, but gives them
a greater grace than if they had needed no art, as all other ornaments
are commonly nothing else but the remedies or disguises of
imperfections; and therefore he thinks him very weak that is unprovided
of this excellent and most useful quality, without which the best
natural or acquired parts are of no more use than the Guanches' darts,
which, the virtuosos say, are headed with butter hardened in the sun. It
serves him to innumerable purposes to press on and understand no
repulse, how smart or harsh soever, for he that can fail nearest the
wind has much the advantage of all others; and such is the weakness or
vanity of some men, that they will grant that to obstinate importunity
which they would never have done upon all the most just reasons and
considerations imaginable, as those that watch witches will make them
confess that which they would never have done upon any other account.

He believes a man's words and his meaning should never agree together;
for he that says what he thinks lays himself open to be expounded by the
most ignorant, and he who does not make his words rather serve to
conceal than discover the sense of his heart deserves to have it pulled
out, like a traitor's, and shown publicly to the rabble; for as a king,
they say, cannot reign without dissembling, so private men, without
that, cannot govern themselves with any prudence or discretion
imaginable. This is the only politic magic that has power to make a man
walk invisible, give him access into all men's privacies, and keep all
others out of his, which is as great an odds as it is to discover what
cards those he plays with have in their hands, and permit them to know
nothing of his; and, therefore, he never speaks his own sense, but that
which he finds comes nearest to the meaning of those he converses with,
as birds are drawn into nets by pipes that counterfeit their own voices.
By this means he possesses men, like the devil, by getting within them
before they are aware, turns them out of themselves, and either betrays
or renders them ridiculous, as he finds it most agreeable either to his
humour or his occasions.

As for religion, he believes a wise man ought to possess it only that he
may not be observed to have freed himself from the obligations of it,
and so teach others by his example to take the same freedom. For he who
is at liberty has a great advantage over all those whom he has to deal
with, as all hypocrites find by pe