it come out that it was done by a son or a wife or a favourite, all is at once hushed and no more noise made; so it is when anything happens for which we must needs take the blame upon ourselves; as we see it very often in women, that if they have done anything against the wishes of their parents and friends, and it turn out ill, whatever misfortune follows they will keep it to themselves and set a good face upon it ²⁶.

SOPHISM.

9. From something to nothing appears a greater step than from more to less; and again from nothing to something appears a greater step than from less to more.

It is a rule in mathematics that there is no proportion between nothing and something; and therefore the degrees of nullity and quiddity appear greater than the degrees of increase and decrease. Thus the loss of an eye is harder for a man with only one eye than for a man with two. In like manner if a man has several children, it is more grief to him to lose the last surviving son than all the rest. Hence also the Sibyl, when she had burned her two first books, doubled the price of the third; for the loss of this would have been a degree of privation, and not of diminution.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives, first in respect of those things whereof the use consists in a sufficiency or competency, that is in a determinate quantity. For if a man were bound by penalty to pay a certain sum of money on a stated day, it would be worse for him to be one pound short, than (supposing that that one could not be got) to be short by ten pounds more. So in the wasting of fortunes, the degree of debt which makes the first inroad on the capital seems worse than the last which reduces to beggary. To this belong the common forms; “Sparing comes too late when all is gone”²⁷; “as good never a whit as never the better,” etc. It deceives secondly, in respect of that principle of nature, that the decay of one thing is the generation of another ²⁸; so that the degree of extreme privation is sometimes of less disadvantage, because it gives a handle and stimulus to some new course. Hence also Demosthenes often complains to his countrymen; “That the terms which they accepted from Philip, not being profitable nor honourable, were nothing else than aliments of their sloth and indolence; which they would be much better without; because then their industry might be better excited to seek other remedies”²⁹. I knew a physician that when delicate women complained that they were ill and yet could not endure to take any medicine, would say to them, not less wittily than sharply, “Your only way is to be worse, for then you will be glad of any medicine.” Moreover this degree of privation or extreme want may be useful not only to stimulate energy, but also to enforce patience.

With regard to the second part of this Sophism, it rests on the same foundation as the former (that is on the degrees of nullity and quiddity). Hence the making of a beginning of anything is thought so great a matter:—

Dimidium fact, qui bene cœpit, habet, etc.³⁰.

Hence also the superstition of astrologers, who make a judgment of the disposition and fortune of a man from the point or moment of his nativity or conception.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives first because in some cases the first beginnings of things are no more than that what Epicurus in his philosophy calls tentamenta³¹, that is imperfect offers and essays, which are nothing unless they be repeated or proceeded with. Therefore in this case the second degree seems more worthy and more powerful than the first, as the wheel-horse in a cart does more work than the leader. Again, it is not a bad saying “that it is the second word which makes the fray.” For perhaps the first would have passed. And so the one made a beginning of the mischief, but the other prevented it from coming to an end. It deceives secondly, by reason of the dignity of perseverance; which lies in the progress, not in the first attempt. For chance or nature may give the first impulse, but only a settled affection and judgment can give constancy. It deceives thirdly, in those things whereof the nature and ordinary course goes against the beginning made; so that the first start is ever being frustrated unless the force be kept up; according to the common forms; “Not to advance, is to retreat”; “He who is not gaining, is losing”; as in running up hill, and rowing against stream. But on the other hand, if the motion be down hill, or the rowing be down stream, then the degree of inception is of far greater importance. Besides, this colour extends not only to the degree of inception, which proceeds from power to act, compared with the degree from act to increase; but also to the degree from impotency to power, compared with the degree from power to act. For the degree from impotency to power seems greater than from power to act.

SOPHISM.

10. That which has relation to truth is greater than that which has relation to opinion; and the proof that a thing has relation to opinion is this: it is that which a man would not do if he thought it would not be known.

So the Epicureans say of the Stoics' Felicity placed in virtue, that it is like the felicity of a player, who if he were left of his auditory and their applause, would straight be out of heart and countenance. And therefore in derision they call virtue a theatrical good. But it is otherwise in riches, of which it is said,

Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo³².

And likewise of pleasure,

——Grata sub imo

Gaudia corde premens, vultu simulante pudorem³³.

ANSWER.

The fallacy of this Sophism is somewhat more subtle; though the answer to the example alleged is easy. For virtue is not chosen for the sake of popularity; since it is a precept that a man should above all things reverence himself ³⁴. So that a good man will be the same in solitude as on the stage; though perhaps his virtue may be somewhat strengthened by praise, as heat is increased by reflexion. This however denies the supposition and does not refute the fallacy. Now the answer is this. Allow that virtue (especially such as is attended with labours and conflicts) would not be chosen, except for the sake of the glory and fame accompanying it; yet it does not therefore follow that the motive and appetite to virtue is not principally for its own sake; for fame may only be the impulsive cause, or sine qua non, and not the efficient or constituent cause. For instance; if there were two horses, and one of them without the spur could do well, but the other with the spur could do much better, the latter should in my judgment bear off the prize and be accounted the better horse. And to say “Tush, the life of this horse is in the spur,” would not move any man of sound judgment; for since the ordinary instrument of horsemanship is the spur, and that it is no manner of burden or impediment to the rider, the horse that is quickened with the spur is not therefore to be less valued; nor again is the other that does wonderfully well without the spur to be reckoned on that account the better, but only the finer and daintier. So glory and honour are the spurs of virtue; and though virtue would somewhat languish without them, yet as they are always at hand to attend virtue, even when not invited, there is no reason why virtue may not be sought for its own sake as well. And thus the proposition that “a thing which is chosen for opinion's sake and not for truth may be known by this—it is what a man would not do if he thought it would not be known,” is rightly answered.

SOPHISM.

II. That which is gained by our own merit and industry is a greater good; that which is derived from the kindness of others or from the indulgence of fortune a lesser good.

The reasons of this are,—first, because there is better hope of the future; for in the favours of others or the good winds of fortune there is little certainty; but our own virtue and industry are ever with us; so that after we have obtained some good in this way we have always the same instruments ready to use again; yea, and by habit and success made more effective. Secondly, because for what we get by the favour of other men we are other men's debtors; whereas what we obtain of ourselves carries no obligation with it. Nay, even when divine mercy has bestowed any favour on us, it demands a kind of retribution to the goodness of God, which is distressing to depraved and wicked men; whereas in the former kind, that comes to pass which the prophet speaks of, “ Men rejoice and exult, they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag ³⁵”. Thirdly, because what proceeds not by our own merit, carries with it no praise or reputation; for felicity begets a kind of admiration, but not praise. As Cicero said to Cæsar; “We have enough to admire, we are looking for something, to praise ³⁶”. Fourthly, because the things obtained by our own industry are generally achieved by labour and exertion, which have some sweetness in themselves; as Solomon says, “Meat taken in hunting is sweet”³⁷.

ANSWER.

To these there are four opposing Sophisms, which incline to the contrary side, and may respectively serve as refutations to the former. The first is that felicity seems to be a kind of sign and character of the divine favour; which both creates confidence and alacrity in ourselves, and wins obedience and respect from others. And this felicity extends to casual things, to which virtue hardly aspires; as when Cæsar to encourage the pilot said, “You carry Cæsar and his fortune”³⁸; whereas if he had said, “You carry Cæsar and his virtue”, it would have been but cold comfort against the dangers of a storm. The second is that the deeds of virtue and industry are imitable and open to others; whereas felicity is inimitable, and a kind of prerogative of the individual man. Hence we generally see that natural things are preferred to artificial, because they admit not of imitation; for whatever is imitable is potentially common. The third is that things which come of felicity appear free gifts, bought without toil; but things gained by our own virtue seem as paid for. Therefore Plutarch said elegantly, in comparing the actions of Timoleon, a man eminently fortunate, with those of his contemporaries Epaminondas and Agesilaus, “That they were like the verses of Homer, which, as they excel in other respects, so they seem to flow naturally, and as it were at the inspiration of genius³⁹.” The fourth is that which happens contrary to hope and expectation comes more gratefully and with greater pleasure to men's minds; but this cannot be the case with things effected by our own care and exertion.

SOPHISM.

12. That which consists of many divisible parts is greater than that which consists of few parts and is more one; for all things when viewed part by part appear greater; whence likewise plurality of parts makes a show of magnitude; but it has a greater effect if the parts be without order; for it produces a resemblance to infinity and prevents comprehension.

The fallacy here is very palpable, even at first sight; for it is not the plurality of parts alone, but the majority of them, which make the total greater. But yet this Sophism often carries away the imagination; yea, and deceives the sense. For to the sight it appears a shorter distance on a dead level, where nothing intervenes to break the view, than when there are trees and buildings or some other mark to divide and measure the space. So again when a great monied man has divided and distributed his chests and bags, he seems to himself richer than he was. So likewise in amplifications, the effect is increased if the whole be divided into many parts and each be handled separately. And if this be done without order and promiscuously, it fills the imagination still more; for confusion gives an impression of multitude; inasmuch as things set forth and laid out in order, both appear more limited in themselves, and make it evident that nothing has been omitted; whereas things that are presented confusedly are not only thought to be numerous in themselves, but leave room for suspicion that there are many more behind.

