I50                        OF SEEMING WISE.

clearly. To choose time is to save time, and an
unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There
be three parts of business : the preparation, the
debate or examination, and the perfection. Whereof,
if you look for dispatch, let the middle only be the
work of many, and the first and last the work of few.
The proceeding upon somewhat conceived in writing
doth for the most part facilitate dispatch, for though
it should be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more
pregnant of direction than an indefinite; as ashes
are more generative than dust.
 

XXVI.
OF SEEMING   WISE.

It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser
than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than
they are; but howsoever it be between nations, cer¬
tainly it is so between man and man. For, as the
Apostle" saith of godliness,  " Having a show of god-