So that
as it is said of untrue valours, that some men's valours are in the
eyes of them that look on, so such men's industries are in the eyes
of others, or, at least, in regard of their own designments; only
learned men love business as an action according to nature, as
agreeable to health of mind as exercise is to health of body, taking
pleasure in the action itself, and not in the purchase, so that of
all men they are the most indefatigable, if it be towards any
business which can hold or detain their mind.
(6) And if any man be laborious in reading and study, and yet idle
in business and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or
softness of spirit, such as Seneca speaketh of: Quidam tam sunt
umbratiles, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est; and not
of learning: well may it be that such a point of a man's nature may
make him give himself to learning, but it is not learning that
breedeth any such point in his nature.
(7) And that learning should take up too much time or leisure: I
answer, the most active or busy man that hath been or can be, hath
(no question) many vacant times of leisure while he expecteth the
tides and returns of business (except he be either tedious and of no
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.
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