No More Learning

Is not knowl-
edge a true and only natural pleasure, whereof there is no
satiety? Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of
all perturbation? How many things are there which we imagine
not? How many things do we esteem and value otherwise than
they are! This ill-proportioned estimation, these vain imagina-
tions, these be the clouds of error that turn into the storms of
perturbation. Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind.
to be raised above the confusion of things, where he may have
the prospect of the order of nature and the error of men?
But is this a vein only of delight, and not of discovery? of
contentment, and not of benefit? Shall he not as well discern
the riches of nature's warehouse, as the benefit of her shop? Is
truth ever barren? Shall he not be able thereby to produce
worthy effects, and to endow the life of man with infinite com-
modities?
But shall I make this garland to be put upon a wrong head?
Would anybody believe me, if I should verify this upon the
knowledge that is now in use? Are we the richer by one poor
invention, by reason of all the learning that hath been these
many hundred years? The industry of artificers maketh some
small improvement of things invented; and chance sometimes in
experimenting maketh us to stumble upon somewhat which is
new; but all the disputation of the learned never brought to
light one effect of nature before unknown. When things are
known and found out, then they can descant upon them, they


## p. 1191 (#617) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
"
1191
can knit them into certain causes, they can reduce them to their
principles. If any instance of experience stand against them,
they can range it in order by some distinctions. But all this is
but a web of the wit, it can work nothing. I do not doubt but
that common notions, which we call reason, and the knitting of
them together, which we call logic, are the art of reason and
studies. But they rather cast obscurity than gain light to the
contemplation of nature. All the philosophy of nature which is
now received, is either the philosophy of the Grecians, or that
other of the Alchemists. That of the Grecians hath the founda-
tions in words, in ostentation, in confutation, in sects, in schools,
in disputations. The Grecians were (as one of themselves saith),
"you Grecians, ever children. " They knew little antiquity; they
knew (except fables) not much above five hundred years before
themselves; they knew but a small portion of the world. That
of the Alchemists hath the foundation in imposture, in auricular
traditions and obscurity; it was catching hold of religion, but
the principle of it is, "Populus vult decipi. " So that I know no
great difference between these great philosophies, but that the
one is a loud-crying folly, and the other is a whispering folly.
The one is gathered out of a few vulgar observations, and the
other out of a few experiments of a furnace. The one never
faileth to multiply words, and the other ever faileth to multiply
gold. Who would not smile at Aristotle, when he admireth the
eternity and invariableness of the heavens, as there were not
the like in the bowels of the earth? Those be the confines and
borders of these two kingdoms, where the continual alteration
and incursion are. The superficies and upper parts of the earth
are full of varieties. The superficies and lower part of the
heavens (which we call the middle region of the air) is full of
variety. There is much spirit in the one part that cannot be
brought into mass. There is much massy body in the other
place that cannot be refined to spirit. The common air is as
the waste ground between the borders. Who would not smile
at the astronomers? I mean not these new carmen which drive
the earth about, but the ancient astronomers, which feign the
moon to be the swiftest of all planets in motion, and the rest in
order, the higher the slower; and so are compelled to imagine a
double motion; whereas how evident is it, that that which they
call a contrary motion is but an abatement of motion. The
fixed stars overgo Saturn, and so in them and the rest all is


## p. 1192 (#618) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
1192
but one motion, and the nearer the earth the slower; a motion
also whereof air and water do participate, though much inter-
rupted.
But why do I in a conference of pleasure enter into these
great matters, in sort that pretending to know much, I should
forget what is seasonable? Pardon me, it was because all
[other] things may be endowed and adorned with speeches, but
knowledge itself is more beautiful than any apparel of words
that can be put upon it.
And let not me seem arrogant, without respect to these great
reputed authors. Let me so give every man his due, as I give
Time his due, which is to discover truth. Many of these men
had greater wits, far above mine own, and so are many in the
universities of Europe at this day. But alas, they learn nothing
there but to believe: first to believe that others know that which
they know not; and after [that] themselves know that which
they know not. But indeed facility to believe, impatience to
doubt, temerity to answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict,
end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in
part of nature; these, and the like, have been the things which
have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and
the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to
vain notions and blind experiments. And what the posterity and
issue of so honorable a match may be, it is not hard to consider.
Printing, a gross invention; artillery, a thing that lay not far
out of the way; the needle, a thing partly known before; what a
change have these three made in the world in these times; the
one in state of learning, the other in state of the war, the third
in the state of treasure, commodities, and navigation. And those,
I say, were but stumbled upon and lighted upon by chance.
Therefore, no doubt the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowl-
edge; wherein many things are reserved, which kings with their
treasure cannot buy, nor with their force command; their spials
and intelligencers can give no news of them, their seamen and
discoverers cannot sail where they grow. Now we govern nature
in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity; but if we
would be led by her in invention, we should command her in
action.


## p. 1193 (#619) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON,
1193
TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR, TOUCHING THE HISTORY OF
BRITAIN
From Letters and Life,' by James Spedding
It may please your good Lordship:
So
OME late act of his Majesty, referred to some former speech
which I have heard from your Lordship, bred in me a great
desire, and by strength of desire a boldness to make an humble
proposition to your Lordship, such as in me can be no better
than a wish: but if your Lordship should apprehend it, may
take some good and worthy effect. The act I speak of, is the
order given by his Majesty, as I understand, for the erection of
a tomb or monument for our late sovereign Lady Queen Eliza-
beth: wherein I may note much, but this at this time; that as
her Majesty did always right to his Highness's hopes, so his Maj-
esty doth in all things right to her memory; a very just and
princely retribution. But from this occasion, by a very easy
ascent, I passed furder, being put in mind, by this Represent-
ative of her person, of the more true and more firm Represent-
ative, which is of her life and government. For as Statuaes and
Pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking Pictures.
Wherein if my affection be not too great, or my reading too
small, I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write
lives by parallels, it would trouble him for virtue and fortune
both to find for her a parallel amongst women.
And though
she was of the passive sex, yet her government was so active,
as, in my simple opinion, it made more impression upon the
several states of Europe, than it received from thence. But I
confess unto your Lordship I could not stay here, but went
a little furder into the consideration of the times which have
passed since King Henry the 8th; wherein I find the strangest
variety that in like number of successions of any hereditary mon-
archy hath ever been known. The reign of a child; the offer of
an usurpation (though it were but as a Diary Ague); the reign
of a lady married to a foreign Prince; and the reign of a lady
solitary and unmarried. So that as it cometh to pass in massive
bodies, that they have certain trepidations and waverings before
they fix and settle; so it seemeth that by the providence of God
this monarchy, before it was to settle in his Majesty and his gen-
erations (in which I hope it is now established for ever), it had


