Dissimulation is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh
a strong wit and a strong heart to know when to tell truth, and to do
it; therefore it is the weaker sort of politicians that are the great
dissemblers.
Tacitus saith, “Livia sorted well with the arts of her husband, and
dissimulation of her son;[97] attributing arts or policy to Augustus,
and dissimulation to Tiberius:” and again, when Mucianus encourageth
Vespasian to take arms against Vitellius, he saith, “We rise not
against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or
closeness of Tiberius.”[98] These properties of arts or policy, and
dissimulation or closeness, are indeed habits and faculties several,
and to be distinguished; for if a man have that penetration of judgment
as he can discern what things are to be laid open, and what to be
secreted, and what to be showed at half-lights, and to whom and when
(which indeed are arts of state, and arts of life, as Tacitus well
calleth them), to him a habit of dissimulation is a hinderance and a
poorness. But if a man cannot obtain to that judgment, then it is left
to him generally to be close, and a dissembler; for where a man cannot
choose or vary in particulars, there it is good to take the safest and
wariest way in general, like the going softly by one that cannot well
see. Certainly, the ablest men that ever were, have had all an openness
and frankness of dealing, and a name of certainty and veracity: but
then they were like horses well managed, for they could tell passing
well when to stop or turn; and at such times, when they thought the
case indeed required dissimulation, if then they used it, it came to
pass that the former opinion spread abroad, of their good faith and
clearness of dealing, made them almost invisible.
There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self: the
first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself
without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is: the
second, dissimulation in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and
arguments, that he is not that he is: and the third, simulation in the
affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends
to be that he is not.
For the first of these, secrecy, it is indeed the virtue of a
confessor; and assuredly the secret man heareth many confessions; for
who will open himself to a blab or a babbler? But if a man be thought
secret, it inviteth discovery, as the more close air sucketh in the
more open; and, as in confession, the revealing is not 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 a 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[99] 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 rising 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 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: the third is, the better to discover the mind of another; for
to him that opens himself men will hardly show themselves adverse; but
will (fair) let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom
of thought; and therefore it is a good shrewd proverb of the Spaniard,
“Tell a lie, and find a troth;”[100] as if there were no way of
discovery but by simulation. There be also three disadvantages to set
it even; the first, that simulation and dissimulation commonly carry
with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth spoil the
feathers of round flying up to the mark; the second, that it puzzleth
and perplexeth the conceits of many, that, perhaps, would otherwise
coöperate with him, and makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends:
the third, and greatest, is, that it depriveth a man of one of the most
principal instruments for action, which is trust and belief. The best
composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion,
secrecy in habit, dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign
if there be no remedy.