Passage (Francis Bacon, *Of Studies*, 1625): "Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best, from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation." Bacon's analogy "natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study" most strongly implies that:
Anatural abilities are useless without prior study.
Bnatural talent must be entirely replaced by formal learning.
Cstudies are valuable principally because they restrain or shape natural abilities, much as pruning shapes a plant.
Donly those born with natural ability should pursue study.
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: C. studies are valuable principally because they restrain or shape natural abilities, much as pruning shapes a plant.
*Proyning* is an early-modern spelling of *pruning*. Bacon's figure: plants left to themselves grow wildly; pruning makes them productive. The analogy assigns *study* the role of pruning — **shaping**, **trimming**, and **directing** natural abilities, not creating or replacing them.
- **A** overstates: natural abilities exist independently; study refines them.
- **C** contradicts the analogy — pruning does not replace the plant.
- **D** misuses the figure to add a precondition Bacon doesn't make.
Bacon balances the figure in the next clause: *and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.* So studies prune nature; experience in turn prunes studies. The mutual-pruning is the load-bearing claim.
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