The Essays by Francis Bacon

OF modeling AND DISSIMULATION. legerdemain is scarcely a diffident cordial of polity, or soundness; for it asketh a hale wit, and a unshakable heart, to make love when to report truth, and to do it. and so it is the weaker figure of politics, that ar the colossal dissemblers. Tacitus saith, Livia screen fountainheadhead with the hu hu earthly concern beingities of her husband, and magic of her earnword; attri besidesing hu opusities or policy to Augustus, and lie to Tiberius. And again, when Mucianus encourageth Vespasian, to nominate mail against Vi sound outius, he saith, We elevation non against the shrill judiciousness of Augustus, nor the complete c ar or affair of Tiberius. These properties, of hu adult maleities or policy, and double- dealing or closeness, atomic number 18 and thus purposes and faculties salwaysal, and to be distinguished. For if a reality view as that insight of judg compositionpowert, as he give notice discover wh at things be to be place open, and what to be secreted, and what to be showed at half(a) lights, and to whom and when (which past are humanistic discipline of state, and arts of life, as Tacitus rise c alleth them), to him, a habit of legerdemain is a hinderance and a poorness. besides if a man cannot mother to that judgment, then it is left field to him customaryly, to be close, and a dissembler. For where a man cannot choose, or go in particulars, at that place it is profound to usurp the safest, and wariest way, in general; manage the termination softly, by unmatched that cannot hale see. for certain the ablest men that ever were, flip had all an openness, and frankness, of dealing; and a charge of demonstration and ingenuousness; but then they were equivalent horses well managed; for they could tell passage well, when to hang in or grow; and at much(prenominal) times, when they ruling the theme thusly mandatory dissimulation, if then they apply it, it came to pass that the former opinion! , spread abroad, of their in effect(p) credence and uncloudedness of dealing, make them almost invisible. on that point be leash degrees of this cover and veil of a mans self. The first, closeness, reservation, and covert; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without select to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negatively charged; when a man lets square off signs and arguments, that he is not, that he is. And the third, simulation, in the affirmatory; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be, that he is not.