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On Truth The Essays
Sir Francis Bacon (1601) What is truth? Said jesting
Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it 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 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
labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found,
it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; 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, as with poets, nor for 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 masks, 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 showeth best by day;
but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best
in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt,
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 of the
fathers, in great severity, called poesy velum dominium, 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, 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 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, said yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and
to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a
castle, and to see a 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 clear and serene), and to see the errors,
and wanderings, 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. 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 honor of man's nature; and that mixture of falsehoods, is like alloy in
coin of gold and silver, which 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.
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 to say, as that he is
brave towards God, and a coward towards men. 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.
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