[00:10.60]Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.
[00:15.79]Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability,
[00:25.51]is in the judgment and disposition of business.
[00:29.69]For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels,
[00:38.32]and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned.
[00:43.77]To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament,
[00:49.84]is affectation; to make jugment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar.
[00:57.76]They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants,
[01:06.12]that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large,
[01:13.74]except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them,
[01:22.24]and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them,
[01:29.43]and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute;
[01:37.25]nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
[01:46.92]Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested;
[01:56.60]that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously;
[02:03.22]and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
[02:09.05]Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others;
[02:15.83]but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books,
[02:21.90]else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things.
[02:29.10]Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
[02:37.10]And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little,
[02:44.81]he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning,
[02:53.41]to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty;
[02:59.91]the mathematics subtitle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
[03:09.44]Abeunt studia in mores. Nay there is no stand or impediment in the wit,
[03:15.74]but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises.
[03:23.86]Bowling is good for the stone and reins: shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach;
[03:31.33]riding for the head; and the like. So if a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics;
[03:39.38]for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.
[03:45.77]If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores.
[03:55.96]If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers’cases.
[04:05.93]So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.