## p. 1194 (#620) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
1194
these prelusive changes in these barren princes. Neither could
I contain myself here (as it is easier to produce than to stay a
wish), but calling to remembrance the unworthiness of the his-
tory of England (in the main continuance thereof), and the par-
tiality and obliquity of that of Scotland, in the latest and largest
author that I have seen: I conceived it would be honor for his
Majesty, and a work very memorable, if this island of Great
Britain, as it is now joined in Monarchy for the ages to come,
so were joined in History for the times past; and that one just
and complete History were compiled of both nations. And if
any man think it may refresh the memory of former discords, he
may satisfy himself with the verse, "olim hæc meminisse juva-
bit:" for the case being now altered, it is matter of comfort
and gratulation to remember former troubles.
Thus much, if it may please your Lordship, was in the optat-
ive mood. It is true that I did look a little in the potential;
wherein the hope which I conceived was grounded upon three
observations. The first, of the times, which do flourish in learn-
ing, both of art and language; which giveth hope not only that
it may be done, but that it may be well done. For when good
things are undertaken in ill times, it turneth but to loss; as in
this very particular we have a fresh example of Polydore Vergile,
who being designed to write the English History by K. Henry
the 8th (a strange choice to chuse a stranger), and for his bet-
ter instruction having obtained into his hands many registers and
memorials out of the monasteries, did indeed deface and suppress
better things than those he did collect and reduce. Secondly, I
do see that which all the world seeth in his Majesty, both a
wonderful judgment in learning and a singular affection towards
learning, and the works of true honor which are of the mind and
not of the hand. For there cannot be the like honor sought in
the building of galleries, or the planting of elms along highways,
and the like manufactures, things rather of magnificence than of
magnanimity, as there is in the uniting of states, pacifying of
controversies, nourishing and augmenting of learning and arts,
and the particular actions appertaining unto these; of which kind
Cicero judged truly, when he said to Cæsar, "Quantum operibus
tuis detrahet vetustas, tantum addet laudibus. " And lastly, I
called to mind, that your Lordship at sometimes hath been
pleased to express unto me a great desire, that something of this
nature should be performed; answerably indeed to your other


## p. 1195 (#621) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
1195
noble and worthy courses and actions, wherein your Lordship
sheweth yourself not only an excellent Chancellor and Counselor,
but also an exceeding favorer and fosterer of all good learning
and virtue, both in men and matters, persons and actions: joining
and adding unto the great services towards his Majesty, which
have, in small compass of time, been accumulated upon your
Lordship, many other deservings both of the Church and Com-
monwealth and particulars; so as the opinion of so great and
wise a man doth seem unto me a good warrant both of the
possibility and worth of this matter. But all this while I assure
myself, I cannot be mistaken by your Lordship, as if I sought
an office or employment for myself. For no man knoweth better
than your Lordship, that (if there were in me any faculty there-
unto, as I am most unable), yet neither my fortune nor profes-
sion would permit it. But because there be so many good painters
both for hand and colors, it needeth but encouragement and
instructions to give life and light unto it.
So in all humbleness I conclude my presenting to your good
Lordship this wish; that if it perish it is but a loss of that which
is not. And thus craving pardon that I have taken so much
time from your Lordship, I always remain
Your Lps. very humbly and much bounden
FR. BACON.
GRAY'S INN, this 2d of April, 1605.
TO VILLIERS ON HIS PATENT AS VISCOUNT
From 'Letters and Life,' by James Spedding
Sir:
I
HAVE sent you now your patent of creation of Lord Blechly of
Blechly, and of Viscount Villiers. Blechly is your own, and
I like the sound of the name better than Whaddon; but the
name will be hid, for you will be called Viscount Villiers. I
have put them both in a patent, after the manner of the patents
of Earls where baronies are joined; but the chief reason was,
because I would avoid double prefaces which had not been fit;
nevertheless the ceremony of robing and otherwise must be
double.
And now, because I am in the country, I will send you some
of my country fruits; which with me. are good meditations;
which when I am in the city are choked with business.


## p. 1196 (#622) ###########################################

1196
FRANCIS BACON
After that the King shall have watered your new dignities
with his bounty of the lands which he intends you, and that
some other things concerning your means which are now likewise
in intention shall be settled upon you; I do not see but you
may think your private fortunes established; and, therefore, it is
now time that you should refer your actions chiefly to the good
of your sovereign and your country. It is the life of an ox or
beast always to eat, and never to exercise; but men are born
(and especially Christian men), not to cram in their fortunes,
but to exercise their virtues; and yet the other hath been the
unworthy, and (thanks be to God) sometimes the unlucky humor
of great persons in our times. Neither will your further fortune
be the further off: for assure yourself that fortune is of a
woman's nature, that will sooner follow you by slighting than
by too much wooing. And in this dedication of yourself to the
public, I recommend unto you principally that which I think
was never done since I was born; and which not done hath bred
almost a wilderness and solitude in the King's service; which is,
that you countenance, and encourage, and advance able men and
virtuous men, and meriting men in all kinds, degrees, and pro-
fessions. For in the time of the Cecils, the father and the son,
able men were by design and of purpose suppressed; and though
of late choice goeth better both in church and commonwealth,
yet money, and turn-serving, and cunning canvasses, and impor-
tunity prevail too much. And in places of moment rather make
able and honest men yours, than advance those that are other-
wise because they are yours. As for cunning and corrupt men,
you must (I know) sometimes use them; but keep them at a dis-
tance; and let it appear that you make use of them, rather than
that they lead you. Above all, depend wholly (next to God)
upon the King; and be ruled (as hitherto you have been) by his
instructions; for that is best for yourself. For the King's care
and thoughts concerning you are according to the thoughts of a
great King; whereas your thoughts concerning yourself are and
ought to be according to the thoughts of a modest man. But
let me not weary you. The sum is that you think goodness the
best part of greatness; and that you remember whence your ris-
ing comes, and make return accordingly.
God ever keep you.
GORHAMBURY, August 12th, 1616


