Wisdom For the Ego

AN ANT is a wise creature for itself. But it is a shrewd thing, in an orchard or garden.

Men, who are great lovers of themselves, waste the public. They divide people with reason, between self-love and society.

The ego is a poor centre of a man’s actions.

The correct center is the right earth, for only it stands fast on its own centre.

Whereas all things, that have affinity with the heavens, move on the centre of another, which they benefit.

It is more tolerable to refer the judgement of all things to a sovereign prince. This is because the good and evil of the people is the peril of the public fortune.

But the following is a desperate evil:

• the ego of a servant to a prince, or
• the ego of a citizen in a republic.

Any affair that passes through an egotistic man becomes crooked to his own ends.

Therefore, let princes and states choose such servants that do not have this mark. Their service should be the mere accessory.

Bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other corrupt servants set a bias on their bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their master’s great and important affairs.

Such servants usually receive benefits after the model of their own fortune. But the hurt they sell for that good, is after the model of their master’s fortune.

Extreme self-lovers will set a house on fire just to roast their eggs. They hold credit with their masters, because they study to please them and profit themselves.

Wisdom for the ego is a depraved thing.

• It is the wisdom of rats which leave a house before it falls.
• It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who dug 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, 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.

Innovations

AS THE births of living creatures, at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

The first born bring honor into their family. They are commonly more worthy than most that succeed. Likewise, the first precedent (if it be good) is seldom attained by imitation.

For ill, to man’s nature, as it stands perverted, hath a natural motion, strongest in continuance.

But good, as a forced motion, strongest at first.

Surely every medicine is an innovation; and he that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

If time makes things worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not make them better, what shall be the end?

What is settled by custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit.

Those things which have long gone together, are, as it were, confederate within themselves; whereas new things piece not so well; but though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their inconformity. Besides, they are like strangers; more admired, and less favored.

All this is true, if time stood still; which contrariwise moveth so round, that a froward retention of custom, is as turbulent a thing as an innovation; and they that reverence too much old times, are but a scorn to the new.

It were good, therefore, that men in their innovations would follow the example of time itself; which indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly, by degrees scarce to be perceived.

For otherwise, whatsoever is new is unlooked for; and ever it mends some, and pairs others; and he that is holpen, takes it for a fortune, and thanks the time; and he that is hurt, for a wrong, and imputeth it to the author.

It is good also, not to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident; and well to beware, that it be the reformation, that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change, that pretendeth the reformation.

The novelty, though it be not rejected, yet be held for a suspect; and, as the Scripture saith, that we make a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us, and discover what is the straight and right way, and so to walk in it.