d occasion to
be added to my faithful desire to do you service. From my lodging at
Gray's Inn.

IN PRAISE OF KNOWLEDGE

From 'Letters and Life,' by James Spedding

Silence were the best celebration of that which I mean to commend; for
who would not use silence, where silence is not made, and what crier can
make silence in such a noise and tumult of vain and popular opinions?

My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man and
the knowledge of the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind itself
is but an accident to knowledge; for knowledge is a double of that which
is; the truth of being and the truth of knowing is all one.

Are not the pleasures of the affections greater than the pleasures of
the senses? And are not the pleasures of the intellect greater than the
pleasures of the affections? Is not knowledge a true and only natural
pleasure, whereof there is no satiety? Is it not knowledge that doth
alone clear the mind of all perturbation? How many things are there
which we imagine not? How many things do we esteem and value otherwise
than they are! This ill-proportioned estimation, these vain
imaginations, these be the clouds of error that turn into the storms of
perturbation. Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be
raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of
the order of nature and the error of men?

But is this a vein only of delight, and not of discovery? of
contentment, and not of benefit? Shall he not as well discern the riches
of nature's warehouse, as the benefit of her shop? Is truth ever barren?
Shall he not be able thereby to produce worthy effects, and to endow the
life of man with infinite commodities?

But shall I make this garland to be put upon a wrong head? Would anybody
believe me, if I should verify this upon the knowledge that is now in
use? Are we the richer by one poor invention, by reason of all the
learning that hath been these many hundred years? The industry of
artificers maketh some small improvement of things invented; and chance
sometimes in experimenting maketh us to stumble upon somewhat which is
new; but all the disputation of the learned never brought to light one
effect of nature before unknown. When things are known and found out,
then they can descant upon them, they can knit them into certain
causes, they can reduce them to their principles. If any instance of
experience stand against them, they can range