"Essays" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bacon Francis)

1601

THE ESSAYS

by Francis Bacon

OF TRUTH

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an
answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it
a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as
in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be
gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same
veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of
the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men
take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it
imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a
natural though corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later
school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to
think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither
they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with
the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same
truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks,
and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and
daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a
pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price
of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A
mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if
there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering
hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like,
but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken
things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to
themselves?

One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum
doemonum, because it filleth the imagination; and yet, it is but
with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through
the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth
the hurt; such as we spake of before. But, howsoever these things
are thus in men's depraved judgments, and affections, yet truth, which
only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is
the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the
presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of
it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of
God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last,
was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since, is the
illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light, upon the face
of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the face of
man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light, into the face of
his chosen. The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise