for worldly use, but for the ease
of a man's heart, so secret men come to the knowledge of many things
in that kind; while men rather discharge their minds, than impart their
minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say
truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no
small reverence, to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether
open. As for talkers and futile persons, they are commonly vain and
credulous withal. For he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk
what he knoweth not. Therefore set it down, that an habit of secrecy, is
both politic and moral. And in this part, it is good that a man's face
give his tongue leave to speak. For the discovery of a man' s self, by
the tracts of his countenance, is a great weakness and betraying; by how
much it is many times more marked, and believed, than a man's words.

For the second, which is dissimulation; it followeth many times upon
secrecy, by a necessity; so that he that will be secret, must be a
dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning, to suffer a man to
keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without
swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with
questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an
absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not,
they will gather as much by his silence, as by his speech. As for
equivocations, or oraculous speeches, they cannot hold out long. So
that no man can be secret, except he give himself a little scope of
dissimulation; which is, as it were, but the skirts or train of secrecy.

But for the third degree, which is simulation, and false profession;
that I hold more culpable, and less politic; except it be in great and
rare matters. And therefore a general custom of simulation (which is
this last degree) is a vice, using either of a natural falseness or
fearfulness, or of a mind that hath some main faults, which because
a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise simulation in other
things, lest his hand should be out of use.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First,
to lay asleep opposition, and to surprise. For where a man's intentions
are published, it is an alarum, to call up all that are against them.
The second is, to reserve to a man's self a fair retreat. For if a man
engage himself by a manifest declaration, he must go through or take a
fall.