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发表于 27.7.2006 21:22:16
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<span style='color:green'>OF STUDIES<br /></span><br /><br /><u>Francis Bacon</u><br /><br /><br />Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use<br />for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse;<br />and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.<br /><br />For expert and execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but<br />the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best<br />form those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to<br />use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgement wholly by<br />their rules, is the humour of a scholar.<br /><br />They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities<br />are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies themselves<br />do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by<br />experience.<br /><br />Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them;<br />for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and<br />above them, won by observation.<br /><br />Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor<br />to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.<br /><br />Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be<br />chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts;<br />others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and<br />with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and<br />extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less<br />important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are,<br />like common distilled waters, flashy things.<br /><br />Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.<br />And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he<br />confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had<br />need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.<br /><br />Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural<br />philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt<br />studia in morse.<br /><br />Nay there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by<br />fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises.<br />Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast;<br />gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a<br />man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in<br />demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin<br />again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him<br />study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat<br />over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let<br />him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a<br />special receipt.<br /> |
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