ESSAYS

I

Of Truth

WHAT is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And, though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there s remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins; though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth-nor, again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon 10 men's thoughts-that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, 15 as with poets, nor with advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may

perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, 25 that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One 30 of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum dæmonum, because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt such as we spake of before. But 35 howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth (which is the love-making, or wooing of it) the knowledge of truth (which is the presence of it) and the belief of truth (which is the enjoying of it) is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of his spirit. First he breathed light upon 45 the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet, that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, It is a pleasure to stand upon the 50 shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see the battle, and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always 55 clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings,

Y

and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

60

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which 65 may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; 7° and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge-saith he If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards 75 man; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, & He shall not find faith upon the earth.

II

Of Death

MEN fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin and passage to another world, is holy and s religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books of mortification, that a man should think with himself what the pain is, if he have but 10 his finger's end pressed or tortured, and thereby imagine what the pains of death are when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb. For the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense: and by him 15 that spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa. Groans, and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, shew death terrible.

20

It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in

the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death: and therefore Death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; grief 25 flieth to it; fear preoccupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the Emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Seneca adds niceness and satiety: 30 Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; mori velle, non tantum fortis, aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over. It is no less worthy to observe, how little 35 alteration in good spirits the approaches of death make; for they appear to be the same men up to the last instant. Augustus Cæsar died in a compliment: Livia, conjugii nostri memor vive, et vale. Tiberius in dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him, Fam Tiberium vires et corpus, non 40 dissimulatio, deserebant. Vespasian in a jest, sitting upon the stool, Ut puto Deus fio. Galba with a sentence, Feri, si ex re sit populi Romani, holding forth his neck. Septimius Severus in dispatch, Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum. And the like.

45

Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made it appear more fearful. Better saith he Qui finem vitæ extremum inter munera ponat Naturæ. It is as natural to die as to be born and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as 50 painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood: who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of death. But, above all, believe it, the sweetest