## p. 1197 (#623) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
CHARGE TO JUSTICE HUTTON
From Letters and Life,' by James Spedding
1197
Mr. Serjeant Hutton:
HE King's most excellent Majesty, being duly informed of
your learning, integrity, discretion, experience, means, and
reputation in your country, hath thought fit not to leave
you these talents to be employed upon yourself only, but to call
you to serve himself and his people, in the place of one of his
Justices of the court of common pleas.
The court where you are to serve, is the local centre and
heart of the laws of this realm. Here the subject hath his
assurance by fines and recoveries. Here he hath his fixed and
invariable remedies by præcipes and writs of right. Here Justice
opens not by a by-gate of privilege, but by the great gate of the
King's original writs out of the Chancery.
Here issues process
of outlawry; if men will not answer law in this centre of law,
they shall be cast out of the circle of law. And therefore it is
proper for you by all means with your wisdom and fortitude to
maintain the laws of the realm. Wherein, nevertheless, I would
not have you head-strong, but heart-strong; and to weigh and
remember with yourself, that the twelve Judges of the realm are
as the twelve lions under Solomon's throne; they must be lions,
but yet lions, under the throne; they must shew their stoutness
in elevating and bearing up the throne.
To represent unto you the lines and portraitures of a good
judge:-The first is, That you should draw your learning out of
your books, not out of your brain.
2. That you should mix well the freedom of your own
opinion with the reverence of the opinion of your fellows.
3. That you should continue the studying of your books, and
not to spend on upon the old stock.
4. That you should fear no man's face, and yet not turn
stoutness into bravery.
5. That you should be truly impartial, and not so as men
may see affection through fine carriage.
6. That you be a light to jurors to open their eyes, but not
a guide to lead them by the noses.
7. That you affect not the opinion of pregnancy and expe-
dition by an impatient and catching hearing of the counselors at
the bar.


## p. 1198 (#624) ###########################################

1198
FRANCIS BACON
8. That your speech be with gravity, as one of the sages of
the law; and not talkative, nor with impertinent flying out to
show learning.
9. That your hands, and the hands of your hands (I mean
those about you), be clean, and uncorrupt from gifts, from
meddling in titles, and from serving of turns, be they of great
ones or small ones.
10.
That you contain the jurisdiction of the court within the
ancient merestones, without removing the mark.
II. Lastly, That you carry such a hand over your ministers
and clerks, as that they may rather be in awe of you, than pre-
sume upon you.
These and the like points of the duty of a Judge, I forbear
to enlarge; for the longer I have lived with you, the shorter
shall my speech be to you; knowing that you come so furnished.
and prepared with these good virtues, as whatsoever I shall say
cannot be new unto you. And therefore I will say no more unto
you at this time, but deliver you your patent.
A PRAYER, OR PSALM
From Letters and Life,' by James Spedding
M
OST gracious Lord God, my merciful Father, from my youth
up, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Thou (O
Lord) soundest and searchest the depths and secrets of all
hearts; thou knowledgest the upright of heart, thou judgest the
hypocrite, thou ponderest men's thoughts and doings as in a
balance, thou measurest their intentions as with a line, vanity
and crooked ways cannot be hid from thee.
Remember (O Lord) how thy servant hath walked before
thee: remember what I have first sought, and what hath been
principal in mine intentions. I have loved thy assemblies, I
have mourned for the divisions of thy Church, I have delighted
in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine which thy right
hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee
that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might
stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. The state
and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine
eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart: I have
(though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. If


## p. 1199 (#625) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
1199
any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither
hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been
as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures
have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have
sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found.
thee in thy temples.
Thousands have been my sins, and ten thousand my trans-
gressions; but thy sanctifications have remained with me, and
my heart, through thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal
upon thy altar. O Lord, my strength, I have since my youth
met with thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by
thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible provi-
dence. As thy favors have increased upon me, so have thy cor-
rections; so as thou hast been alway near me, O Lord; and
ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from
thee have pierced me; and when I have ascended before men, I
have descended in humiliation before thee.
And now when I thought most of peace and honor, thy hand
is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me, according to thy
former loving-kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school,
not as a bastard, but as a child. Just are thy judgments upon
me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of
the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the
sands of the sea, to the sea, earth, heavens? and all these are
nothing to thy mercies.
Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before thee, that I
am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces
which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it (as I ought)
to exchangers, where it might have made best profit; but mis-
spent it in things for which I was least fit; so as I may truly
say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrim-
age. Be merciful into me (O Lord) for my Saviour's sake, and
receive me unto thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways.


