insinuate; if it be granted that any such thing be, it must be
remembered withal that learning ministereth in every of them greater
strength of medicine or remedy than it offereth cause of
indisposition or infirmity. For if by a secret operation it make
men perplexed and irresolute, on the other side by plain precept it
teacheth them when and upon what ground to resolve; yea, and how to
carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till they resolve. If
it make men positive and regular, it teacheth them what things are
in their nature demonstrative, and what are conjectural, and as well
the use of distinctions and exceptions, as the latitude of
principles and rules. If it mislead by disproportion or
dissimilitude of examples, it teacheth men the force of
circumstances, the errors of comparisons, and all the cautions of
application; so that in all these it doth rectify more effectually
than it can pervert. And these medicines it conveyeth into men's
minds much more forcibly by the quickness and penetration of
examples. For let a man look into the errors of Clement VII., so
lively described by Guicciardini, who served under him, or into the
errors of Cicero, painted out by his own pencil in his Epistles to
Atticus, and he will fly apace from being irresolute. Let him look
into the errors of Phocion, and he will beware how he be obstinate
or inflexible. Let him but read the fable of Ixion, and it will
hold him from being vaporous or imaginative. Let him look into the
errors of Cato II., and he will never be one of the Antipodes, to
tread opposite to the present world.

(5) And for the conceit that learning should dispose men to leisure
and privateness, and make men slothful: it were a strange thing if
that which accustometh the mind to a perpetual motion and agitation
should induce slothfulness, whereas, contrariwise, it may be truly