No More Learning

They make a causeway to their
country by injury, as if it were not honester to do nothing than to seek
a way to do good by a mischief.

_Injuria_. --Injuries do not extinguish courtesies: they only suffer them
not to appear fair. For a man that doth me an injury after a courtesy,
takes not away that courtesy, but defaces it: as he that writes other
verses upon my verses, takes not away the first letters, but hides them.

_Beneficia_. --Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us; and that
friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our
boats; or winds, that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats,
that they be nourishing. For these are what they are necessarily.
Horses carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not. It is true, some
men may receive a courtesy and not know it; but never any man received it
from him that knew it not. Many men have been cured of diseases by
accidents; but they were not remedies. I myself have known one helped of
an ague by falling into a water; another whipped out of a fever; but no
man would ever use these for medicines. It is the mind, and not the
event, that distinguisheth the courtesy from wrong. My adversary may
offend the judge with his pride and impertinences, and I win my cause;
but he meant it not to me as a courtesy. I scaped pirates by being
shipwrecked; was the wreck a benefit therefore?
No; the doing of
courtesies aright is the mixing of the respects for his own sake and for
mine. He that doeth them merely for his own sake is like one that feeds
his cattle to sell them; he hath his horse well dressed for Smithfield.

_Valor rerum_. --The price of many things is far above what they are bought
and sold for. Life and health, which are both inestimable, we have of
the physician; as learning and knowledge, the true tillage of the mind,
from our schoolmasters. But the fees of the one or the salary of the
other never answer the value of what we received, but served to gratify
their labours.

_Memoria_. --Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate
and frail; it is the first of our faculties that age invades. Seneca,
the father, the rhetorician, confesseth of himself he had a miraculous
one, not only to receive but to hold. I myself could, in my youth, have
repeated all that ever I had made, and so continued till I was past
forty; since, it is much decayed in me. Yet I can repeat whole books
that I have read, and poems of some selected friends which I have liked
to charge my memory with. It was wont to be faithful to me; but shaken
with age now, and sloth, which weakens the strongest abilities, it may
perform somewhat, but cannot promise much. By exercise it is to be made
better and serviceable. Whatsoever I pawned with it while I was young
and a boy, it offers me readily, and without stops; but what I trust to
it now, or have done of later years, it lays up more negligently, and
oftentimes loses; so that I receive mine own (though frequently called
for) as if it were new and borrowed. Nor do I always find presently from
it what I seek; but while I am doing another thing, that I laboured for
will come; and what I sought with trouble will offer itself when I am
quiet. Now, in some men I have found it as happy as Nature, who,
whatsoever they read or pen, they can say without book presently, as if
they did then write in their mind.