ANSWER.

This Sophism deceives, first when a man is prepossessed with an opinion that a thing is greater than it really is. For then the distribution thereof will destroy that false opinion, and show it in its true dimensions, without amplification. And therefore if a man be in sickness or pain, the hours will seem longer without a clock or an hour-glass than with it.. For if the weariness and pain of disease makes time appear longer than it really is, then the computation of time corrects the error, and makes it appear shorter than had been conceived by the false opinion. So again in the dead plain, the contrary to that which I said just now sometimes happens. For though at first the eye represents the distance to the sense as shorter, because it is undivided; yet if that give an impression of a much shorter distance than it is afterwards found to be, the disappointment of that false opinion will make it appear longer than it really is. Therefore if a man have an over great opinion of anything and you wish to make it still greater, you must beware of distributions, but extol it in the whole. The Sophism deceives secondly, when the distribution is distracted and scattered, and does not meet or strike the eye at one glance. Thus if flowers in a garden be divided into many beds, they will give the appearance of a greater number than if they were all growing in one bed, provided that all the beds can be seen at once; for otherwise the union will have more effect than the scattered distribution. So again men's revenues seem greater when their farms and properties lie near and contiguous; for if they lie scattered they do not so easily come under view. The Sophism deceives, thirdly, by reason of the superiority of unity to multitude. For all piecing together of things is a sure sign of poverty in the pieces; where it comes to that,

Et quæ non prosunt singula, multa juvant ⁴⁰.

Therefore Mary's was the better part,—“Martha, Martha, thou art busy about many things, one thing sufficeth⁴¹”. Hence the fable in Æsop of the fox and the cat. For the fox boasted how many tricks and shifts he had to escape the hounds; but the cat said she had only one help to rely on; which was the poor faculty of climbing a tree; yet this was a far better projection than all the fox's tricks; whence the proverb, “The fox knows many tricks, but the cat one good one ⁴²”. And in the moral signification of this fable we see the same thing. For the support of a powerful and faithful friend is a surer protection than all manner of plots and tricks.

These then shall suffice for an example. I have by me indeed a great many more Sophisms of the same kind, which I collected in my youth; but without their illustrations and answers, which I have not now the leisure to perfect; and to set forth the naked colours without their illustrations (especially as those above given appear in full dress) does not seem suitable. Be it observed in the meantime that this matter, whatever may be thought of it, seems to me of no small value; as that which participates of Primary Philosophy, of Politics, and of Rhetoric. And so much for the Popular Signs or Colours of Apparent Good and Evil, both simple and comparative.

The second Collection, which belongs to the Promptuary or Preparatory Store, is that to which Cicero alludes (as I said above in treating of Logic), where he recommends the orator to have commonplaces ready at hand, in which the question is argued and handled on either side: such as “for the letter of the law”, “for the intention of the law,” etc. But I extend this precept to other cases; applying it not only to the judicial kind of oratory, but also to the deliberative and demonstrative. I would have in short all topics which there is frequent occasion to handle (whether they relate to proofs and refutations, or to persuasions and dissuasions, or to praise and blame) studied and prepared beforehand; and not only so, but the case exaggerated both ways with the utmost force of the wit, and urged unfairly, as it were, and quite beyond the truth. And the best way of making such a collection, with a view to use as well as brevity, would be to contract those commonplaces into certain acute and concise sentences ⁴³; to be as skeins or bottoms of thread which may be unwinded at large when they are wanted. Some such piece of diligence I find in Seneca ⁴⁴, but in hypotheses or cases. A few instances of the thing, having a great many by me, I think fit to propound by way of example. I call them Antitheses of Things⁴⁵.

Examples of Antitheses.