## p. 1200 (#626) ###########################################

I 200
FRANCIS BACON
FROM THE APOPHTHEGMS >
MY
y Lo. of Essex, at the succor of Rhoan, made twenty-four
knights, which at that time was a great matter. Divers
(7. ) of those gentlemen were of weak and small means; which
when Queen Elizabeth heard, she said, "My Lo. mought have
done well to have built his alms-house before he made his
knights. "
21. Many men, especially such as affect gravity, have a
manner after other men's speech to shake their heads. Sir
Lionel Cranfield would say, "That it was as men shake a bottle,
to see if there was any wit in their head or no. "
33. Bias was sailing, and there fell out a great tempest, and
the mariners, that were wicked and dissolute fellows, called upon
the gods; but Bias said to them, "Peace, let them not know ye
are here. "
42. There was a Bishop that was somewhat a delicate person,
and bathed twice a day. A friend of his said to him, "My lord,
why do you bathe twice a day? " The Bishop answered,
"Because I cannot conveniently bathe thrice. "
55. Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of her instructions to
great officers, "That they were like to garments, strait at the
first putting on, but did by and by wear loose enough. ”
64. Sir Henry Wotton used to say, "That critics are like
brushers of noblemen's clothes. "
Mr. Savill was asked by my lord of Essex his opinion
touching poets; who answered my lord, "He thought them the
best writers, next to those that write prose. "
85. One was saying, "That his great-grandfather and grand-
father and father died at sea. " Said another that heard him,
"And I were as you, I would never come at sea. " "Why, (saith
he) where did your great-grandfather and grandfather and father
die? " He answered, "Where but in their beds. " Saith the
other, "And I were as you, I would never come in bed. ”
97. Alonso of Arragon was wont to say, in commendation of
age, That age appeared to be best in four things: "Old wood
best to burn; old wine to drink; old friends to trust; and old
authors to read. "
119. One of the fathers saith, "That there is but this differ-
ence between the death of old men and young men: that old
men go to death, and death comes to young men. "


## p. 1201 (#627) ###########################################

FRANCIS BACON
12ΟΙ
TRANSLATION OF THE 137TH PSALM
From Works,' Vol. xiv.
WHE
HENAS we sat all sad and desolate,
By Babylon upon the river's side,
Eased from the tasks which in our captive state
We were enforced daily to abide,
Our harps we had brought with us to the field,
Some solace to our heavy souls to yield.
But soon we found we failed of our account,
For when our minds some freedom did obtain,
Straightways the memory of Sion Mount
Did cause afresh our wounds to bleed again;
So that with present gifts, and future fears,
Our eyes burst forth into a stream of tears.
As for our harps, since sorrow struck them dumb,
We hanged them on the willow-trees were near;
Yet did our cruel masters to us come,
Asking of us some Hebrew songs to hear:
Taunting us rather in our misery,
Than much delighting in our melody.
Alas (said we) who can once force or frame
His grieved and oppressèd heart to sing
The praises of Jehovah's glorious name,
In banishment, under a foreign king?
In Sion is his seat and dwelling-place,
Thence doth he shew the brightness of his face.
Hierusalem, where God his throne hath set,
Shall any hour absent thee from my mind?
Then let my right hand quite her skill forget,
Then let my voice and words no passage find;
Nay, if I do not thee prefer in all
That in the compass of my thoughts can fall.
Remember thou, O Lord, the cruel cry
Of Edom's children, which did ring and sound,
Inciting the Chaldean's cruelty,
"Down with it, down with it, even unto the ground. "
In that good day repay it unto them,
When thou shalt visit thy Hierusalem.
11-76


## p. 1202 (#628) ###########################################

1202
FRANCIS BACON
And thou, O Babylon, shalt have thy turn
By just revenge, and happy shall he be,
That thy proud walls and towers shall waste and burn,
And as thou didst by us, so do by thee.
Yea, happy he that takes thy children's bones,
And dasheth them against the pavement stones.
THE WORLD'S A BUBBLE
From Works, Vol. xiv.
THE
HE world's a bubble, and the life of man
less than a span;
In his conception wretched, from the womb
so to the tomb:
Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years
with cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
Yet since with sorrow here we live opprest,
what life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
to dandle fools.
The rural parts are turned into a den
of savage men.
And where's the city from all vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?
Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
or pains his head.
Those that live single take it for a curse,
or do things worse.
Some would have children; those that have them moan,
or wish them gone.
What is it then to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?
Our own affections still at home to please
is a disease:
To cross the seas to any foreign soil
perils and toil.
Wars with their noise affright us: when they cease,
we are worse in peace.
What then remains, but that we still should cry
Not to be born, or being born to die.


## p. 1203 (#629) ###########################################

1203
WALTER BAGEHOT
(1826-1877)
BY FORREST MORGAN
M
ALTER BAGEHOT was born February 3d, 1826, at Langport,
Somersetshire, England; and died there March 24th, 1877.
He sprang on both sides from, and was reared in, a nest of
wealthy bankers and ardent Liberals, steeped in political history and
with London country houses where leaders of thought and politics
resorted; and his mother's brother-in-law was Dr. Prichard the eth-
nologist. This heredity, progressive by disposition and conservative
by trade, and this entourage, produced
naturally enough a mind at once rapid of
insight and cautious of judgment, devoted
almost equally to business action and intel-
lectual speculation, and on its speculative
side turned toward the fields of political
history and sociology.
WALTER BAGEHOT
But there were equally important ele-
ments not traceable. His freshness of men-
tal vision, the strikingly novel points of
view from which he looked at every sub-
ject, was marvelous even in a century so
fertile of varied independences: he com
plained that "the most galling of yokes is
the tyranny of your next-door neighbor,"
the obligation of thinking as he thinks. He had a keen, almost reck-
less wit and delicious buoyant humor, whose utterances never pall by
repetition; few authors so abound in tenaciously quotable phrases
and passages of humorous intellectuality. What is rarely found in
connection with much humor, he had a sensitive dreaminess of
nature, strongly poetic in feeling, whence resulted a large apprecia-
tion of the subtler classes of poetry; of which he was an acute and
sympathizing critic. As part of this temperament, he had a strong
bent toward mysticism,-in one essay he says flatly that "mysticism
is true," which gave him a rare insight into the religious nature
and some obscure problems of religious history; though he was too
cool, scientific, and humorous to be a great theologian.

