Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever
fly by twilight. Certainly they are to be repressed, or at the least
well guarded; for they cloud the mind, they lose friends, and they
check with business, whereby business cannot go on currently and
constantly. They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise
men to irresolution and melancholy. They are defects, not in the heart
but in the brain; for they take place in the stoutest natures, as in
the example of Henry the Seventh of England. There was not a more
suspicious man, nor a more stout, and in such a composition they do
small hurt; for commonly they are not admitted, but with examination,
whether they be likely or no; but in fearful natures they gain ground
too fast. There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know
little; and, therefore, men should remedy suspicion by procuring to
know more, and not to keep their suspicions in smother. What would men
have? Do they think those they employ and deal with are saints? Do they
not think they will have their own ends, and be truer to themselves
than to them? Therefore, there is no better way to moderate suspicions,
than to account upon such suspicions as true, and yet to bridle them
as false:[358] for so far a man ought to make use of suspicions as to
provide, as if that should be true that he suspects, yet it may do him
no hurt. Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers are but buzzes; but
suspicions that are artificially nourished, and put into men’s heads by
the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. Certainly, the best
mean, to clear the way in this same wood of suspicions, is frankly to
communicate them with the party that he suspects: for thereby he shall
be sure to know more of the truth of them than he did before; and,
withal, shall make that party more circumspect, not to give further
cause of suspicion. But this would not be done to men of base natures;
for they, if they find themselves once suspected, will never be true.
The Italian says, “Sospetto licentia fede;”[359] as if suspicion did
give a passport to faith; but it ought rather to kindle it to discharge
itself.