I. NOBILITY.

For. They whose virtue is in the stock cannot be bad even if they would. Nobility is the laurel with which Time crowns men. We reverence antiquity even in dead monuments; how much more in living ones? If you regard not nobility of birth, where will be the difference between the offspring of men and brutes? Nobility withdraws virtue from envy, and makes it gracious.	Against. Seldom comes nobility from virtue; seldomer virtue from nobility. Noblemen have to thank their ancestors for pardon oftener than for advancement. New men are commonly so diligent, that noblemen by their side look like statues. Noblemen look behind them too often in the course; the mark of a bad runner.
II. BEAUTY.
For. Deformed persons commonly take revenge on nature. Virtue is nothing but inward beauty; beauty nothing but outward virtue. Deformed persons seek to rescue themselves from scorn—by malice. Beauty makes virtues shine, and vices blush.	Against. Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. As a fair garment on a deformed body, such is beauty in a bad man. They that are beautiful and they that are affected by beauty are commonly alike light.
III. YOUTH.
For. First thoughts and young men's counsels have more ot divineness. Old men are wiser for themselves, not so wise for others and for the commonwealth. Old age, if it could be seen, deforms the mind more than the body. Old men are afraid of everything except the Gods.	Against. Youth is the seedbed of repentance. There is implanted in youth contempt for the authority of age; so every man must grow wise at his own cost. The counsels to which Time is not called, Time will not ratify. In old men the Loves are changed into the Graces.
IV. HEALTH.
For. The care of health humiliates the mind and makes it the beggar of the body. A healthy body is the soul's host, a sick body her gaoler. Nothing forwards the conclusion of business so much as good health; weak health on the contrary takes too many holidays.	Against. Often to recover health, is often to renew youth. Ill health is a good excuse for many things; which we are glad to use even when well. Good health makes too close an alliance between the soul and the body. Great empires have been governed from bed, great armies commanded from the litter.
V. WIFE AND CHILDREN.
For. Love of his country begins in a man's own house. He that has wife and children has given hostages to fortune. A wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; whereas unmarried men are harsh and severe. To be without wife or children is good for a man only when he wants to run away. He who begets not children, sacrifices to death. They that are fortunate in other things are commonly unfortunate in their children; lest men should come too near the condition of Gods.	Against. Man generates and has children; God creates and produces works. The eternity of brutes is in offspring; of men, in fame, good deserts, and institutions. Domestic considerations commonly overthrow public ones. Some persons have wished for Priam's fortune, who survived all his children 46.
VI. RICHES.
For. They despise riches who despair of them. It is envy of riches that has made virtue a goddess. While philosophers are disputing whether virtue or pleasure be the proper aim of life, do you provide yourself with the instruments of both. Virtue is turned by riches into a common good. Other goods have but a provincial command; only riches have a general one.	Against. Of great riches you may have either the keeping, or the giving away, or the fame; but no use. Do you not see what feigned prices are set upon little stones and such rarities, only that there may be some use of great riches? Many men while they thought to buy everything with their riches, have been first sold themselves. I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue; for they are both necessary to virtue and cumbersome. Riches are a good handmaid but the worst mistress.
VII. HONOURS.
For. Honours are the suffrages not of tyrants (as they are said to be), but of divine providence. Honours make both virtues and vices conspicuous; therefore they are a spur to the one and a bridle to the other. No man can tell how far his virtue will go unless honours give him a fair field. Virtue, like all things else, moves violently to her place, calmly in her place; now the place of virtue is honour.	Against. While we seek honours we lose liberty. Honours commonly give men power over those things wherein the best condition is not to will, the next best not to can. The rising to honours is laborious, the standing slippery, the descent headlong. Great persons had need to borrow the opinions of the vulgar, to think themselves happy.
VIII. EMPIRE.
For. The enjoyment of happiness is a great good; but the power of imparting it to others is a still greater. Kings are not as men, but as the stars; for they have great influence both on individuals and on the times themselves. To resist the vice-gerent of God is not treason, but a kind of theomachy.	Against. How wretched to have nothing to desire, and everything to fear ! Kings are like the heavenly bodies, which have much veneration but no rest. None of human condition is admitted to the banquets of the Gods unless it be in derision.
IX. PRAISE, REPUTATION.
For. Praise is the reflexion of virtue. Praise is the honour that comes by free votes. Honours are conferred by many forms of government; but praise comes everywhere of liberty. The voice of the people has something divine; else how could so many agree in one thing? Marvel not if the vulgar speak truer than the great, for they speak safer.	Against. Fame is a worse judge than messenger. What has a good man to do with the slaver of the common people? Fame is like a river, it bears up the light and lets the solid sink. The lowest virtues are praised by the common people, the middle are admired; but of the highest they have no sense of perception. Praise is won by ostentation more than by merit, and follows the vain and windy more than the sound and real.
X. NATURE.
For. Custom advances in an arithmetical ratio, nature in a geometrical. As common laws are to customs in states, such is nature to custom in individuals. Custom against nature is a kind of tyranny, and is soon and upon slight occasions overthrown.	Against. We think according to our nature, speak as we have been taught, but act as we have been accustomed. Nature is a schoolmaster, custom a magistrate.
XI. FORTUNE.
For. Overt and apparent virtues bring forth praise; secret and hidden virtues bring forth fortune. Virtues of duty bring forth praise; virtues of ability bring forth fortune. Fortune is like the Milky Way; a cluster of obscure virtues without a name. Fortune is to be honoured if it be but for her daughters, Confidence and Authority.	Against. The folly of one man is the fortune of another. The best that can be said of fortune is that, as she uses no choice in her favours, so she does not care to uphold them. Great men, to decline the envy of their own virtues, turn worshippers of fortune.
XII. LIFE.
For. It is absurd to prefer the accidents of life to life itself. A long course is better than a short one for everything, even for virtue. Without a good space of life a man can neither finish, nor learn, nor repent.	Against. Philosophers in making such preparations against death make death itself appear more fearful. Men fear death, as children fear to go into the dark, because they know not what is there. There is no human passion so weak but if it be a little rpused it masters the fear of death. A man might wish to die, though ne were neither brave nor miserable nor wise, merely from weariness of being alive47.
XIII. SUPERSTITION.
For. They that err from zeal, though we cannot approve them, yet we must love them. Mediocrities belong to matters moral; extremities to matters divine. The religious man is called superstitious. I had rather believe the most monstrous fables that are to be found in any religion, than that this world was made without a deity.	Against. As the likeness of an ape to an makes him all the more ugly, so does the likeness of superstition to religion. Look how hateful affectation is in human affairs, so hateful is superstition in divine. Better have no opinion of God at all than an injurious one. It was not the Epicureans but the Stoics that troubled the ancient states. There is no such thing as a mere atheist in opinion; but great hypocrites are the true atheists, who are ever handling holy things without reverencing them.
XIV. PRIDE.
For. Pride is unsociable to vices among other things; and as poison by poison, so not a few vices are expelled by pride. The good-natured man is subject to other men's vices as well as his own; the proud man to his own only. Let pride go a step higher, and from contempt of others rise to contempt of self, and it becomes philosophy.	Against. Pride is the ivy that winds about all virtues and all good things. Other vices do but thwart virtues; only pride infects them. Pride lacks the best condition of vice—concealment. The proud man while he despises others neglects himself.
XV. INGRATITUDE.
For. The crime of ingratitude is nothing more than a clear insight into the cause of a benefit conferred. In our desire to show gratitude to certain persons we sacrifice both the justice we owe to others and the liberty we owe to ourselves. Before we are called on to be grateful for a benefit, let us be sure as to the value of it.	Against. The crime of ingratitude is not restrained by punishments, but given over to the Furies. The bonds of benefits are stricter than the bonds of duties; wherefore he that is ungrateful is unjust and every way bad. This is the condition of humanity no man is born in so public a fortune but he must obey the private calls both of gratitude and revenge.
XVI. ENVY.
For. It is natural for a man to hate that which reproaches to him his own fortunes. Envy in commonwealths is a wholesome kind of ostracism.	Against. Envy keeps no holidays. Nothing but death can reconcile envy to virtue. Envy puts virtues to laborious tasks, as Juno did Hercules.
XVII. UNCHASTITY.
For. It is owing to jealousy that chastity has been made a virtue. Unchastity was the worst of Circe's transformations. A man must be of a very sad disposition to think love a serious matter. Why make a virtue of that which is either a matter of diet, or a show of cleanliness, or the child of pride? Loves are like wildfowl; there is no property in them, but the right passes with the possession.	Against. He that is unchaste is without all reverence for himself, which is the bridle of all vices. All who like Paris prefer beauty, quit like Paris wisdom and power. It was no vulgar truth that Alexander lighted on, when he said that sleep and lust were earnests of death.
XVIII. CRUELTY.
For. None of the virtues has so many crimes to answer for as clemency. Cruelty, if it proceeds from revenge, is justice, if from danger, prudence. He that has mercy on his enemy has no mercy on himself. Bloodlettings are not oftener necessary in medicine than executions in states.	Against. To delight in blood, one must be either a wild beast or a Fury. To a good man cruelty always seems fabulous, and some tragical fiction.
XIX. VAIN-GLORY.
For. He that would procure praise for himself must procure the benefit of other men. He who is so sober that he cares for nothing that is not his own business, I fear he thinks the good of the public to be no business of his. Dispositions that have in them some vanity are readier to undertake the care of the commonwealth.	Against. Vain-glorious persons are ever factious, liars, inconstant, extreme. Thraso is Gnatho's prey48. It is a shame for the suitor to woo the waiting-woman, and praise is the waiting-woman to virtue.
XX. JUSTICE.
For. Kingdoms and governments are but accessories to justice; for there would be no need of them if justice could be carried on without. It is owing to justice that man is a god to man, and not a wolf. Justice though it cannot extirpate vices, yet prevents them from doing hurt.	Against. If to be just be not to do that to another which you would not have another do to you, then is mercy justice. If everyone has a right to his own, surely humanity has a right to pardon. What tell you me of equal measure, when to the wise man all things are equal? Consider the condition of accused persons among the Romans, and conclude that justice is not for the good of the common wealth. The ordinary justice of governments is but as a philosopher in the court—it merely conduces to the reverence of those who govern.
XXI. FORTITUDE.
For. Nothing is to be feared except fear itself. There is nothing either solid in pleasure, or secure in virtue, where fear intrudes. He that looks steadily at dangers that he may meet them, sees also how he may avoid them. Other virtues free us from the domination of Vice, Fortitude only from the domination of fortune.	Against. A noble virtue, to be willing to die yourself in order to kill another ! A noble virtue, which a man may acquire by getting drunk ! He that is prodigal of his own life is dangerous to other men's. Fortitude is the virtue of the iron age.
XXII. TEMPERANCE.
For. The power of abstinence is not much other than the power of endurance. Uniformity, concord, and measured motion, are attributes of heaven and characters of eternity. Temperance is like wholesome cold; it collects and braces the powers of the mind. Exquisite and restless senses need narcotics; so do passions.	Against. I like not these negative virtues; for they show innocence and not merit. The mind grows languid that has no excesses. I like those virtues which induce excellence of action, not dullness of passion. If you will have the motions of the mind all consonant, you must have them few—for it is a poor man that can count his stock. To abstain from the use of a thing that you may not feel the want of it, to shun the want that you may not fear the loss of it, are precautions of pusillanimity and cowardice.
XXIII. CONSTANCY.
