Publisher's Synopsis
What is truth? said jesting Pilate;42 and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delightin giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking as well as in acting.And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing witswhich are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of theancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth: nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a naturalthough corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools43 of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should love lies; where neither they make forpleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannottell; this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come tothe price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond orcarbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth anyman doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, falsevaluations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number ofmen poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? Oneof the fathers,44 in great severity, called poesy "vinum dæmonum,"45 because it filleth theimagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through themind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. Buthowsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which onlydoth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, theknowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, isthe sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was thelight of the sense;46 the last was the light of reason;47 and his sabbath work, ever since, is theillumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then hebreathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of hischosen. The poet48 that beautified the sect,49 that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yetexcellently well: "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; apleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below;but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth" (a hill not to becommanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), "and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below;"50 so always that this prospect be with pity, and not withswelling or pride.