Above all, he had that instinct of selective art, in felicity of words
and salience of ideas, which elevates writing into literature; which


## p. 1204 (#630) ###########################################

1204
WALTER BAGEHOT
long after a thought has merged its being and use in those of wider
scope, keeps it in separate remembrance and retains for its creator
his due of credit through the artistic charm of the shape he gave it.
The result of a mixture of traits popularly thought incompat-
ible, and usually so in reality, -a great relish for the driest business
facts and a creative literary gift, was absolutely unique. Bagehot
explains the general sterility of literature as a guide to life by the
fact that "so few people who can write know anything;" and began
a reform in his own person, by applying all his highest faculties -
the best not only of his thought but of his imagination and his liter-
ary skill to the theme of his daily work, banking and business affairs
and political economy. There have been many men of letters who
were excellent business men and hard bargainers, sometimes indeed
merchants or bankers, but they have held their literature as far as
possible off the plane of their bread-winning; they have not used it
to explain and decorate the latter and made that the motive of art.
Bagehot loved business not alone as the born trader loves it, for its
profit and its gratification of innate likings, - "business is really
pleasanter than pleasure, though it does not look so," he says in sub-
stance, but as an artist loves a picturesque situation or a journalist
a murder; it pleased his literary sense as material for analysis and
composition. He had in a high degree that union of the practical
and the musing faculties which in its (as yet) highest degree made
Shakespeare; but even Shakespeare did not write dramas on how to
make theatres pay, or sonnets on real-estate speculation.
Bagehot's career was determined, as usual, partly by character
and partly by circumstances. He graduated at London University in
1848, and studied for and was called to the bar; but his father
owned an interest in a rich old provincial bank and a good shipping
business, and instead of the law he joined in their conduct. He had
just before, however, passed a few months in France, including the
time of Louis Napoleon's coup d'état in December, 1851; and from
Paris he wrote to the London Inquirer (a Unitarian weekly) a re-
markable series of letters on that event and its immediate sequents,
defending the usurpation vigorously and outlining his political creed,
from whose main lines he swerved but little in after life. Waiving
the question whether the defense was valid, —and like all first-rate
minds, Bagehot is even more instructive when he is wrong than
when he is right, because the wrong is sure to be almost right and
the truth on its side neglected, the letters are full of fresh, acute,
and even profound ideas, sharp exposition of those primary objects
of government which demagogues and buncombe legislators ignore,
racy wit, sarcasm, and description (in one passage he rises for a
moment into really blood-stirring rhetoric), and proofs of his capacity
-
-


## p. 1205 (#631) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
1205
thus early for reducing the confused cross-currents of daily life to
the operation of great embracing laws. No other writing of a youth
of twenty-five on such subjects—or almost none-is worth remem-
bering at all for its matter; while this is perennially wholesome and
educative, as well as capital reading.
From this on he devoted most of his spare time to literature: that
he found so much spare time, and produced so much of a high grade
while winning respect as a business manager, proves the excellent
quality of his business brain. He was one of the editors of the Na-
tional Review, a very able and readable English quarterly, from its
foundation in 1854 to its death in 1863, and wrote for it twenty lit-
erary, biographical, and theological papers, which are among his best
titles to enduring remembrance, and are full of his choicest flavors,
his wealth of thought, fun, poetic sensitiveness, and deep religious
feeling of the needs of human nature. Previous to this, he had writ-
ten some good articles for the Prospective Review, and he wrote
some afterwards for the Fortnightly Review (including the series
afterwards gathered into 'Physics and Politics'), and other period-
icals.
But his chief industry and most peculiar work was determined by
his marriage in 1858 to the daughter of James Wilson, an ex-mer-
chant who had founded the Economist as a journal of trade, banking,
and investment, and made it prosperous and rather influential. Mr.
Wilson was engaging in politics, where he rose to high office and
would probably have ended in the Cabinet; but being sent to India
to regulate its finances, died there in 1860. Bagehot thereupon took
control of the paper, and was the paper until his death in 1877; and
the position he gave it was as unique as his own. On banking,
finance, taxation, and political economy in general his utterances had
such weight that Chancellors of the Exchequer consulted him as to
the revenues, and the London business world eagerly studied the
paper for guidance. But he went far beyond this, and made it an
unexampled force in politics and governmental science, personal to
himself. For the first time a great political thinker applied his mind
week by week to discussing the problems presented by passing poli-
tics, and expounding the drift and meaning of current events in his
nation and the others which bore closest on it, as France and
America. That he gained such a hearing was due not alone to his
immense ability, and to a style carefully modeled on the conversa-
tion of business men with each other, but to his cool moderation and
evident aloofness from party as party. He dissected each like a man
of science: party was to him a tool and not a religion. He gibed at
the Tories; but the Tories forgave him because he was half a Tory
at heart, he utterly distrusted popular instincts and was afraid of


## p. 1206 (#632) ###########################################

1206
WALTER BAGEHOT
popular ignorance. He was rarely warm for the actual measures of
the Liberals; but the Liberals knew that he intensely despised the
pig-headed obstructiveness of the typical Tory, and had no kinship
with the blind worshipers of the status quo. To natives and foreign-
ers alike for many years the paper was single and invaluable: in it
one could find set forth acutely and dispassionately the broad facts
and the real purport of all great legislative proposals, free from the
rant and mendacity, the fury and distortion, the prejudice and coun-
ter-prejudice of the party press.
An outgrowth of his treble position as banker, economic writer,
and general littérateur, was his charming book 'Lombard Street. '
Most writers know nothing about business, he sets forth, most busi-
ness men cannot write, therefore most writing about business is
either unreadable or untrue: he put all his literary gifts at its serv-
ice, and produced a book as instructive as a trade manual and more
delightful than most novels. Its luminous, easy, half-playful "busi-
ness talk" is irresistibly captivating. It is a description and analysis
of the London money market and its component parts,—the Bank of
England, the joint-stock banks, the private banks, and the bill-brok-
ers. It will live, however, as literature and as a picture, not as a
banker's guide; as the vividest outline of business London, of the
"great commerce" and the fabric of credit which is the basis of mod-
ern civilization and of which London is the centre, that the world
has ever known.
Previous to this, the most widely known of his works-'The Eng-
lish Constitution,' much used as a text-book- had made a new epoch
in political analysis, and placed him among the foremost thinkers
and writers of his time. Not only did it revolutionize the accepted
mode of viewing that governmental structure, but as a treatise on
government in general its novel types of classification are now
admitted commonplaces. Besides its main themes, the book is a
great store of thought and suggestion on government, society, and
human nature,- for as in all his works, he pours on his nominal sub-
ject a flood of illumination and analogy from the unlikeliest sources;
and a piece of eminently pleasurable reading from end to end. Its
basic novelty lay in what seems the most natural of inquiries, but
which in fact was left for Bagehot's original mind even to think of,
-the actual working of the governmental system in practice, as dis-
tinguished from legal theory. The result of this novel analysis was
startling: old powers and checks went to the rubbish heap, and a
wholly new set of machinery and even new springs of force and life
were substituted. He argued that the actual use of the English mon-
archy is not to do the work of government, but through its roots in
the past to gain popular loyalty and support for the real government.