For. Constancy is the foundation on which virtues rest. Wretched is the man who knows not what himself may become. Human judgment is too weak to be true to the nature of things, let it then at least be true to itself. Even vices derive a grace from constancy. If inconstancy of mind be added to the inconstancy of fortune, in what darkness do we live? Fortune is like Proteus; if you persevere she returns to her shape.	Against. Constancy is like a surly porter; it drives much useful intelligence from the door. It is fit that constancy should bear adversity well, for it commonly brings it on. The shortest folly is the best.
XXIV. MAGNANIMITY.
For. If the mind do but choose generous ends to aim at, it shall have not only the virtues but the deities to help. Virtues induced by habit or by precepts are ordinary; those imposed by a virtuous end are heroical.	Against. Magnanimity is a poetical virtue.
XXV. KNOWLEDGE, CONTEMPLATION.
For. That pleasure is indeed according to nature, of which there is no satiety. What prospect so sweet as to look down upon the errors of other men? How good a thing to have the motion of the mind concentric with the universe. All depraved affections are but false estimations; and goodness and truth are the same thing.	Against. Contemplation is a specious idleness. Good thoughts are little better than good dreams. Providence takes care of the world; do thou take care of thy country. A politic man uses his very thoughts for seed.
XXVI. LEARNING.
For. If books were written about small matters, there would be scarce any use of experience. In reading a man converses with the wise, in action generally with fools. Sciences which are of no use in themselves are not to be deemed useless, if they sharpen the wit and put the thoughts in order.	Against. In colleges men learn to believe. What art ever taught the seasonable use of art? To be wise by rule and to be wise by experience are contrary proceedings; he that accustoms himself to the one unfits himself for the other. Art is often put to a foolish use, that it may not be of no use at all. Almost all scholars have this—when anything is presented to them, they will find in it that which they know, not learn from it that which they know not.
XXVII. PROMPTITUDE.
For. Wisdom that comes not quick comes not in season. He that quickly errs quickly amends his error. He that is wise in deliberation and not upon the moment does no great matters.	Against. The wisdom that is ready at hand does not Ue deep. Wisdom is like a garment, it must be light if it be for speed. He whose counsels are not ripened by deliberation, his wisdom will not ripen with age. Things speedily devised speedily fall out of favour.
XXVIII. SILENCE IN MATTERS OF SECRECY.
For. The silent man hears everything, for everything can be safely communicated. He that is apt to tell what he knows, is apt to tell also what he knows not. Mysteries are due to secrecy.	Against. The best way of keeping the mind secret is to vary the manners. Silence is the virtue of a confessor. The silent man has nothing told him, because he gives nothing but silence in exchange. To be close is next to being unknown.
XXIX. FACILITY.
For. I love the man who yields to others' feelings, and yet keeps his judgment Facility is a foolish privation of judgment. free. To be pliant is to be most like gold.	Against. Favours received from a man of facile disposition pass for debts; denials for injuries. He that obtains a favour from a man of facile disposition thanks himself for it. The facile man is oppressed with all difficulties, for he involves himself in all. The facile man seldom gets out of it without a blush.
XXX. POPULARITY.
For. Wise men are commonly pleased with the same things; but to meet the various inclinations of fools is the part of wisdom. To court the people is to be courted by the people. Men that are themselves great find no single person to respect, but only the people.	Against. He who agrees very well with fools may himself be suspected. He that pleases the mob is apt to raise a mob. Nothing that is moderate is liked by the common people. The lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people.
XXXI. LOQUACITY.
For. He that is silent betrays want of confidence either in others or in himself. All kinds of constraint are unhappy, that of silence is the most miserable of all. Silence is the virtue of a fool, And therefore it was well said to a man that would not speak, “If you are wise you are a fool; if you are a fool, you are wise”49. Silence, like night, is convenient for treacheries. Thoughts are wholesomest when they are like running waters. Silence is a kind of solitude. He that is silent lays himself out for opinion. Silence neither casts off bad thoughts nor distributes good.	Against. Silence gives to words both grace and authority. Silence is the sleep which nourishes wisdom. Silence is the fermentation of thought. Silence is the style of wisdom. Silence aspires after truth.
XXXII. DISSIMULATION.
For. Dissimulation is a compendious wisdom. We are not bound to say the same thing, but to aim at the same end 50. Nakedness is uncomely in the mind as well is in the body. Dissimulation is both a grace and a guard. Dissimulation is the fence of counsels. There are some for whom it is good to be deceived. He that does everything without dissimulation is not the less a deceiver; for most people either do not understand him or do not believe him. Want of dissimulation is nothing but want of power over the mind.	Against. If we cannot think according to the truth of things, let us at least speak according as we think. When arts of policy are beyond a man's capacity, dissimulation must serve him for wisdom. He that dissembles deprives himself of a principal instrument of action, namely trust and belief. Dissimulation invites dissimulation. He that dissembles is not free.
XXXIII. BOLDNESS.
For. He that shows diffidence invites reproof. What action is to an orator boldness is to a politician,—the first requisite, the second, and the third. I love a confessing modesty, hate an accusing one 51. Confidence of manners brings minds the sooner together. I like a reserved countenance and an open speech.	Against. Boldness is the pioneer of folly. Impudence is of no use except for imposture. Confidence is the mistress of fools, and the sport of wise men. Boldness is dullness of the sense joined with malice of the will.
XXXIV. CEREMONIES, PUNTOS, AFFECTATION.
For. A decorous government of the countenance and carriage is the true seasoning of virtue. We comply with the vulgar in our words, why not in habit and gesture? He that does not preserve decorum in trifles and daily habits may be a great man; but be sure of this, such a man is not wise at all hours. Virtue and wisdom without forms are like foreign languages; for they are not intelligible to the common people. He that knows not the sense of the common people by an inward con-gruity, if he know it not by outward observation either, is of all men the most foolish. Forms of behaviour are the translation of virtue into vernacular.	Against. What more uncomely than to mak life a piece of acting? From ingenuousness comes grace from artifice hatred. Better painted cheeks and curie hair than painted and curled manner He that applies his mind to such small observations, is not capable great thoughts. Affectation is the shining putr faction of ingenuousness 52.
XXXV. JESTS.
For. A jest is the orator's altar. He that throws into everything a Who does not despise these hunter after deformities and prettinesses dash of modest pleasantry keeps his mind the more at liberty. To pass easily from jest to earnest and from earnest to jest is a thing more politic than men suppose. A jest is many times the vehicle of a truth which would not otherwise have been brought in.	Against. It is a dishonest trick to wash away with a jest the real importance of things. Consider jests when the laugh is over. These wits hardly penetrate below the surface of things, where jests ever lie. Where a jest has any weight in serious matters, it is a childish levity.
XXXVI. LOVE.
For. See you not that all men seek themselves? But it is only the lover that finds himself. There is nothing which better regulates the mind than the authority of some powerful passion. If you are wise, seek something to desire; for to him who has not some special object of pursuit all things are distasteful and wearisome 53. Why should not one be content with one?	Against. The stage is much beholden to love, life not at all. Nothing has so many names as love; for it is a thing either so foolish that it does not know itself, or so foul that it hides itself with paint. I hate those men of one thought. Love is a very narrow contemplation.
XXXVII. FRIENDSHIP.
For. Friendship does the same things as fortitude, but more sweetly. Friendship is a sweet seasoning to all other blessings. It is the worst solitude, to have no true friendships. It is a retribution worthy of bad faith to be deprived of friendships.	Against. He that contracts close friendships imposes upon himself new necessities. It is the part of a weak mind to go shares in fortune.
XXXVIII. FLATTERY.
For. Flattery proceeds more from manners than malice. To suggest what a man should be, under colour of praising what he is, was ever a form due in civility to the great.	Against. Flattery is the style of slaves. Flattery is the refuse of vices. The flatterer is like the fowler that deceives birds by imitating their cry. The unseemliness of flattery is matter of comedy, its mischief of tragedy. Nothing so hard to cure as the ear.
XXXIX. REVENGE.
For. Revenge is a kind of wild justice. He who requites violence with violence, sins against the law but not against the man. The fear of private revenge is a useful thing; for laws too often sleep.	Against. He that did the first wrong made a beginning of mischief, he that returned it made no end. The more natural revenge is, the more need to restrain it. He that is ready to return an injury was behindhand more in time perhaps than in will.
XL. INNOVATION.
For. Every medicine is an innovation. He that will not have new remedies will have new evils. Time is the greatest innovator, why then should we not imitate time? Ancient precedents are unfit, modern ones corrupt and interested. Leave it to the unskilful and the contentious to act by precedent. As those who first bring honour into their family are commonly worthier than their descendants, so are the first precedents commonly better than the imitations of them. A froward retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation. Seeing that things alter of themselves to the worse, if counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end? The slaves of custom are the sport of time.	Against. Things new born are ill-shapen. The only author I like is time. There is no novelty that does not some hurt, for it unsettles what is. Things settled by custom, though they be not good, yet at least they fit one with another. What innovator imitates time, who so insinuates his innovations that they are not perceived? That which comes unlooked for gets the less thanks from him whom it helps, and gives the more annoyance to him whom it hurts.
XLI. DELAY.
For. Fortune sells many things to him that is in a hurry, which she gives to him that waits. While we hasten to take hold of the beginnings of things, we grasp shadows. While things are wavering, watch; when they have taken their direction, act. Commit the beginnings of actions to Argus, the end to Briareus.	Against. Opportunity offers the handle of the bottle first, and afterwards the belly. Opportunity is like the Sibyl; she raises the price as she diminishes the offer. Speed is Pluto's helmet. Things that are done betimes are done with judgment; things that are put off too late, by circuit 54.
XLII. PREPARATION.
For. He that attempts a great matter with small means, does but provide himself with an occasion of hoping. With small preparations you may purchase wisdom, but not fortune.	Against. The time to cease preparing is the instant you can begin acting. Let no man hope that he can bind fortune by preparation. To interchange preparation and action is politic, to part them is vain and unfortunate. Great preparation wastes both time and matter.
XLIII. MEETING THE FIRST MOVE.
For. More dangers have deceived men than forced them. It is less trouble to apply the remedy to a danger than to keep watch upon the approach of it. He that arms himself to meet danger teaches it to come on, and in remedying fixes it. A danger is no more light, if it once seem light.	Against. The very remedies of dangers carry little dangers in them. It is better to have to deal with a few dangers in their maturity, than with the menaces of every one.
XLIV. VIOLENT COUNSELS.
For. For those who embrace this mild kind of wisdom an increase of the evil is salutary. Necessity, which gives violent counsels, also executes them.	Against. Every violent remedy is pregnant with some new evil. The only violent counsellors are anger and fear.
XLV. SUSPICION.
For. Distrust is the sinews of wisdom, but suspicion is a medicine for the joints. His faith is justly suspected whose faith suspicion shakes. Suspicion loosens a frail faith, but braces a strong one.	Against. Suspicion discharges faith. The distemper of suspicions is a kind of civil madness.
XLVI. THE WORDS OF THE LAW.
For. The interpretation which departs from the letter is not interpretation but divination. When the letter is departed from, the judge becomes the law-giver.	Against. The sense according to which each word is to be interpreted must be gathered from all the words together. The worst tyranny is the torturing of the law.
XLVII. FOR WITNESSES AGAINST ARGUMENTS.
For. He who relies on arguments decides according to the merits of the pleader, not of the cause. He who believes arguments more than witnesses, ought to give more credit to the wit than the senses. Arguments might be trusted, if men never acted absurdly. Arguments, when opposed to testimony, may make a fact seem strange, but cannot make it seem not a fact.	Against. If witnesses are to be believed in spite of arguments, it is enough if the judge be not deaf. Arguments are the antidote against the poison of testimony. It is safest to believe those proofs which seldomest lie.

