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Studies serve for delight, forornament（装饰，修饰）, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment anddisposition（处置）of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots andmarshalling（编组的）of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that needpruning（修剪）by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty mencontemn（蔑视，侮辱）studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict andconfute（驳斥）; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; elsedistilled（净化的）books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. | 