## p. 1207 (#633) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
1207
which the masses would not obey if they realized its genuine nature;
that "it raises the army though it does not win the battle. " He
showed that the function of the House of Peers is not as a co-
ordinate power with the Commons (which is the real government), but
as a revising body and an index of the strength of popular feeling.
Constitutional governments he divides into Cabinet, where the people
can change the government at any time, and therefore follow its acts
and debates eagerly and instructedly; and Presidential, where they
can only change it at fixed terms, and are therefore apathetic and
ill-informed and care little for speeches which can effect nothing.
Just before 'Lombard Street' came his scientific masterpiece,
'Physics and Politics'; a work which does for human society what
the 'Origin of Species' does for organic life, expounding its method
of progress from very low if not the lowest forms to higher ones.
Indeed, one of its main lines is only a special application of Darwin's
"natural selection" to societies, noting the survival of the strongest
(which implies in the long run the best developed in all virtues that
make for social cohesion) through conflict; but the book is so much
more than that, in spite of its heavy debt to all scientific and institu-
tional research, that it remains a first-rate feat of original construct-
ive thought. It is the more striking from its almost ludicrous brevity
compared with the novelty, variety, and pregnancy of its ideas.
It is scarcely more than a pamphlet; one can read it through in
an evening: yet there is hardly any book which is a master-key to
so many historical locks, so useful a standard for referring scattered
sociological facts to, so clarifying to the mind in the study of early
history. The work is strewn with fertile and suggestive observations
from many branches of knowledge. Its leading idea of the needs and
difficulties of early societies is given in one of the citations.
The unfinished 'Economic Studies' are partially a re-survey of the
same ground on a more limited scale, and contain in addition a mass
of the nicest and shrewdest observations on modern trade and soci-
ety, full of truth and suggestiveness. All the other books printed
under his name are collections either from the Economist or from
outside publications.
As a thinker, Bagehot's leading positions may be roughly sum-
marized thus: in history, that reasoning from the present to the past
is generally wrong and frequently nonsense; in politics, that abstract
systems are foolish, that a government which does not benefit its sub-
jects has no rights against one that will, that the masses had much
better let the upper ranks do the governing than meddle with it
themselves, that all classes are too eager to act without thinking and
ought not to attempt so much; in society, that democracy is an evil
because it leaves no specially trained upper class to furnish models


## p. 1208 (#634) ###########################################

1208
WALTER BAGEHOT
for refinement. But there is vastly more besides this, and his value
lies much more in the mental clarification afforded by his details
than in the new principles of action afforded by his generalizations.
He leaves men saner, soberer, juster, with a clearer sense of per-
spective, of real issues, that more than makes up for a slight diminu-
tion of zeal.
«<
As pure literature, the most individual trait in his writings sprang
from his scorn of mere word-mongering divorced from actual life.
"A man ought to have the right of being a Philistine if he chooses,"
he tells us: "there is a sickly incompleteness in men too fine for the
world and too nice to work their way through it. " A great man of
letters, no one has ever mocked his craft so persistently. A great
thinker, he never tired of humorously magnifying the active and
belittling the intellectual temperament. Of course it was only half-
serious: he admits the force and utility of colossal visionaries like
Shelley, constructive scholars like Gibbon, ascetic artists like Milton,
even light dreamers like Hartley Coleridge; indeed, intellectually he
appreciates all intellectual force, and scorns feeble thought which
has the effrontery to show itself, and those who are cross with the
agony of a new idea. " But his heart goes out to the unscholarly
Cavalier with his dash and his loyalty, to the county member who
"hardly reads two books per existence," and even to the rustic who
sticks to his old ideas and whom "it takes seven weeks to compre-
hend an atom of a new one. " A petty surface consistency must not
be exacted from the miscellaneous utterances of a humorist: all sorts
of complementary half-truths are part of his service. His own quite
just conception of humor, as meaning merely full vision and balanced
judgment, is his best defense: "when a man has attained the deep
conception that there is such a thing as nonsense," he says, "you
may be sure of him for ever after. " At bottom he is thoroughly con-
sistent: holding that the masses should work in contented deference
to their intellectual guides, but those guides should qualify them-
selves by practical experience of life, that poetry is not an amuse-
ment for lazy sybarites but the most elevating of spiritual influences,
that religions cut the roots of their power by trying to avoid super-
naturalism and cultivate intelligibility, and that the animal basis of
human life is a screen expressly devised to shut off direct knowledge
of God and make character possible.
To make his acquaintance first is to enter upon a store of high
and fine enjoyment, and of strong and vivifying thought, which one
must be either very rich of attainment or very feeble of grasp to find
unprofitable or pleasureless.
Horn't Morgan,


