XXIII.-OF WISDOM FOR A MAN'S SELF. (1612, enlarged 1625.) 4 3 AN ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd1 thing in an orchard 2 or garden; and certainly men that are great lovers of themselves waste the public. Divide with reason between Self-love and Society; and be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others, especially to thy king and country. It is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth; for that only stands fast upon his own5 centre; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens, move upon the centre of another, which they benefit. The referring of all to a man's self is more tolerable in a sovereign prince, because themselves are not only themselves, but their good and evil is at the peril of the public fortune; but it is a desperate evil in a servant to a prince, or a citizen in a republic; for whatsoever affairs pass such a man's hands, he crooketh them to his own ends, which must needs be often eccentric to the ends of his master or state; therefore let princes or states choose such servants as have not this mark ;9 except they mean their service should be made but the accessary. That which maketh the effect more pernicious is, that all proportion is lost; it were disproportion enough for the servant's good to be preferred before the master's; but yet it is a greater extreme, when a little good of the servant shall carry things against a great good of the master's: 10 and yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants; which set a bias upon their bowl,11 of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their master's great and important affairs and, for the most part, the good such servants receive is after the model of their own fortune; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model of their master's fortune: and certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set a house on fire, an it were 12 but to roast their eggs; and yet these men many times hold credit with their masters because their study is but to please them, and profit themselves; and for either respect they will abandon the good of their affairs. Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall: it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for him: it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are, 'sui amantes, sine rivali,' 18 are many times unfortunate; and whereas they have all their times sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of Fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned. NOTES ON ESSAY XXIII. I. 'shrewd '-injurious, mischievous, vicious; it properly means cursed, from the verb beshrew. So in Shakespeare: 'Her 2. eldest sister is so cursed and shrewd.' 'Beshrew thee, cousin, which did'st lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in to despair'-SHAKESPEARE. 'orchard'―i.e. wort-yard. Cf. vineyard. 3. Take carefully the mean between the two extremes of selfishness and recklessness. Every man owes a duty to himself as well as a duty to others, nor is he a selfish man who looks rigidly after the preservation of what is due to himself. Religion and social economy give their sanction to both these duties: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' And in society we are all bound together so closely and our interests so interlace that it is perfectly true that the man who most earnestly consults his own interests, most efficiently secures, at the same time, those of the community at large. National prosperity is the aggregate of a number of instances of individual prosperity. Misers, beggars, and spendthrifts are alike the ants of society, and 'waste the public." Nothing which inflicts injury on the nation can be of permanent benefit to any person or class of persons in the nation, and selfishness consists in seizing our own benefit regardless of its ultimate effect upon the whole community. This has too often been the case in what are called strikes; too high wages and too low wages are both evils to be dreaded as utterly incompatible with permanent prosperity in trade; if low wages deteriorate workmanship, trade suffers, though in the interim employers may perhaps have made large profits; and if strikes or other combinations force wages up abnormally high, so that trade is driven out of the country, the workmen themselves must ultimately suffer, although in the interim they may have temporarily secured a very high rate of wages. 4. 'right earth'—exactly what the earth does, maintains itself as the centre of the universe. Bacon here distinctly adopts the Ptolemaic system of astronomy against the Copernican (see note 19, Essay XV; and 13, XVII). Right is here an adverb (Latin recte), as in Go right on; You have not been taught right. The people passed over right against Jericho'-Josh. iii, 16. 5. his own'-for its own, as we should now say. But its is a modern and really incorrect word of very rare occurrence in the literature of this period. We have now made it the possessive case of the neuter pronoun it, corresponding to the masculine and feminine his and her. Before the form its was coined the old form it was used: 'Do, child, go to it grandam'-Shakespeare's King John. -Matt. vi, 34 (Geneva ver.). 'It knighthood shall do worse'-BEN JONSON. 'It shall fright all it friends with borrowing letters'-BEN JONSON. Or the pronoun his was used: Every seed after his kind'-Gen. i, 11. 'The iron gate opened unto them of his own accord’—Acts xii, 10. 6. Because the public interests are more directly involved with their own. 7. 'desperate'-heinous, extremely bad. 8. eccentric to'-not coinciding with. His master's or the public interests revolve around a certain centre, his own interests around another centre, so that they must necessarily cross and clash with one another. 9. 'mark'-characteristic of selfishness. If he does choose a self-seeking servant he must know that just as two circles with different centres can only partially coincide with one another, so he must expect his own interests to be ‘accessary,' i.e. disregarded except when they happen to coincide with his servant's interests. 10. Thus, a corrupt judge will thwart the ends of justice (which is a very serious matter) for the sake of pocketing a bribe himself (which is a very paltry matter). But the evils referred to may perhaps be best seen in some department of life, the actual administration of which has to be entirely entrusted to others, and which therefore is very liable to be vitiated by want of integrity in the subordinates employed—horse-racing for example. There can be no doubt that this sport, in itself legitimate and beneficial, has been thoroughly demoralised and degraded in the public estimation, mainly by the unprincipled practices that are too often associated with it. The owner of the best horse in the field may lose the race, and thousands of pounds in consequence, if the jockey employed to ride for him is an unprincipled man, whose bets or bribe will bring him in an additional fifty pounds in the event of his own master losing. II. bias upon their bowl'-what, in cricket and other like games, is called 'giving the ball a twist,' i.e. sending it in a different direction from that of the propelling force. Bacon's illustration is taken from the game of bowls. 12. 'an it were'—if it were, even were it. An is said by some philologists to be the imperative of an Old English verb unnan, to grant or give; just as from give we get if (formerly gif) and gin (given; 'gin a body kiss a body'—Popular song). It may however be nothing more than the common conjunction and, and equivalent to even. 'It dies, and if (even if) it had a thousand lives'—1 Henry VI, V, iv, 75. 13. 'Lovers of themselves without a rival.' ANALYSIS OF ESSAY XXIII. 1. Self-love ought to be co-ordinate with love for others. 2. In kings it is excusable, but in their subordinates pernicious. 3. Self-love is a depraved thing (most fitly compared to instincts of rats, foxes, crocodiles), and often ruinous to its practiser. XXIV. OF INNOVATIONS.1 (1625.) As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all Innovations, which are the births of Time; yet notwithstanding, as those that first bring honour into their family are commonly more worthy than most that succeed, so the first precedent (if it be good) is seldom attained by imitation;3 for Ill (to man's nature as it stands perverted) hath a natural motion strongest in continuance; but Good, as a forced motion, strongest at first. Surely every medicine is an Innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for Time is the greatest innovator; and if Time of course alter things to the worse, and Wisdom and Counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end? It is true, that what is settled by custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit; and those things which have long gone together, are, as it were, confederate within themselves; whereas new things piece not so well; but, though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their inconformity: besides, they are like strangers, more admired and less favoured. 5 All this is true, if Time stood still: which, contrariwise, moveth so round, that a froward retention of custom is as turbulent9 a thing as an Innovation; and they that reverence too much old times are but a scorn 10 to the new. It were good, therefore, that men in their Innovations would follow the example of Time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived; for otherwise, whatsoever is new is unlooked for; and ever it mends some and pairs 11 other; and he that is holpen,12 takes it for a fortune,13 and thanks the time; and he that is hurt, for a wrong, and imputeth it to the author. It is good also not to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident; and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth 14 the reformation; and lastly, that the novelty, though it be not rejected, yet be held for a suspect,15 and, as the Scripture saith, That we make a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us, and discover what is the straight and right way, and so to walk in it.' 16 |