An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd thing in an
orchard or garden. And certainly men that are great lovers of
themselves waste the public. Divide with reason between self-love and
society; and be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others,
specially to thy king and country. It is a poor centre of a man's
actions, himself. It is right earth. For that only stands fast upon
his own centre; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens
move upon the centre of another, which they benefit. The referring of
all to a man's self is more tolerable in a sovereign prince; because
themselves are not only themselves, but their good and evil is at the
peril of the public fortune. But it is a desperate evil in a servant
to a prince, or a citizen in a republic. For whatsoever affairs pass
such a man's hands, he crooketh them to his own ends; which must needs
be often eccentric to the ends of his master or state. Therefore let
princes, or states, choose such servants as have not this mark; except
they mean their service should be made but the accessory. That which
maketh the effect more pernicious is that all proportion is lost. It
were disproportion enough for the servant's good to be preferred
before the master's; but yet it is a greater extreme, when a little
good of the servant shall carry things against a great good of the
master's. And yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers,
ambassadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants; which set
a bias upon their bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the
overthrow of their master's great and important affairs. And for the
most part, the good such servants receive is after the model of their
own fortune; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model
of their master's fortune. And certainly it is the nature of extreme
self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to
roast their eggs; and yet these men many times hold credit with their
masters, because their study is but to please them and profit
themselves; and for either respect they will abandon the good of their
affairs.
Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved
thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house
somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out
the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of
crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is
specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey)
are _sui amantes sine rivali_, are many times unfortunate. And whereas
they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the
end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings
they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned.
_Francis Bacon._