effectually than it can pervert.  And these medicines it conveyeth into men’s minds much more forcibly by the quickness and penetration of examples.  For let a man look into the errors of Clement VII., so lively described by Guicciardini, who served under him, or into the errors of Cicero, painted out by his own pencil in his Epistles to Atticus, and he will fly apace from being irresolute.  Let him look into the errors of Phocion, and he will beware how he be obstinate or inflexible.  Let him but read the fable of Ixion, and it will hold him from being vaporous or imaginative.  Let him look into the errors of Cato II., and he will never be one of the Antipodes, to tread opposite to the present world.

(5) And for the conceit that learning should dispose men to leisure and privateness, and make men slothful:  it were a strange thing if that which accustometh the mind to a perpetual motion and agitation should induce slothfulness, whereas, contrariwise, it may be truly affirmed that no kind of men love business for itself but those that are learned; for other persons love it for profit, as a hireling that loves the work for the wages; or for honour, as because it beareth them up in the eyes of men, and refresheth their reputation, which otherwise would wear; or because it putteth them in mind of their fortune, and giveth them occasion to pleasure and displeasure; or because it exerciseth some faculty wherein they take pride, and so entertaineth them in good-humour and pleasing conceits towards themselves; or because it advanceth any other their ends.  So that as it is said of untrue valours, that some men’s valours are in the eyes of them that look on, so such men’s industries are in the eyes of others, or, at least, in regard of their own designments; only learned men love business as an action according to nature, as agreeable to health of mind as exercise is to health of body, taking pleasure in the action itself, and not in the purchase, so that of all men they are the most indefatigable, if it be towards any business which can hold or detain their mind.

(6) And if any man be laborious in reading and study, and yet idle in business and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or softness of spirit, such as Seneca speaketh of:  Quidam tam sunt umbratiles, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est; and not of learning:  well may it be that such a point of a man’s nature may make him give himself to learning, but it is not learning that breedeth any such point in his nature.

(7) And that learning should take up too much time or leisure:  I answer, the most active or busy man that hath been or can be, hath (no question) many vacant times of leisure while he expecteth the tides and returns of business (except he be either tedious and of no despatch, or lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that may be better done by others), and then the question is but how those spaces and times of leisure shall be filled and spent; whether