Why do you study?
A question to be answered on a blue one half cross-wise college pad paper. I forgot my exact answer and the papers were not yet returned, but my answer sums up to that of which: I study for Diploma’s stake and for public image.
After reading Of Studies by Francis Bacon for the 5th time, I close my eyes and bite my lips. What a shame. To study only for the sake of what’s ahead. While Bacon says that studies serve for three things: delight, ornament, and for ability. To me that means for self-satisfaction, better conversations, and skills for careers that we would choose tomorrow.
he warns and here I am to admit to studying too much as I have become lazy in other aspects of my life, but thinking too much about avoiding being lazy is not good as I tend to go lazy on studying too. And he said that I would look like I am showing off when I use too much knowledge in conversations, that, I admit to doing too, with my encounters as of late, I am now practicing what monks are masters of: silence. He mentioned “to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar,” which I don’t quite get but to put it simply he would mean that one becomes a follower by the book not by reality-related thinking.
He discusses the effects of reading, conversation, and writing. My favorite lines from his essay are:
- “Some books are to be tastes, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested;”
- “Reading maketh a full man…”
- “Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophers deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.”
I may not understand fully what Bacon means with these words or rather I may not be able to explain it briefly or in details, but yes, I quite know what he means. Due to my laziness I would sum this up as he states that when you lack one of the three, for example “talking”, then you should know how to fill that hole with writing or the other way around. That’s the message that stayed in my head for quite some time. So now I am not quite certain as to what I lack. Maybe everything? All the three? Ha ha.
My favorite lines from the last part of the essay is “for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.” which for me means never giving up, go back to the starting line, or repeat again, or push that restart button already; and the way he ended the essay with “So every defect of the mind, may have a special receipt.” So every skill that a man lacks is a problem, and every problem has always a solution.
From analyzing poems to becoming a critic of essays and of language and literature, I am hyped up and excited for what’s more to come. I would have preferred the instructor’s suggestions rather than the class’ preferences.