## p. 1209 (#635) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
THE VIRTUES OF STUPIDITY
From 'Letters on the French Coup d'État›
――――――
1209
I
FEAR you will laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be
about the most essential mental quality for a free people
whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large
scale: it is much stupidity. Not to begin by wounding any
present susceptibilities, let me take the Roman character; for with
one great exception, I need not say to whom I allude, - they
are the great political people of history. Now, is not a certain.
dullness their most visible characteristic? What is the history of
their speculative mind? a blank; what their literature? a copy.
They have left not a single discovery in any abstract science,
not a single perfect or well-formed work of high imagination.
The Greeks, the perfection of human and accomplished genius,
bequeathed to mankind the ideal forms of self-idolizing art, the
Romans imitated and admired; the Greeks explained the laws of
nature, the Romans wondered and despised; the Greeks invented
a system of numerals second only to that now in use, the Ro-
mans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy apparatus.
which we still call by their name; the Greeks made a capital and
scientific calendar, the Romans began their month when the
Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Through-
out Latin literature, this is the perpetual puzzle:- Why are we
free and they slaves, we prætors and they barbers? why do the
stupid people always win and the clever people always lose? I
need not say that in real sound stupidity the English are un-
rivaled: you'll hear more wit and better wit in an Irish street
row than would keep Westminster Hall in humor for five weeks.
In fact, what we opprobriously call "stupidity," though not an
enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource
for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion;
it enforces concentration: people who learn slowly, learn only
what they must. The best security for people's doing their duty
is, that they should not know anything else to do; the best se-
curity for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable
of comprehending what is to be said on the other side. These
valuable truths are no discoveries of mine: they are familiar


## p. 1210 (#636) ###########################################

1210
WALTER BAGEHOT
enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear what
a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising bar-
rister: "Sharp? Oh, yes! he's too sharp by half. He is not
safe, not a minute, isn't that young man. " I extend this, and
advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be too
clever to be practical and not dull enough to be free.
And what I call a proper stupidity keeps a man from all the
defects of this character: it chains the gifted possessor mainly to
his old ideas, it takes him seven weeks to comprehend an atom
of a new one; it keeps him from being led away by new theo-
ries, for there is nothing which bores him so much; it restrains
him within his old pursuits, his well-known habits, his tried expe-
dients, his verified conclusions, his traditional beliefs. He is not
tempted to levity or impatience, for he does not see the joke
and is thick-skinned to present evils. Inconsistency puts him
out: "What I says is this here, as I was a-saying yesterday,” is
his notion of historical eloquence and habitual discretion. He is
very slow indeed to be excited, — his passions, his feelings, and
his affections are dull and tardy strong things, falling in a cer-
tain known direction, fixed on certain known objects, and for the
most part acting in a moderate degree and at a sluggish pace.
You always know where to find his mind. Now, this is exactly
what (in politics at least) you do not know about a Frenchman.
REVIEW WRITING
From The First Edinburgh Reviewers'
R
EVIEW writing exemplifies the casual character of modern lit-
erature: everything about it is temporary and fragmentary.
Look at a railway stall: you see books of every color,
blue, yellow, crimson, "ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,” — on
every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with every con-
ceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—
but all small. People take their literature in morsels, as they
take sandwiches on a journey.
And the change in appearance of books has been accompanied
-has been caused by a similar change in readers. What a
transition from the student of former ages! from a grave man
with grave cheeks and a considerate eye, who spends his life in
study, has no interest in the outward world, hears nothing of its


## p. 1211 (#637) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
1211
din and cares nothing for its honors, who would gladly learn
and gladly teach, whose whole soul is taken up with a few
books of Aristotle and his Philosophy,'-to the merchant in the
railway, with a head full of sums, an idea that tallow is "up,"
a conviction that teas are "lively," and a mind reverting per-
petually from the little volume which he reads to these mundane
topics, to the railway, to the shares, to the buying and bargain-
ing universe. We must not wonder that the outside of books is
so different, when the inner nature of those for whom they are
written is so changed.
་་
In this transition from ancient writing to modern, the review-
like essay and the essay-like review fill a large space. Their
small bulk, their slight pretension to systematic completeness,
their avowal, it might be said, of necessary incompleteness,—the
facility of changing the subject, of selecting points to attack, of
exposing only the best corner for defense, are great temptations.
Still greater is the advantage of our limits. " A real reviewer
always spends his first and best pages on the parts of a subject
on which he wishes to write, the easy comfortable parts which
he knows. The formidable difficulties which he acknowledges,
you foresee by a strange fatality that he will only reach two
pages before the end; to his great grief, there is no opportunity
for discussing them. As a young gentleman at the India House
examination wrote "Time up" on nine unfinished papers in suc-
cession, so you may occasionally read a whole review, in every
article of which the principal difficulty of each successive ques-
tion is about to be reached at the conclusion. Nor can any one
deny that this is the suitable skill, the judicious custom of the
craft.
-
LORD ELDON
From The First Edinburgh Reviewers'
Α
S FOR Lord Eldon, it is the most difficult thing in the world
to believe that there ever was such a man; it only shows
how intense historical evidence is, that no one really doubts
it. He believed in everything which it is impossible to believe
in, in the danger of Parliamentary Reform, the danger of
Catholic Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court of Chan-
cery, the danger of altering the courts of law, the danger of


## p. 1212 (#638) ###########################################

1212
WALTER BAGEHOT
abolishing capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of
making land-owners pay their debts, the danger of making any-
thing more, the danger of making anything less. It seems as if
he maturely thought, "Now, I know the present state of things
to be consistent with the existence of John Lord Eldon; but if
we begin altering that state, I am sure I do not know that it
will be consistent. " As Sir Robert Walpole was against all com-
mittees of inquiry on the simple ground, "If they once begin
that sort of thing, who knows who will be safe? " so that great
Chancellor (still remembered in his own scene) looked pleasantly
down from the woolsack, and seemed to observe, "Well, it is a
queer thing that I should be here, and here I mean to stay. "
TASTE
From Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning'
The
TH
HERE is a most formidable and estimable insane taste.
will has great though indirect power over the taste, just
as it has over the belief. There are some horrid beliefs
from which human nature revolts, from which at first it shrinks,
to which at first no effort can force it. But if we fix the mind
upon them, they have a power over us, just because of their
natural offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood.
Experienced soldiers tell us that at first, men are sickened by the
smell and newness of blood, almost to death and fainting; but
that as soon as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds,
as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter,
a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood (at least for the
moment) with a deep, eager love. It is a principle that if we
put down a healthy instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself
by creating an unhealthy insane attraction. For this reason, the
most earnest truth-seeking men fall into the worst delusions.
They will not let their mind alone; they force it toward some
ugly thing, which a crotchet of argument, a conceit of intellect
recommends: and nature punishes their disregard of her warning
by subjection to the ugly one, by belief in it. Just so, the most
industrious critics get the most admiration. They think it unjust
to rest in their instinctive natural horror; they overcome it, and
angry nature gives them over to ugly poems and marries them to
detestable stanzas.


