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
in pleasure or in studies; as was well answered by Demosthenes to
his adversary AEschines, that was a man given to pleasure, and told
him "That his orations did smell of the lamp." "Indeed," said
Demosthenes, "there is a great difference between the things that
you and I do by lamp-light." So as no man need doubt that learning
will expel business, but rather it will keep and defend the
possession of the mind against idleness and pleasure, which
otherwise at unawares may enter to the prejudice of both.

(8) Again, for that other conceit that learning should undermine the
reverence of laws and government, it is assuredly a mere depravation
and calumny, without all shadow of truth. For to say that a blind
custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught
and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by
a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all
controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle,
generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance
makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time
doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous,
rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults,
seditious, and changes.

(9) And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was well punished
for his blasphemy against learning, in the same kind wherein he
offended; for when he was past threescore years old, he was taken
with an extreme desire to go to school again, and to learn the Greek
tongue, to the end to peruse the Greek authors; which doth well