The Essays Or Counsels Cıvıl and Moral — Francis Bacon

WHAT is truth said jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer Certainly there be that delight in giddiness and count it a bondage to fix a belief affecting free will in thinking as well as in acting And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men s thoughts that doth bring lies in favor but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter and is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should love lies where neither they make for pleasure as with poets nor for advantage as with the merchant but for the lie s sake But I cannot tell this same truth is a naked and open day light that doth not show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle lights