An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd[282] 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;[283] 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 accessary.
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. 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 a house on fire, an 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,”[284] are many times unfortunate; and
whereas they have all their times 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.