brother; and, to the Ephesians, who reproached him that he spent his time
in playing with children before the temple: "Is it not better," said he,
"to do so, than to sit at the helm of affairs in your company?" Others
having their imagination advanced above the world and fortune, have
looked upon the tribunals of justice, and even the thrones of kings, as
paltry and contemptible; insomuch, that Empedocles refused the royalty
that the Agrigentines offered to him. Thales, once inveighing in
discourse against the pains and care men put themselves to to become
rich, was answered by one in the company, that he did like the fox, who
found fault with what he could not obtain. Whereupon, he had a mind, for
the jest's sake, to show them to the contrary; and having, for this
occasion, made a muster of all his wits, wholly to employ them in the
service of profit and gain, he set a traffic on foot, which in one year
brought him in so great riches, that the most experienced in that trade
could hardly in their whole lives, with all their industry, have raked so
much together.--[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Thales, i. 26; Cicero, De
Divin., i. 49.]--That which Aristotle reports of some who called both
him and Anaxagoras, and others of their profession, wise but not prudent,
in not applying their study to more profitable things--though I do not
well digest this verbal distinction--that will not, however, serve to
excuse my pedants, for to see the low and necessitous fortune wherewith
they are content, we have rather reason to pronounce that they are
neither wise nor prudent.

But letting this first reason alone, I think it better to say, that this
evil proceeds from their applying themselves the wrong way to the study
of the sciences; and that, after the manner we are instructed, it is no
wonder if neither the scholars nor the masters become, though more
learned, ever the wiser, or more able. In plain truth, the cares and
expense our parents are at in our education, point at nothing, but to