## p. 1213 (#639) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
1213
CAUSES OF THE STERILITY OF LITERATURE
From Shakespeare, the Man,' etc.
HE reason why so few good books are written is, that so few
people that can write know anything. In general, an
author has always lived in a room, has read books, has
cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of
the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own
eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see.
His life is a vacuum. The mental habits of Robert Southey,
which about a year ago were so extensively praised in the pub-
lic journals, are the type of literary existence, just as the praise
bestowed on them shows the admiration excited by them among
literary people. He wrote poetry (as if anybody could) before
breakfast; he read during breakfast. He wrote history until
dinner; he corrected proof-sheets between dinner and tea; he
wrote an essay for the Quarterly afterwards; and after supper,
by way of relaxation, composed The Doctor'a lengthy and
elaborate jest. Now, what can any one think of such a life? —
except how clearly it shows that the habits best fitted for com-
municating information, formed with the best care, and daily
regulated by the best motives, are exactly the habits which are
likely to afford a man the least information to communicate.
Southey had no events, no experiences. His wife kept house
and allowed him pocket-money, just as if he had been a Ger-
man professor devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of
Horace's amours.
The critic in the 'Vicar of Wakefield' lays down that you
should always say that the picture would have been better if
the painter had taken more pains; but in the case of the prac-
ticed literary man, you should often enough say that the writings.
would have been much better if the writer had taken less pains.
He says he has devoted his life to the subject; the reply is,
"Then you have taken the best way to prevent your making
anything of it. Instead of reading studiously what Burgersdicius
and Ænesidemus said men were, you should have gone out
yourself and seen (if you can see) what they are. " But there
is a whole class of minds which prefer the literary delineation
of objects to the actual eyesight of them. Such a man would
naturally think literature more instructive than life. Hazlitt


## p. 1214 (#640) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
1214
said of Mackintosh, "He might like to read an account of India;
but India itself, with its burning, shining face, would be a mere
blank, an endless waste to him. Persons of this class have no
more to say to a matter of fact staring them in the face, without
a label in its mouth, than they would to a hippopotamus. "
After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to
be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken
anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy
from; he looked at things for himself. Anyhow the modern sys-
tem fails, for where are the amusing books from voracious stu-
dents and habitual writers?
Moreover, in general, it will perhaps be found that persons
devoted to mere literature commonly become devoted to mere
idleness. They wish to produce a great work, but they find they
cannot. Having relinquished everything to devote themselves to
this, they conclude on trial that this is impossible; they wish to
write, but nothing occurs to them: therefore they write nothing
and they do nothing. As has been said, they have nothing to
do; their life has no events, unless they are very poor; with any
decent means of subsistence, they have nothing to rouse them
from an indolent and musing dream. A merchant must meet
his bills, or he is civilly dead and uncivilly remembered; but a
student may know nothing of time, and be too lazy to wind up
his watch.
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS
From William Cowper›
F THERE be any truly painful fact about the world now toler-
ably well established by ample experience and ample records,
it is that an intellectual and indolent happiness is wholly
denied to the children of men. That most valuable author,
Lucretius, who has supplied us and others with an almost inex-
haustible supply of metaphors on this topic, ever dwells on the
life of his gods with a sad and melancholy feeling that no such
life was possible on a crude and cumbersome earth. In general,
the two opposing agencies are marriage and lack of money;
either of these breaks the lot of literary and refined inaction at
once and forever. The first of these, as we have seen, Cowper
had escaped; his reserved and negligent reveries were still free,


## p. 1215 (#641) ###########################################

WALTER BAGEHOT
1215
at least from the invasion of affection. To this invasion, indeed,
there is commonly requisite the acquiescence or connivance of
mortality; but all men are born - not free and equal, as the
Americans maintain, but, in the Old World at least-basely sub-
jected to the yoke of coin. It is in vain that in this hemisphere
we endeavor after impecuniary fancies. In bold and eager youth
we go out on our travels: we visit Baalbec and Paphos and
Tadmor and Cythera,— ancient shrines and ancient empires, seats
of eager love or gentle inspiration; we wander far and long;
we have nothing to do with our fellow-men,—what are we,
indeed, to diggers and counters? we wander far, we dream to
wander forever. - but we dream in vain. A surer force than the
subtlest fascination of fancy is in operation; the purse-strings tie
us to our kind. Our travel coin runs low, and we must return,
away from Tadmor and Baalbec, back to our steady, tedious
industry and dull work, to "la vieille Europe" (as Napoleon said),
"qui m'ennuie. ” It is the same in thought: in vain we seclude
ourselves in elegant chambers, in fascinating fancies, in refined
reflections.
―――――――――
ON EARLY READING
From Edward Gibbon >
IN
-
N SCHOOL Work Gibbon had uncommon difficulties and unusual
deficiencies; but these were much more than counterbal-
anced by a habit which often accompanies a sickly child-
hood, and is the commencement of a studious life, the habit
of desultory reading. The instructiveness of this is sometimes
not comprehended. S. T. Coleridge used to say that he felt a
great superiority over those who had not read-and fondly
read-fairy tales in their childhood: he thought they wanted a
sense which he possessed, the perception, or apperception — we
do not know which he used to say it was-of the unity and
wholeness of the universe.