音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:01.21]Passage 23. Of Studies

[00:05.92]Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.

[00:11.61]Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring;

[00:16.31]for ornament, is in discourse;

[00:18.72]and for ability, is in the judgement and disposition of business.

[00:23.20]For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one;

[00:29.77]but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs,

[00:34.37]come best from those that are learned.

[00:36.88]To spend too much time in studies is sloth;

[00:40.50]to use them too much for ornament,is affectation;

[00:44.76]to make judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar.

[00:49.79]They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience:

[00:54.60]for natural abilities are like natural plants,that need pruning by study;

[00:59.97]and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large,

[01:05.66]except they be bounded in by experience.

[01:09.38]Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them;

[01:16.38]for they teach not their own use;

[01:18.90]but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

[01:25.02]Read not to contradict and confute;

[01:28.30]nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse;

[01:34.54]but to weigh and consider.

[01:36.95]Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,and some few to be chewed and digested;

[01:44.72]that is, some books are to be read only in parts;

[01:48.55]others to be read, but not curiously;

[01:51.83]and some few to be read wholly,and with diligence and attention.

[01:56.43]Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others;

[02:03.50]but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books;

[02:09.52]else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things.

[02:15.25]Reading makes a full man； conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

[02:21.92]And therefore,if a man write little，he had need have a great memory;

[02:27.83]if he confer little, he had need have a present wit;

[02:32.42]and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he does not.

[02:39.86]Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle;

[02:46.97]natural philosophy deep; moral grave;

[02:51.35]logic and rhetoric able to contend.