The vanity of this mortal life, or, Of man, considered only in his present…

The acquisition of much knowledge, the furnishing his understanding with store of choice and well-digested notions; that he may please himself in being (or in having men think him) a learned Wight; Death robs away all his gain. And what is the world the better? How little shall he enrich the clods, among which he must shortly lye down, and have his abode! Or how little is the gain when the labour and travel of so many years is all vanished and blown away with the last puff of his dying-breath? and the fruit that remains, is to have it said ⟨p. 37⟩by those that survive, There lies learned dust? That any part of his acquisitions in that kind descend to others, little betters the case, when they that succeed are all hastening down also into the same ignoble dust. Besides that the increase of sorrow, both because the objects of his knowledge, the more he knows, do multiply the more upon him, so as to beget a despair of ever knowing so much as he shall know himself to be ignorant of; And a thousand doubts, about things he hath more deeply considered, which his more confident (undiscovered) ignorance never dreamt of or suspected. And thence an unquietness and irresolution of mind, which they that never drove at any such mark are (more contentedly) unacquainted with. And also because, that by how much knowledge hath refined a man's soul, so much it is more sensible and perceptive of troublesome impressions from the disorderly state of things in the world; which they that converse ⟨p. 38⟩only with earth and dirt, have not spirits clarified and fine enough to receive. So that except a man's knowing more than others, were to be referred to another state, the labour of attaining thereto, and other accessory disadvantages, would hardly ever be compensated by the fruit or pleasure of it. And unless a man would suppose himself made for torment, he would be shrewdly tempted to think a quiet and drowsy ignorance an happier state.

The acquisition of much knowledg, the furnishing his understanding with store of choice and welldigested notions; that he may please himself in being (or in having men think him) a learn'd Wight; Death robs away all his gain. And what is the world the better? How little shall he enrich the clods, among which he must shortly lye down, and have his abode! Or how little is the gain when the labour and travel of so many years is all vanished and blown away with the last puff of his dying-breath? and the fruit that remains, is to have it said