Experience

People have been talking a lot about experience lately, and talking as if it was possible and useful to compare the experience of one person to the experience of another. Francis Bacon, one of the more successful politicians the world has known, thought that when it came to kings, rulers, and magistrates, experience wasn't the right question.

And senators or counsellors likewise, which be learned, do proceed upon more safe and substantial principles, than counsellors which are only men of experience: the one sort keeping dangers afar off, whereas the other discover them not till they come near hand, and then trust to the agility of their wit to ward or avoid them.

The passage has some serious implications for our time. Apropos, I think, as a description of the last seven years of American politics. Anyway, what was particularly interesting to me was that Bacon believed learning more important than experience held even more true in times of war. And, indeed, he is very persuasive when he draws upon the examples of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, two men renowned for their learning and eloquence (as well as their generalship). Admiring Alexander the Great is one thing, Bacon says, but considering him as Aristotle's scholar carries me away! The quotation is from Book I of Bacon's The Advancement of Learning.