A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. But I cannot tell this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. One of the later schools43 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 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. 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. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness and count it a bondage to fix a belief affecting freewill in thinking as well as in acting. What is truth? said jesting Pilate 42 and would not stay for an answer.
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