From the School Library...

"On Studies"

An Essay by Sir Francis Bacon

"Studies serve for delight, for interest, and for ability.

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"Their chief use for delight is in privateness of retiring; for interest, is in conversation; and for ability, is in judgment and disposition of business.

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"To spend to much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for interest is affectation; to make judgment of them wholly by their rules is the quirk of a scholar.
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"Craft men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them: for they do not teach their own use; but that is a wisdom outside of studies and above studies, won by observation.

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"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

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"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

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"Reading makes a full man; conversation a ready man; and writing an accurate man.

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"And therefore, if a man write little, he had need of great memory; if he converse little, he had need of quick wit; and if he read little, he had need of much cunning, to seem to know what he doth not.

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"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral philosophy, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend...

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"So if a man's mind be given to wandering, let him study mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his attention be called away ever so little, he must begin again: if his mind be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study logic; for that is the 'hair-splitter': if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: so every weakness of the mind may have its own remedy."


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Persevero,
Scribe