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Essay XXXI: Of Suspicion
Essay XXXI: Of Suspicion
Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly
by twilight. Certainly they are to be repressed, or at least well guarded:
for they cloud the mind; they leese ^1 friends; and they check with business,
whereby business cannot go on currently and constantly. They dispose kings to
tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and melancholy. They
are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain; for they take place in the
stoutest ^2 natures; as in the example of Henry the Seventh of England. There
was not a more suspicious man, nor a more stout. And in such a composition
they do small hurt. For commonly they are not admitted, but with examination,
whether they be likely or no. But in fearful natures they gain ground too
fast. There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little; and
therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not to
keep their suspicions in smother. ^3 What would men have? Do they think those
they employ and deal with are saints? Do they not think they will have their
own ends, and be truer to themselves than to them? Therefore there is no
better way to moderate suspicions, than to account upon such suspicions as
true and yet to bridle them as false. For so far a man ought to make use of
suspicions, as to provide, as if that should be true that he suspects, yet
it may do him no hurt. Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers are but
buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished, and put into men`s
heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. Certainly, the
best mean to clear the way in this same wood of suspicions is frankly to
communicate them with the party that he suspects; for thereby he shall be
sure to know more of the truth of them than he did before; and withal shall
make that party more circumspect not to give further cause of suspicion. But
this would not be done to men of base natures; for they, if they find
themselves once suspected, will never be true. The Italian says, Sospetto
licentia fede; ^4 as if suspicion did give a passport to faith; but it ought
rather to kindle it to discharge itself.
[Footnote 1: Lose.]
[Footnote 2: Bravest.]
[Footnote 3: Suppressed.]
[Footnote 4: I. e., suspicion justifies breaking faith.]
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