From Francis Bacon's essay *Of Studies* (1625). Select the word that fits the blank. "Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to ______."

The catalogue pairs each subject with the faculty it cultivates. Logic and rhetoric — the two disciplines of argument — together prepare a man to *dispute*. Bacon's word is **contend** in its older sense: to argue, to strive in debate. - "Instruct" pulls in teaching, but logic and rhetoric in Bacon's frame are about *argument*, not pedagogy. - "Console" and "amuse" miss the disputative purpose entirely. This sense of *contend* survives in modern English in phrases like "a contention," *a contested claim*. The point is that logic+rhetoric are the disciplines you reach for when you must argue.