Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their cheif use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.
Histories make men wise; poets witty; mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend....
There is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises.
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