These Antitheses (which I have here set down) are perhaps of no great value; but as I had long ago prepared and collected them, I was loth to let the fruit of my youthful industry perish—the rather because (if they be carefully examined) they are seeds only, not flowers. In one respect indeed they savour altogether of youth, there being plenty of them in the moral and demonstrative kind, but in the deliberative and judicial very few.

The third Collection, which belongs to the Promptuary, or Preparatory Store, and is likewise deficient, is that of what I call Lesser Forms⁵⁵. I mean those parts of speech which answer to the vestibules, back doors, ante-chambers, withdrawing-chambers, passages etc., of a house; and may serve indiscriminately for all subjects. Such are prefaces, conclusions, digressions, transitions, intimations of what is coming, excusations, and a number of the kind. For as in buildings it is a great matter both for pleasure and use that the fronts, doors, windows, approaches, passages, and the like be conveniently arranged, so also in a speech these accessory and interstitial passages (if they be handsomely and skilfully fashioned and placed) add a great deal both of ornament and effect to the entire structure. Of these Forms I will subjoin one or two examples, without dwelling longer upon them. For though they be matters of no small use, yet as I have nothing of my own to add in this part, but merely transcribe the naked forms out of Demosthenes or Cicero or some other chosen author, they are not of that importance that I should spend time upon them.

Examples of Lesser Forms.

A CONCLUSION IN A DELIBERATIVE.

So may we redeem the fault passed and at the same time prevent the inconveniences to come.

COROLLARY OF AN ACCURATE DISTRIBUTION.

That all may know that I have no wish either to evade anything by silence or to obscure it by speech ⁵⁶.

A TRANSITION WITH A HINT.

Let us pass these things, and yet not without marking and turning back to look at them as we go by⁵⁷.

A FORM TO PREOCCUPY THE MIND AGAINST AN OPINION PREVIOUSLY FORMED.

I will make you understand in all this business how much is truth, how much error, and how much envy ⁵⁸. These few may be enough by way of example; and with these I conclude the Appendices to Rhetoric, which belong to the Promptuary.

CHAPTER IV.

Two General Appendices of the Art of Transmission; Critical and Pedagogical.

THERE remain two appendices touching the transmission of knowledge in general; the one Critical, the other Pedagogical. For as the principal part of transmission of knowledge consists in the writing of books, so the relative part thereof turns on the reading of books. Now reading is either directed by teachers, or attained by each man's own endeavours; and to this these two knowledges which I have mentioned appertain.

To the Critical part belongs, first, the true correction and amended edition of approved authors; whereby both themselves receive justice and their students light. Yet in this the rash diligence of some has done no little harm. For many critics, when they meet a passage which they do not understand, immediately suppose that there is a fault in the copy. As in that passage of Tacitus, where he relates that when a certain colony asserted before the senate the right of asylum, their arguments were not very favourably listened to by the emperor and the senate; whereupon the ambassadors, fearing for the success of their cause, gave a good sum of money to Titus Vinius to support them—by which means they prevailed. “Then” (says Tacitus) “the dignity and antiquity of the colony had its weight”¹; meaning that the arguments which appeared light before gained fresh weight by the money. But a critic, and he not one of the worst, here erased the word turn, and substituted tantum. And this bad habit of critics has brought it to pass that (as some one has wisely remarked) “the most corrected copies are often the least correct”. Moreover, to speak truly, unless critics be learned in the sciences which the books they edit treat of, their diligence is not without its danger.

Secondly, there belongs to the Critical part the interpretation and explication of authors,—commentaries, scholia, annotations, collections of beauties, and the like. In labours of this kind however some of the critics have been visited with that very bad disease, of leaping over many of the obscurer places, while they linger and expatiate to tediousness on those which are clear enough; as if the object were not so much to illustrate the author as to display on every possible opportunity the extensive learning and various reading of the critic himself. It were especially to be desired (though this is a matter which belongs rather to the art of transmission in the main, than to the appendices thereof) that every writer who handles arguments of the obscurer and more important kind, should himself subjoin his own explanations; that so the text may not be interrupted by digressions and expositions, and the notes may not be at variance with the writer's meaning. Something of the kind I suspect in Theon's Commentary on Euclid ².

There belongs thirdly to the Critical part (and from this indeed it derives its name) the insertion of some brief judgment concerning the authors edited, and comparison of them with such other writers on the same subjects; that students may by such censure be both advised what books to read and better prepared when they come to read them. This last office is indeed, so to speak, the critic's chair; which has certainly in our age been ennobled by some great men,—men in my judgment above the stature of critics.

As for the Pedagogical part, the shortest rule would be, “Consult the schools of the Jesuits”; for nothing better has been put in practice. Nevertheless I will as usual give a few hints, gleaning an ear here and there. I am clearly in favour of a collegiate education for boys and young men; not in private houses, nor merely under schoolmasters. For in colleges there is a greater emulation of the youths amongst themselves; there is also the sight and countenance of grave men, which tends to modesty, and forms their young minds from the very first after that model; and in short there are very many advantages in a collegiate education. For the order and manner of teaching, I would say first of all,— avoid abridgments and a certain precocity of learning, which makes the mind over bold, and causes great proficiency rather in show than in fact. Also let some encouragement be given to the free exercise of the pupils' minds and tastes; I mean, if any of them, besides performing the prescribed exercises, shall steal time withal for other pursuits to which he is more inclined, let him not be checked. Observe moreover (what perhaps has not hitherto been remarked) that there are two ways of training and exercising and preparing the mind, which proceed in opposite directions. The one begins with the easier tasks, and so leads on gradually to the more difficult; the other begins by enforcing and pressing the more difficult, that when they are mastered the easier ones may be performed with pleasure. For it is one method to begin swimming with bladders, which keep you up; and another to begin dancing with heavy shoes, which weigh you down. Nor is it easy to tell how much a judicious intermixture of these methods helps to advance the faculties of the mind and body. Again, the application and choice of studies according to the nature of the mind to be taught, is a matter of wonderful use and judgment; the due and careful observation whereof is due from the masters to the parents, that they may be able to advise them as to the course of life they should choose for their sons. And herein it should be carefully observed, that as a man will advance far fastest in those pursuits to which he is naturally inclined, so with respect to those for which he is by defect of nature most unsuited there are found in studies properly chosen a cure and remedy for his defects. For example, if one be bird-witted, that is, easily distracted and unable to keep his attention as long as he should, Mathematics provides a remedy; for in them if the mind be caught away but a moment, the demonstration has to be commenced anew. Exercises, again, it is obvious, play the principal part in instruction. But few have observed that there ought to be not only a wise choice and course of exercises, but a wise intermission of them also; for it is well observed by Cicero, “that men in their exercises for the most part exercise their faults as well as their faculties”³, so that an ill habit is sometimes acquired along with the good. It is safer therefore to intermit exercises from time to time and return to them after a while, than continually to pursue and press them. But enough of this. Certainly these are matters not very grand or imposing at first sight, yet of singular fruit and efficacy. For as the good or ill thriving of plants depends chiefly upon the good or ill treatment they received when they were young and tender; and as the immense increase of the Roman empire is by some deservedly attributed to the virtue and wisdom of the first six kings, who were in truth as the tutors and guardians of it in its infancy ⁴; so surely the culture and ordering of youthful or tender years has a power which though latent and not perceptible to everybody, neither length of time nor assiduity and earnestness of labour in mature age can afterwards countervail. It will not be amiss to observe also, that even mean faculties, when they fall into great men or great matters, sometimes work great and important effects. Of this I will adduce a memorable example; the rather, because the Jesuits appear not to despise this kind of discipline; therein judging (as I think) well. It is a thing indeed, if practised professionally, of low repute; but if it be made a part of discipline, it is of excellent use. I mean stage-playing: an art which strengthens the memory, regulates the tone and effect of the voice and pronunciation, teaches a decent carriage of the countenance and gesture, gives not a little assurance, and accustoms young men to bear being looked at. The example which I shall give, taken from Tacitus, is that of one Vibulenus, formerly an actor, then a soldier in the Pannonian legions. This man had at the death of Augustus raised a mutiny, whereupon Blæsus, the lieutenant, committed some of the mutineers to prison. The soldiers however broke in and let them out; whereupon Vibulenus getting up to speak, began thus; “These poor innocent wretches you have restored to light and life; but who shall restore life to my brother, or my brother to me? whom, being sent hither in message from the legions of Germany, to treat of the common cause, this man has murdered last night by some of his swordsmen, whom he keeps and arms for the execution of soldiers. Answer, Blæsus, where have you thrown his body? Enemies themselves deny not burial. When with kisses and tears I shall have satiated my grief, command me also to be slain beside him; only let these my fellows, seeing we are put to death for no crime, but because we consulted for the good of the legions, have leave to bury us”⁵. With which words he excited such excessive jealousy and alarm, that, had it not shortly afterwards appeared that nothing of the sort had happened, nay, that he had never had a brother, the soldiers would hardly have kept their hands off the prefect; but the fact was that he played the whole thing as if it had been a piece on the stage.

