charge their minds than impart their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy.[1] Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether open. As for talkers and futile[2] persons, they are commonly vain and credulous withal. For he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not. Therefore set it down, that an habit of secrecy is both politic and moral. And in this part it is good that a man's face give his tongue leave to speak. For the discovery of a man's self by the tracts[3] of his countenance is a great weakness and betraying; by how much it is many times more marked and believed than a man's words.
For the second, which is Dissimulation; it followeth many times upon secrecy by a necessity; so that he that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent[4] carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence as by his speech. As for equivocations, or oraculous[5]
- ↑ "A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men: mystery the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones." Maxims: Enclosed in Letter of January 15, 1753. The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, with the Characters. Edited with Introduction, Notes, and Index, by John Bradshaw. II. 572.
- ↑ Futile. Talkative.
- ↑ Tract. Trait, lineament, feature.
- ↑ Indifferent. Impartial, neutral.
- ↑ Oraculous. Oracular.
