in it, that men should love lies; where neither they
make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advan-
tage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake.
But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and
open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and
mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so
stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may
perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth
best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a
diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied
lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.
Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out
of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes,
false valuations, imaginations as one would, and
the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number
of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy
and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy
vinum daemonum, because it fireth the imagina-
tion; and yet, it is but with the shadow of a lie.
But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind,
but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that
doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. But how-
soever these things are thus in men's depraved
judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only
doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth,
which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the
knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and
the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is