And now I am come to the end of my treatise concerning Rational Knowledges; wherein if I have sometimes made the divisions other than those that are received, yet let it not be thought that I disallow all those divisions which I do not use. For there is a double necessity imposed upon me of altering the divisions. First, because to reduce into one class things next in nature, and to gather into one bundle things wanted for use, are operations differing in the very end and intention. For as a secretary of a king or state, when he arranges his papers in his study or general cabinet, puts those things together, no doubt, which are of like nature,—treatises by themselves in one place, instructions by themselves in another, foreign letters, domestic letters, and the like, each apart by themselves, —but when on the contrary he arranges them in his boxes or particular cabinet, he puts those together which, though of different kinds, he thinks he will have occasion to use together; so in this general cabinet of knowledge it was necessary for me to make the divisions according to the nature of the things themselves, whereas if I had been to handle any particular knowledge I should have adopted the divisions fittest for use and practice. Secondly, because the introduction of the Desiderata, and the incorporation of them with the rest, involved as a consequence an alteration in the distribution of the existing sciences. For suppose (by way of demonstration) that the arts which we now have are as 15, and that the same with the desiderata added are as 20; I say that the factors of the number 15 are not the same with the factors of the number 20. For the factors of 15 are 3 and 5; the factors of 20 are 2, 4, 5, and 10. It is plain therefore that these things could not be otherwise. And so much for the Logical Sciences.

 

¹ Pantag. ii. 7. The humour of making catalogues of imaginary books probably began with Rabelais.

² Arist. De Interpret, i. r.

³ In Acosta's History of the New World [book vi. c. 5], which is a very interesting book, the writer, in giving an account of the way in which the Mexicans used hieroglyphical characters, makes a digression on the writing of the Chinese, in a manner which indicates that at that time their mode of writing was not generally known.

⁴ This assertion was made by the early missionaries, and has been constantly repeated since. Within certain limits it is true; just as an Italian and an Englishman may read or write Latin equally well, though they pronounce it differently. But the structure of the spoken languages, or rather dialects, to which written Chinese can correspond must be identical. It is difficult to attach a precise meaning to such statements as Remusat's “Les signes de leur écriture, pris en général, n'expriment pas des prononciations, mais des idées”. Every character has in truth, he immediately afterwards remarks, its sound; and a Chinese book can of course be read aloud in Chinese. Moreover the great majority of Chinese characters carry with them an indication of their pronunciation. They consist of two elements, one being a simpler character of the same sound, although generally speaking of totally different meaning, the other referring more or less precisely to the meaning. Thus the character for a particular kind of tree will contain, besides the phonetic element, the character for tree or wood in general; so too will very frequently that for a thing made of wood. These elements have been termed Phoneticæ and Classificæ. But most of the latter admit of being used in different combinations as Phoneticæ. They correspond precisely with the kind of hieroglyphics which Bunsen calls determinants, and are for the most part the same as the radicals (as they are called) used in arranging words in the Chinese dictionaries. The class of characters of which I have been speaking, is the fourth of the six classes into which Chinese characters are commonly divided. They are called Hiai-Ching, id est joined to sound, or Hing-Ching, id est representing the sound; and it is said that out of twenty-four thousand characters it was found that twenty-two thousand are of this kind. See Callery, Systema phoneticum Scripturcæ Sinicæ, i. 9. He refers for his authority to a Chinese encyclopædia.

The view taken of the nature of these characters in Marshman's Clavis Sinica, is, as Remusat has pointed out, wholly wrong. It is much to be wished that a person sufficiently acquainted with the subject would investigate the analogy which exists between the Chinese and Egyptian modes of writing; not, of course, with any notion of establishing a historical connexion (as was once attempted) between the two nations. It is exceedingly remarkable, that as early as the fourth dynasty the Egyptians seem to have had a complete and even copious system of purely alphabetic characters, though, as Lepsius has shown, the majority of their alphabetic characters are of later date. I must apologise for the length of this note on a subject not very closely connected with the text.

⁵ Compare this with Solyman's lesson to his vizir on the art of sieges. “Come close to me,” said the Sultan, “but on your head be it if you tread on the carpet on which I sit.” The vizir reflected for a while, then gradually rolling up the carpet, advanced close to his instructor. “All is said,” resumed Solyman; “you know now how strong places are to be taken.” The lesson was given, it is said, in relation to the siege of Rhodes in 1521.

⁶ Aulus Gellius quotes from the Analogia of Cæsar, a precept to avoid an unusual word “veluti scopulum”, Nodes Att. i. 10. Bacon refers to the Analogia in several other places. Vide suprà, p. [476. Observe that he there speaks of it as a grammatical philosophy in which Cæsar was endeavouring to bring words, which are the images of things, into congruity with the things themselves. Whence it would seem that he had changed his opinion as to the character of the book; for this would be the very analogia inter verba et res from which here he distinguishes it.]

⁷ See particularly the Cratylus.

⁸ Not the Venus of Apelles, but the Helen of Zeuxis.

⁹ Cicero De Orat. ii. 4.

¹⁰ On this very interesting question, which Bacon was probably the first to propose, Grimm has some good remarks in his essay on the origin of language, in the Berlin Transactions for 1852. He shows that of the two classes of languages here contrasted each has its own merits, observing that mere fulness of grammatical forms is not to be recognised as necessarily an advantage; else we should be obliged to rate Finnish, in which the noun has thirteen cases, above Sanscrit, in which it has eight, and Greek, in which it has only five. It may be remarked in illustration of this that although there are in Sanscrit past tenses corresponding to the Greek aorists and perfects, yet the accuracy of logical discrimination which appropriates the latter to the completed action belongs to Greek only; so too of the appropriation of the imperfect to express an uncompleted action. See Bopp, Comparative Grammar, § 513.

¹¹ This is somewhat overstated. The Spanish generally retains the Latin tenuis at the beginning of words and often in the middle. The tendency to the flattening Bacon mentions is most marked in the case of p and b. See Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, i. 252, for a general table of consonantal changes in the Roman tongues. A remarkable peculiarity in Spanish is the substitution of h (now dropped in pronunciation, for the Latin / at the beginning of words. It is not however universal, and belongs to a comparatively late period of the language, no trace of it being found, according to Diez, in the poem of the Cid.

¹² Bacon no doubt refers to High and Low German. The Gothic itself—commonly called Mœso-Gothic, but which might perhaps be as fitly called Italian-Gothic, as the existing remains of it belong probably to Italy in the time of Theodoric and his successors —is much less charged with aspirates than the tongues which claim descent from it. The last editor of Ulphilas, after pointing out the prevalence of liquids and tenues, observes rather fancifully: “Our ancestors were not a mountain people; they must have dwelt on plains under a moist, mild climate”, The analogy of Gothic with Sanscrit is very striking. Bopp remarks: “When I read the venerable Ulphilas, I feel as if I were reading Sanscrit”.

¹³ This affectation prevailed about the same time in France and Italy, and a little later in England. Jodelle was the first person, according to Pasquier, who produced a French hexameter and pentameter.

Augustus von Schlegel, in his Indische Bibliothek has an interesting essay on this subject, especially with respect to the Greek hexameter. He endeavours to determine the modifications necessary in order that it may be really naturalised in modern languages.

¹⁴ Mart. ix. 83.:—

The dinner is for eating, and my wish is That guests and not that cooks should like the dishes,

¹⁵ Every living language is continually changing; and the orthography gradually follows changes of pronunciation. But to make the pronunciation of the present moment the standard of orthography is to set aside as far as possible the historical element in the development of the language, and thus greatly to diminish its value as a record of the progress of human thought, not to mention the effect which such a system would have in making works composed before the era of the last reformation unintelligible.

[I cannot help thinking that Bacon would have pronounced a less confident judgment on this question, if it had occurred to him that a system of notation might be contrived which should not only represent the pronunciation of the particular time, but accompany all changes of pronunciation which time might introduce; so that the written word Should be at all times a true description of the spoken word. For this purpose nothing more is required than an alphabet containing as many distinct characters as there are distinguishable elementary sounds in the language, so that the same sound may always be represented by the same character or combination of characters, and no combination of characters may be used to represent more than one combination of sounds. Against a reform of orthography founded upon such a reconstruction of the alphabet, it appears to me that none of the objections either in the text or in the note can be justly urged. With regard to the history of the past, everything would remain as it is. A dictionary containing the old and new spelling of every word in the language would effectually preserve its etymological history (so far as our present orthography does preserve it) up to the present time. For the future pronunciation would still be free to change, and orthography would still follow; but the changes of pronunciation would be less rapid and capricious, and the corresponding changes of orthography would be not gradual but immediate. Pronunciation would change, not according to fashion or accident, but according to the laws of nature; and each change would be registered as it came in the printed records of the language. All this would surely be a great advantage, whether we regard language as a medium of communication, for which it serves best when it is most uniform and constant, or as a record of the progress of human thought, for which it serves the better in proportion as capricious and accidental changes are excluded and natural changes marked and registered.

