n nature a
great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of
our own. Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of
pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his
greediness is incapable of moderation. And I find that in curiosity of
knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and
more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full
of its matter:

"Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."

["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as
into everything else."--Seneca, Ep., 106.]

And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having
restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.

Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of
men have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to
itself, and that costs very dear. Its acquisition is far more hazardous
than that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we
have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to
examine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but
sciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the
soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either
already infected or amended: there are some that only burden and
overcharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that,
under colour of curing, poison us. I have been pleased, in places where
I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity,
poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to
blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to
deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the
opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of
poverty, to add unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine to
live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way
how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which
exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it
does not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:

"Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"

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