As for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politics, they be of
this nature; that learning doth soften men's minds, and makes them more
unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that it doth mar and pervert
men's dispositions for matter of government and policy, in making them
too curious and irresolute by variety of reading, or too peremptory or
positive by strictness of rules and axioms, or too immoderate and
overweening by reason of the greatness of examples, or too incompatible
and differing from the times by reason of the dissimilitude of examples;
or at least, that it doth divert men's travails from action and
business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness; and
that it doth bring into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst every
man is more ready to argue than to obey and execute....
If any man be laborious in reading and study and yet idle in business
and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or softness of spirit;
such as Seneca speaketh of: _Quidam tam sunt umbratiles, ut putent in
turbido esse quicquid in luce est_; and not of learning: well may it be
that such a point of a man's nature may make him give himself to
learning, but it is not learning that breedeth any such point in his
nature.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the Advancement of Learning._