OF SIMULA TION AND DISSIMULA TION      55
 

VI.

OF SIMULATION AND DISSIMULATION.

Dissimulation is but a faint kind of policy or
wisdom, for it asketh a strong wit and a strong
heart to know when to tell truth and to do it.
Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics that are
the great dissemblers.

Tacitus saith : " Livia sorted well with the arts of
her husband and dissimulation of her son ;" attri¬
buting arts or policy to Augustus and dissimulation
to Tiberius. And, again, when Mucianus encou-
rageth Vespasian to take arms against Vitellius, he
saith : " We rise not against the piercing judgment
of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of
Tiberius." These properties of arts or policy, and
dissimulation or closeness, are. Indeed, habits and
faculties several, and to be distinguished. For if a
man have that penetration of judgment as he can
discern what things are to be laid open, and what to
be secreted, and what to be showed at half-lights^