SUSPICIONS amongst thoughts, are like bats
amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight. Cer-
tainly they are to be repressed, or at least well
guarded: for they cloud the mind; they leese
friends; and they check with business, whereby
business cannot go on currently and constantly.
They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jeal-
ousy, wise men to irresolution and melancholy.
They are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain;
for they take place in the stoutest natures; as in the
example of Henry the Seventh of England. There
was not a more suspicious man, nor a more stout.
And in such a composition they do small hurt. For
commonly they are not admitted, but with exami-
nation, whether they be likely or no. But in fearful
natures they gain ground too fast. There is nothing
makes a man suspect much, more than to know
little; and therefore men should remedy suspicion,
by procuring to know more, and not to keep their
suspicions in smother. What would men have? Do
they think, those they employ and deal with, are
saints? Do they not think, they will have their own
ends, and be truer to themselves, than to them?
Therefore there is no better way, to moderate sus-
picions, than to account upon such suspicions as
true, and yet to bridle them as false. For so far a
man ought to make use of suspicions, as to provide,
as if that should be true, that he suspects, yet it
may do him no hurt. Suspicions that the mind of
itself gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that
are artificially nourished, and put into men's
heads, by the tales and whisperings of others, have
stings. Certainly, the best mean, to clear the way
in this same wood of suspicions, is frankly to com-
municate them with the party, that he suspects;
for thereby he shall be sure to know more of the
truth of them, than he did before; and withal shall
make that party more circumspect, not to give
further cause of suspicion. But this would not be
done to men of base natures; for they, if they find
themselves once suspected, will never be true. The
Italian says, Sospetto licentia fede; as if suspicion,
did give a passport to faith; but it ought, rather, to
kindle it to discharge itself.
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