igion. It
has been said that people would then be happy, when kings were
philosophers, or philosophers kings; and history shows that the best
times have ever been under learned princes.

As for the services of knowledge to private virtue, it takes away all
levity, temerity, and insolence by copious suggestion of all doubts and
difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides.
It takes away vain admiration of anything, which is the root of all
weakness. No man can marvel at the play of puppets that goes behind the
curtain. And certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame
of Nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls except)
will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn,
and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a
little heap of dust. But especially learning disposes the mind to be
capable of growth and reformation. For the unlearned man knows not what
it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, nor the
pleasure of feeling himself each day a better man than he was the day
before; he is like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his
scythe. Knowledge crowns man's nature with power. It even gives fortune
to particular persons; and it is hard to say whether arms or learning
have advanced greater numbers. As for the pleasure and delight thereof,
in knowledge there is no satiety. "It is a pleasure incomparable," says
Lucretius, "for the mind of man to be settled, landed, and fortified in
the certainty of truth; and from thence to descry the errors and
perturbations of other men."

Lastly, by learning man excels man in that wherein man excels beasts.
The great dignity of knowledge lies in immortality or continuance, and
the monuments of learning are more durable than the monuments of power.
Have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or
more, without the loss of a syllable or letter, during which time
infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and
demolished?

If the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carries riches
and commodities from place to place, and consociates the most remote
regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to
be magnified? Popular and mistaken judgments will continue as they have
ever been, but so will that also continue whereupon learning has ever
relied, and which fails not.

"Wisdom is justifie