If
fools are not notorious, they have far more persons to deal with of
their own elevation (who understand one another better) than they have
of those that are above them, which renders them fitter for many
businesses than wiser men, and they believe themselves to be so for all.
For no man ever thought himself a fool that was one, so confident does
their ignorance naturally render them, and confidence is no contemptible
qualification in the management of human affairs; and as blind men have
secret artifices and tricks to supply that defect and find out their
ways, which those who have their eyes and are but hoodwinked are utterly
unable to do, so fools have always little crafts and frauds in all their
transactions which wiser men would never have thought upon, and by those
they frequently arrive at very great wealth, and as great success in all
their undertakings. For all fools are but feeble and impotent knaves,
that have as strong and vehement inclinations to all sorts of dishonesty
as the most notorious of those engineers, but want abilities to put them
in practice; and as they are always found to be the most obstinate and
intractable people to be prevailed upon by reason or conscience, so they
are as easy to submit to their superiors--that is, knaves--by whom they
are always observed to be governed, as all corporations are wont to
choose their magistrates out of their own members. As for knaves, they
are commonly true enough to their own interests, and while they gain by
their employments, will be careful not to disserve those who can turn
them out when they please, what tricks soever they put upon others; and
therefore such men prove more useful to them in their designs of gain
and profit than those whose consciences and reason will not permit them
to take that latitude.
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