Bacon was probably thinking of some particular scheme proposed in his own day, in which the existing alphabet was to be used. Many such partial schemes of orthographical reform have been attempted from time to time, all of which may be justly condemned as “useless subtilties,” not because the thing aimed at—ut scilicet scriptio pronunciationi consona sit—would be useless if accomplished, but because, without such a reconstruction of the alphabet as should enable us to assign to each distinct sound a distinct character, the thing cannot be accomplished. With an alphabet of only twenty-six letters, it is impossible to make the spelling of English represent the pronunciation, because there are more than twenty-six distinct sounds used in English speech. It has recently been shown, however, that with an alphabet of only forty letters, every sound used in speaking good English may be represented accurately enough for all practical purposes; and a few more would probably include all the sounds of all the classical languages in Europe.

Two or three alphabets of this kind have been suggested within the last hundred years. There was one proposed by Benjamin Franklin, another by Dr. William Young, another by Sir John Herschell. But the first serious attempt to bring such an alphabet into general use, and fairly to meet and overcome all the practical as well as all the theoretical difficulties, was made by Mr. Alexander Ellis and Mr. Isaac Pitman in 1848. And there can be no doubt that by means of their alphabet every English word now in use may be so written that the spelling shall contain a sufficient direction for the pronunciation. Nor is there any reason to apprehend that it would ever be necessary to remodel it, since, however the fashion of pronunciation may change, it is not likely that any new elementary sounds will be developed; and therefore, though we might have to spell some of our words differently, we should still be able to spell them out of the same alphabet.

¹⁶ See, for an account of these ciphers, the appendix at the end of the treatise. Bacon's biliteral cipher seems, as I have there pointed out, to be connected with one which had been given by Porta, which also depends on the principle of which the Electric Telegraph is now a familiar illustration, that any number of things may be denoted by combinations of two signs, as in the binary scale of numeration.

¹⁷ There is a simpler way of attaining the same end, viz., by using two sets of characters, the differences being, as in Bacon's method, intended to be imperceptible, and making the length of the intervals at which those of one set recur significant of the letters of the “ interius scriptum.” This is a system mentioned by writers on the subject; whether ever actually used, I do not know.

¹⁸ For this and the following examples, a special character is used in the original edition, resembling handwriting, and apparently cut in wood for the occasion. But as it is only in the Alphabetum Biforme and the Exempta Accommodationis that anything depends upon the shape of the letters, I have printed all the rest in the common italic type.—J. S.

¹⁹ This biform alphabet is set out somewhat differently in the original edition. The characters are cut to represent handwriting, the distinctions being made by loops or flourishes; and the (a) or (b) is repeated in every case. By keeping the columns distinct, I have avoided the necessity of this repetition; and I have obtained the requisite distinction between the two sets of characters by using types belonging to two different founts. The particular forms of the letters are of course immaterial, so long as those which stand for a can be clearly distinguished from those which stand for b; and the table, as I have arranged it, will be found easier of reference.—J. S.

²⁰ Being then, as King James used to say, like ships at sea, and when at home like ships in a creek; a comparison which may possibly have been suggested by this passage, which occurs in the Advancement as well as here.

¹ The allusion is to the method of Peter Ramus, which he made to apply to every kind of science, and which depends, as Bacon says, on a dichotomising arrangement. See for Ramus's tabular statements of the contents of the seven liberal arts, the Professic Regia P. Rami. (Basil, 1576; but there is probably an earlier edition.)

² Ampère's Essay on the Philosophy of Science, though the work of a very able man is certainly open to this reproach. His classification attempts to introduce uniformity where uniformity is impossible. The objections to a dichotomising method are pointec out by Aristotle, who shows that the last of the classes which we obtain by it can have only a negative character. Professor Owen, in his Lectures on the Invertebrata, re marks that no class thus constituted has been found satisfactory. Such a one for in stance is that denoted by Dr. Prichard's word Allophyl for tribes not of Indo-Germani origin. See Trendelenburg, Elementa Logices, p. 129.

³ This illustrates the circumstance that several of Bacon's minor works are addressec as to a son or sons; by whom we are to understand those who are qualified to be disciples

In the Redargutio Philosophiarum, the speaker addresses his audience as “filii;” and we find a corresponding phrase in the New Atlantis.

[I understand by filios in this passage not so much those who are qualified to be disciples, as those who will carry on the work. The traditio lampadis refers to the Greek torch-races, in which there were relays of runners, and each as he was spent handed the torch to a fresh man. The methodus ad filios is the method which, having in view the continual progression of knowledge, hands over its unfinished work to another generation, to be taken up and carried forward. See preface to the Novum Organum, note B at the end—J. S.]

⁴ Hor. Ep. ad Pisones, 242:—

The order and the joining give such graces,

Mean matters take such honour from their places.

⁵ Arist. Nic. Eth. vi. 3. It is difficult to know why Bacon supposed Aristotle to allude to Democritus, as there is no reason to doubt the correctness of the received opinion that the allusion is to Plato's illustration of the nature of knowledge, which will be found at p. 197 of the Theætetus. On different occasions Aristotle blames those who in philosophical questions employ similitudes or comparisons; but it does not appear that in any such passage he refers to Democritus.

Mr. Munro, to whom I am indebted for the substance of this note, has pointed out to me the passage in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Logicos, in which the opinion held by Democritus and others of the Physicists that “like is known of like” is mentioned. If any commentator has asserted that such a view of the nature of knowledge is condemned by Aristotle as would make it dependent upon this notion of όμοιόгηϛ, and that this notion was held by Democritus, we should get a probable explanation of the error into which Bacon seems to have fallen; but the simplest explanation is that he put the name of Democritus for that of Plato by mere inadvertence.

It may be remarked that Democritus might be charged not only with propounding a materialistic view of the nature of knowledge, but also with employing illustrations in support of it derived from material objects.

⁶ Compare Plato, Politic. 277.

⁷ See, for most of these terms, the Rhetoric of Ramus.

⁸ Kαθόλου πρτον, κατά παντόϛ, καθ' αύτό, etc. These rules are in reality Ramus's own, though he professed to find them in Aristotle. They were however suggested to him by the fourth chapter of the first book of the Posterior Analytics. See the preface to Valerius Terminus.

⁹ The fundamental idea of Lully's art, and of all similar methods, may be thus stated: —The propositions which in the aggregate make up the sum of human knowledge consist of combinations of a certain number of conceptions. If then we had a complete list of these conceptions so arranged as that all their admissible combinations could be obtained by a mechanical process, such a list would be virtually equivalent to a complete encyclopædia. Even an incomplete list would give a certain portion, greater or less according to circumstances, of all the knowledge which relates to the conceptions which enter into it. It is obvious that such a method can give no criterion of the truth of the propositions which it evolves; but it may be so managed as that every proposition shall be intelligible. To take a very simple instance: I confine myself to a table consisting of three columns, the first column to consist of names of quadrupeds, as horse, stag, mouse etc.; the second of adjectives, such as large, small, rare, etc.; the third of names of classes of animals, as ruminant, rodent, and the like. With a few more such columns Lully would have said that the natural history of quadrupeds could be completely made out. Take any word from the first column, any word from the second, any word from the third, and connect them by the logical copula; and if you are fortunate, you obtain a result as reasonable as this—“a mouse is a small rodent”. But of course it might have appeared that a horse was a ruminant.

Notwithstanding this obvious and incurable defect, different arrangements and modifications of the art were proposed by many writers, some of whom probably believed that it contained a key to all knowledge, while others believed that it would be at least useful as a means of arranging and suggesting to the mind all that could be said truly or falsely on a given subject. It appears to have suggested to Leibnitz one of his early tracts, that on the art of combination, and thus to have led him to his notion of reducing reasoning to a calculus. Analogous to Lully's art is a puerility which has recently been revived, namely, mechanical verse-making. It seems also to have suggested to Trithemius his method of secret writing, the fundamental idea of which may be explained by saying that if there were six and twenty animals in the first column of my table, the same number of adjectives in the second, and of classes in the third, each column might represent a complete alphabet, and the proposition “a mouse is a small rodent” would stand for a word of three letters. With more columns longer words might be spelt, etc., etc. It is obvious that in this case the truth or falsehood of the propositions used would be of little or no moment.

