The secret thoughts of a man run over all things holy,prophane,clean,obscene,grave,and light,without shame,or blame;which verbal discourse cannot do,farther than the judgement shall approve of the time,place,and persons.An anatomist or physician may speak or write his judgement of unclean things;because it is not to please,but profit:but for another man to write his extravagant and pleasant fancies of the same is as if a man,from being tumbled into the dirt,should come and present himself before good company.And it is the want of discretion that makes the difference.Again,in professed remissness of mind,and familiar company,a man may play with the sounds and equivocal significations of words,and that many times with encounters of extraordinary fancy;but in a sermon,or in public,or before persons unknown,or whom we ought to reverence,there is no jingling of words that will not be accounted folly:and the difference is only in the want of discretion.So that where wit is wanting,it is not fancy that is wanting,but discretion.Judgement,therefore,without fancy is wit,but fancy without judgement,not.
When the thoughts of a man that has a design in hand,running over a multitude of things,observes how they conduce to that design,or what design they may conduce unto;if his observations be such as are not easy,or usual,this wit of his is called prudence,and dependeth on much experience,and memory of the like things and their consequences heretofore.In which there is not so much difference of men as there is in their fancies and judgements;because the experience of men equal in age is not much unequal as to the quantity,but lies in different occasions,every one having his private designs.
To govern well a family and a kingdom are not different degrees of prudence,but different sorts of business;no more than to draw a picture in little,or as great or greater than the life,are different degrees of art.A plain husbandman is more prudent in affairs of his own house than a Privy Counsellor in the affairs of another man.
To prudence,if you add the use of unjust or dishonest means,such as usually are prompted to men by fear or want,you have that crooked wisdom which is called craft;which is a sign of pusillanimity.For magnanimity is contempt of unjust or dishonest helps.And that which the Latins call versutia (translated into English,shifting),and is a putting off of a present danger or incommodity by engaging into a greater,as when a man robs one to pay another,is but a shorter-sighted craft;called versutia,from versura,which signifies taking money at usury for the present payment of interest.
As for acquired wit (I mean acquired by method and instruction),there is none but reason;which is grounded on the right use of speech,and produceth the sciences.But of reason and science,Ihave already spoken in the fifth and sixth chapters.
The causes of this difference of wits are in the passions,and the difference of passions proceedeth partly from the different constitution of the body,and partly from different education.For if the difference proceeded from the temper of the brain,and the organs of sense,either exterior or interior,there would be no less difference of men in their sight,hearing,or other senses than in their fancies and discretions.It proceeds,therefore,from the passions;which are different,not only from the difference of men's complexions,but also from their difference of customs and education.
The passions that most of all cause the differences of wit are principally the more or less desire of power,of riches,of knowledge,and of honour.All which may be reduced to the first,that is,desire of power.For riches,knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power.
And therefore,a man who has no great passion for any of these things,but is as men term it indifferent;though he may be so far a good man as to be free from giving offence,yet he cannot possibly have either a great fancy or much judgement.For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the things desired,all steadiness of the mind's motion,and all quickness of the same,proceeding from thence.For as to have no desire is to be dead;so to have weak passions is dullness;and to have passions indifferently for everything,giddiness and distraction;and to have stronger and more vehement passions for anything than is ordinarily seen in others is that which men call madness.
Whereof there be almost as may kinds as of the passions themselves.Sometimes the extraordinary and extravagant passion proceedeth from the evil constitution of the organs of the body,or harm done them;and sometimes the hurt,and indisposition of the organs,is caused by the vehemence or long continuance of the passion.
But in both cases the madness is of one and the same nature.
The passion whose violence or continuance maketh madness is either great vainglory,which is commonly called pride and self-conceit,or great dejection of mind.
Pride subjecteth a man to anger,the excess whereof is the madness called rage,and fury.And thus it comes to pass that excessive desire of revenge,when it becomes habitual,hurteth the organs,and becomes rage:that excessive love,with jealousy,becomes also rage:
excessive opinion of a man's own self,for divine inspiration,for wisdom,learning,form,and the like,becomes distraction and giddiness:the same,joined with envy,rage:vehement opinion of the truth of anything,contradicted by others,rage.