["And how you may shun or sustain every hardship."--Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.] by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations and irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig and well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to the instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also do; but let us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves to that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let alone, and, following Socrates' direction, limit the course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real utility:
"Sapere aude;
Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum."
["Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to ages without end."--Horace, Ep., i. 2.]
'Tis a great foolery to teach our children:
"Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis, Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,"
["What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave."--Propertius, iv. I, 89.] the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere before their own:
["What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?"--Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]
Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, " To what purpose," said he, "should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia were at that time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus, "Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition, and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over the world's changes?"
After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry, rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to, his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly make his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by discourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands, and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him, that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of, to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way of teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,--[Theodore Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.]-- in which the precepts are so intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant, that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens and elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison, much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe.
'Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this age of ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding, should be, looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value, either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And people are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so difficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect.
Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them,--[Plutarch, Treatise on Oracles which have ceased]-- "Either I am much deceived, or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very deep discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied:
"Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb ------ is spelt with a double A, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives ----- and -----, and the superlatives ----and ------, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad."
"Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque Inde habitum facies."
["You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick body; you may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from the mind."--Juvenal, ix. 18]