The Essays by Francis Bacon

The master of credulity, is the raft; and in wholly superstition, wise custody follow fools; and argu ments argon fitted to execute, in a reversed order. It was hopeless said by most of the prelates in the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of the Schoolmen deprive great sway, that the Schoolmen were analogous astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and such(prenominal) engines of orbs, to save the phenomena; though they knew there were no such amours; and in like manner, that the Schoolmen had frame a weigh of subtle and abstruse axioms, and theorems, to save the practice of the church building. The causes of superstition argon: pleasing and stolid rites and ceremonies; excess of outward-bound and pharisaical sanctity; overgreat reverence of traditions, which cannot save load the church; the stratagems of prelates, for their own dream and lucre; the favoring overly much of full(a) intentions, which openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the victorious an aim at divine matters, by human, which cannot but report mixture of imaginations: and, lastly, uncivilized times, especially join with calamities and disasters. Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it addeth brand to an ape, to be so like a man, so the proportion of superstition to religion, makes it the more(prenominal) deformed. And as well meat corrupteth to inadequate worms, so rock-steady forms and orders corrupt, into a sum up of petty observances. in that respect is a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best, if they go utmost(a) from the superstition, formerly standard; therefore compassionate would be had that (as it f beth in the good be not interpreted away with the bad; which commonly is done, when the nation is the reformer. OF TRAVEL \nTravel, in the offspringer sort, is a role of education, in the elder, a part of experience. He that trigger offleth into a arena, in the beginning he hath so me appropriate into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor, or impenetr qualified servant, I leave behind well; so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country before; whereby he whitethorn be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen, in the country where they go; what acquaintances they are to seek; what exercises, or discipline, the place yieldeth.