Francis Bacon Writes "Of Studies"

Francis Bacon, born 1561 into a family of influence, could be described as a modern man of his times—those times being the period now called the High Middle Ages. Ours, after all, is not the first age in which learned commentators have looked around and said that technology was wreaking changes too great for most people to imagine. Bacon identified printing, gunpowder, and the compass as the technological breakthroughs revolutionizing his world.

Bacon was a statesman, or at least a politician, but also, like many men of public affairs in those times, a scholar and writer. Not that he made new scientific discoveries, or composed master works of literature—he was just an informed and eloquent writer about intellectual affairs of his times and, important to us here, what was important in education.

Bacon was a radical on the subjects of learning and education. Knowledge in his time was considered to be a static, timeless thing worked out in the isolated contemplation of classic texts (especially those of Aristotle). Bacon insisted that there could be advancement of knowledge, new knowledge, progress in learning, and worse yet (so thought the traditionalists), secular learning. Bacon called for men of learning to come out of their ivory towers, investigate what was happening in the world, and help to ease the miseries of humanity.

To do that, they needed education, which is the subject of the essay here under study. (I added the paragraphing and numbers for ease of reference.—TI)

"Of Studies," transcribed from The Works of Francis Bacon (2 vols., Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., n. d.), Vol. 2, Literary and Religious Works

1. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.

2. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned.

3. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

4. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

5. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things.

6. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.

7. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. The studies pass into the manners. Nay there is no stone or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are splitters of hairs. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

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