Interpretation: reading history can make people understand things and have foresight; Reading poems can make people smart and witty.
Source: [English] Francis Bacon on learning.
History makes people wise; Poet wit; Mathematics is subtle; Natural philosophy is profound; Moral grave; Logic and rhetoric can be argued. ?
English translation: reading history makes people wise, reading poetry makes them witty, mathematics makes them careful, natural philosophy makes them deep, ethics makes them grave, and logical rhetoric makes them able to contend.
English interpretation: reading history can make people understand things and have foresight; Reading poems makes people clever and witty; Learning mathematics can make people thoughtful and meticulous; Natural philosophy can make people thorough; Ethics can make people not casual and frivolous; Learning logical rhetoric can make people good at rhetorical debate.
Modern social significance
With the progress of science and technology and the development of productivity, great changes have taken place in the living environment of human beings. People experienced the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Machine Mass Production Age and Information Technology Age. Correspondingly, the development process of human civilization has also experienced the birth of civilization, the agricultural age, the industrial age and the information age.
Because the essential change of "man" is much slower than the change of environment, although the environment has changed greatly, "man" still has similar thinking and similar reaction as before. In addition, the differences between people have not changed much for many years. It is still very effective for enlightening today's wisdom and understanding what happened in history and how historical figures handled these events.