Lully's art was, it is said, revealed to him by an angel, after he had taken the resolution of giving up the world and of devoting himself to studies for which his previous way of life had unfitted him. Cornelius Agrippa, who had himself written an exposition of it, thus condemns it in the De Vanit. et Incert. Scient. c. 9.: “Hoc autem admonere vos oportet, hanc artem ad pompam ingenii et doctrinæ ostentationem potius quam ad comparandam eruditionem valere, ac longe plus habere audaciæ quam efficaciæ”. Though much cannot be said in favour of his method, yet Lully himself is one of the most remarkable persons of the middle ages. The story of his renouncing the world in consequence of the intense revulsion of feeling produced by the sudden extinction of a passionate love is well known; whether authentic or not, it is a striking illustration of the solemn words of Peter Damiani: “Quid ergo sit caro doceat ipsa caro”. Lully says of himself: “I was married, I had begotten children, I was tolerably rich, I was wanton and worldly. All this with a willing mind did I forsake, that I might further God's glory and the public good, and exalt the holy faith; I learnt Arabic; many times went I forth to preach to the Saracens; for the faith's sake I was made prisoner and kept in bonds and beaten; forty and five years have I laboured to stir up the rulers of the Church and Christian princes to take heed to the public good; now am I old, now am I poor, yet in the same mind still, by God's help, will so continue to my life's end.” Accordingly he went again to Africa, and, preaching the Gospel, was on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul stoned and left half-dead. Some Genoese merchants put him on board their ship and there he died, and was buried in his native island of Majorca in 1315. See Antonio, Bibl. Hisp. Vet. vol. ii. p. 123. See, with respect to Lully in general, and particularly as to the charge of heterodoxy made against him, Perroquet, Apologie de la Vie et des Ecritz du bien heureux Raymond Lully.

The foolish story, still occasionally repeated, of Raymond Lully having made gold for Edward the Third, is sufficiently refuted by the date of his death, which occurred, according to authority which there is no reason to doubt, while Edward the Third was a child, and nearly thirty years before the coinage of the nobles said to have been made of Lully's gold. Camden is, I am afraid, responsible for the currency of the story, which in Selden's Table Talk seems to be transferred from Lully to Ripley.

¹ Exod. iv. 16.

² Prov. xvi. 21.

³ Cf. Plato, Gorgias, p. 462, etc.

⁴ Cf. Plato, Phædrus, p. 250.

⁵ Cf. Thucyd. iii. 42.

⁶ Cicero, De Fin. iv. 18 and 19.

⁷ Ovid. Metam. vii. 20:—

The better course I know and well approve; The worse I follow.

⁸ Cf. Cicero, De Fin. ii. 17.

⁹ Arist. Rhet. i. 2.

¹⁰ Virg. Ecl. viii. 56:—

Orpheus by land the trees about him bringing, By sea, Arion borne to the dolphins singing.

¹¹ Arist. Rhetoric, i. 6 and 7.

¹² Virg. Æn. ii. 104:—

This would Ulysses wish, and Atreus' sons

Give much to hear of.

¹³ Plutarch, in Phocion, c. 8.

¹⁴ Hor. Ep. ii. 2. 11.:—The merchant praises what he wants to sell.

¹⁵ Proverbs, xx. 14.

¹⁶ The allusion is to the following lines:—

“Prima Ceres ferro mortales vertere terram Instituit, cum jam glandes atque arbuta sacræ

Deficerent Silvæ, et victum Dodona negaret.”—Virg. Georg. i. 147.

¹⁷ Cicero, Pro. Mil. 36.

¹⁸ Ovid, De Art. Amand. ii. 262:—Vice often lurks neath Virtue's shade.

¹⁹ Cf. the fragment of the Academ. ad Varr. preserved by St. Augustine.

²⁰ Bourgeon de Mars, enfant de Paris, Si un eschape, il en vaut dix.

²¹ Livy, iv. 28.

²² Virg. Æn. xii. 600:—And on herself cries out, as cause of all. Bacon alters the original, which runs:—

Se causam clamat crimenque caputque malorum.

²³ Virg. Eclog. v. 23:—And she upbraids the gods and cruel stars.

²⁴ Cf. Demosth. Philipp, i. and iii.

²⁵ Epict. Enchririd. c. 5.

²⁶ Bacon makes the same remark in the Essay on Marriage.

²⁷ Cf. Erasm. Adag. ii. 2. 64; and Hesiod. Op. et Dies, 339.

²⁸ Arist. De Gen. et Corr. i. 4.

²⁹ Olynth, iii. 33. Wats refers to the first Philippic, towards the end of which there is a passage not unlike that in the text; but the phrase “alimenta socordiæ,” which Bacon has quoted in several parts of his works, is not to be found there. He derived it from H. Wolf's translation of a passage in the third Olynthiac, c 33., where the Greek is simply έστι τατα τά τὴν έκάστου ῥαθνμίαν ὑμν ἑπαυξάνοντα, which Wolf renders by “alimenta sunt vestrûm omnium socordiæ.” There is no reference to Philip's conduct in the immediate context, the “alimenta socordiæ” being in reality matters of internal arrangement. It seems as if Bacon read the oration in Wolf's version, and adopted the phrase “alimenta socordiæ” (the point of which belongs to the translator and not to Demosthenes) without comparing it with the original. [I think, however, that the idea of “alimenta” is really involved in the word ἑπαυξάνοντα, when taken with the context and that no other word could have given the meaning so well. …—J. S.]

³⁰ Hor. Ep. i. 2. 40:—Well begun is half done.

³¹ Cf. Lucretius, v. 835.

³² Hor. Sat. i. 1. 66:—The people hiss me, but I applaud myself.

³³ Her face said fie, for shame; but sweet delight Possessed her heart in secret.

[A quotation from the Latin translation of Theocritus (Id, xxvii.) by Hessus (Paris, 1546).

³⁴ Pythag. Aur Vers. v. 12.:—πάντων δ μάλιστ' αίσχύνεο σαυτύν.

³⁵ Habakkuk, i. 15, 16.

³⁶ Cicero, Pro Marcello, c. 9. The quotation is inaccurate, though the meaning is preserved.

³⁷ In the Colours of Good and Evil, of which this tract is only an expansion, this sentence is given in Latin as here, but without any reference to Solomon. There are one or two of Solomon's proverbs to the same purpose, but none I think in these words. It was probably suggested to Bacon by something in Solomon, and turned into its present shape by himself. In after years, remembering where the thought came from, he may easily have forgotten that the expression was his own.—J. S.

³⁸ Plutarch, De Fortunâ Roman, p. 319.

³⁹ Plutarch, in Timol. c. 36.

⁴⁰ Ovid. Rem. Amor. 420:—Things of no good separate, are useful together.

⁴¹ St. Luke, x. 41, 42.

⁴² Cf. Erasmus, Adag. i. 5. 18.

⁴³ The habit of reducing arguments into this form accounts probably for the difficulty of verifying many of Bacon's quotations. The form fittest for the promptuaria was the form easiest to remember and most convenient to use.—J. S.

⁴⁴ The Seneca here referred to is M. Annæus Seneca, the rhetorician, who is supposed to have been the uncle of L. Annæus Seneca, the preceptor of Nero.

⁴⁵ Of these Antitheta many are Bacon's own, and are to be found in other parts of his writings; others are doubtless quotations, of which I shall mention some, though many more might probably be easily pointed out. [A great many of them will be found in the Essays,—J. S.]

⁴⁶ The allusion is to Tiberius. See Sueton. in Tiber. c. 62.

⁴⁷ Seneca, Ep. 77.

⁴⁸ The allusion is to the Eunuchus of Terence.

⁴⁹ This sarcasm is ascribed by Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch to Theophrastus, the author of the Characters (which form the foundation of those of La Bruyct) and of many other works. It has also been ascribed to Simonides. Bacon seems to have taken it from Plutarch.

⁵⁰ Non idem dicere, sed idem spectare, debemus: a sentence in which I suspect that there is either some misprint or some inaccuracy of expression.—J. S.

⁵¹ Arno confitentem verecundiam, accusantem odi. I do not understand this sentence —J. S.

⁵² The same image occurs in Ralegh's Lye:— “ Go tell the Court it glows And shines like rotten wood.”

⁵³ Ovid. Amores, i. 9, 46. The line occurs in Bacon's Promus.—J. S.

⁵⁴ Per ambitum: meaning, I suppose (if the reading be correct), that at first you can choose the best way, but at last you must take the way that offers.—J. S.

⁵⁵ The Promus contains some of these formulæ.

⁵⁶ Cic. Pro. Cluent. c. i. The quotation is inaccurate.

⁵⁷ Cic. Pro. Sext. c. 5.

⁵⁸ Cic. Pro. Cluent. c. 4.

¹ Cf. Tacitus, Hist. i. 66. The case is incorrectly stated. That Bacon had but an imperfect recollection of the passage, is plain from his substituting the name of Titus Vinius for that of Fabius Valens, and from his mentioning the senate, as if the transaction had taken place at Rome. It was by a donative to the soldiery that the colony of Vienna was saved, not (directly at least) by a bribe to their leader; though Tacitus adds that it was believed that he also had been bought over,—“ipsum Valentem magnâ pecuniâ emptum”.—Hist. i. 66.

² It seems probable that this remark, showing a kind of reading with which Bacon does not seem to have been familiar (vide suprà p. 476), was derived from his friend Sir Henry Savile. We find Theon's services in relation to Euclid's Elements depreciatingly spoken of in Saville's Prœlectiones tresdecim in Principium Elementorum Euclidis (1621), pp. 12, 13.

³ Cic. De Orator, i. 33.

⁴ Macchiavelli, Discorsi, i. 19.

⁵ Tacit. Ann, i. 16–22.