No More Learning

--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. And it is more a wonder in such as
have a swift style, for their memories are commonly slowest; such as
torture their writings, and go into council for every word, must needs
fix somewhat, and make it their own at last, though but through their own
vexation.

_Comit. suffragia_. --Suffrages in Parliament are numbered, not weighed;
nor can it be otherwise in those public councils where nothing is so
unequal as the equality; for there, how odd soever men's brains or
wisdoms are, their power is always even and the same.

_Stare a partibus_. --Some actions, be they never so beautiful and
generous, are often obscured by base and vile misconstructions, either
out of envy or ill-nature, that judgeth of others as of itself.
Nay, the
times are so wholly grown to be either partial or malicious, that if he
be a friend all sits well about him, his very vices shall be virtues; if
an enemy, or of the contrary faction, nothing is good or tolerable in
him; insomuch that we care not to discredit and shame our judgments to
soothe our passions.

_Deus in creaturis_. --Man is read in his face; God in His creatures; not
as the philosopher, the creature of glory, reads him; but as the divine,
the servant of humility; yet even he must take care not to be too
curious. For to utter truth of God but as he thinks only, may be
dangerous, who is best known by our not knowing. Some things of Him, so
much as He hath revealed or commanded, it is not only lawful but
necessary for us to know; for therein our ignorance was the first cause
of our wickedness.

_Veritas proprium hominis_. --Truth is man's proper good, and the only
immortal thing was given to our mortality to use. No good Christian or
ethnic, if he be honest, can miss it; no statesman or patriot should.
For without truth all the actions of mankind are craft, malice, or what
you will, rather than wisdom. Homer says he hates him worse than
hell-mouth that utters one thing with his tongue and keeps another in his
breast. Which high expression was grounded on divine reason; for a lying
mouth is a stinking pit, and murders with the contagion it venteth.
Beside, nothing is lasting that is feigned; it will have another face
than it had, ere long. {41} As Euripides saith, "No lie ever grows old. "

_Nullum vitium sine patrocinio_. --It is strange there should be no vice
without its patronage, that when we have no other excuse we will say, we
love it, we cannot forsake it. As if that made it not more a fault.