anew.

wit be caught away out a moment, one is to begin | the divisions other than those that are received, And as sciences have a propriety towards yet would I not be thought to disallow all those faculties for cure and help, so faculties or powers divisions which I do not use for there is a double have a sympathy towards sciences for excellency necessity imposed upon me of altering the divior speedy profiting; and therefore it is an inquiry sions. The one, because it differeth in end and of great wisdom, what kinds of wits and natures purpose, to sort together those things which are are most apt and proper for what sciences. next in nature and those things which are next in use; for if a secretary of state should sort his papers, it is like in his study or general cabinet he would sort together things of a nature, as treaties, instructions, &c., but in his boxes or particular cabinet he would sort together those that he were like to use together, though of several natures; so in this general cabinet of knowledge it was necessary for me to follow the divisions of the nature of things: whereas if myself had been to handle any particular knowledge, I would have respected the divisions fittest for use. The other, because the bringing in of the deficiencies did by consequence alter the partitions of the rest: for let the knowledge extant, for demonstration sake, be fifteen; let the knowledge with the deficiencies be twenty ; the parts of fifteen are not the parts of twenty; for the parts of fifteen are three and five; the parts of twenty are two, four, five, and ten; so as these things are without contradiction, and could not otherwise be.

Fourthly, the ordering of exercises is matter of great consequence to hurt or help: for, as is well observed by Cicero, men in exercising their faculties, if they be not well advised, do exercise their faults and get ill habits as well as good; so there is a great judgment to be had in the continuance and intermission of exercises. It were too long to particularize a number of other considerations of this nature, things but of mean appearance, but of singular efficacy. For as the wronging or cherishing of seeds or young plants is that that is most important to their thriving: (and as it was noted that the first six kings, being in truth as tutors of the state of Rome in the infancy thereof, was the principal cause of the immense greatness of that state which followed:) so the culture and manurance of minds in youth hath such a forcible, though unseen, operation, as hardly any length of time or contention of labour can countervail it afterwards. And it is not amiss to observe also how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into great We proceed now to that knowledge which conmen or great matters, do work great and import-sidereth of the Appetite and Will of Man, whereof ant effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus of two stage players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who by their faculty of playing put the Pannonian armies into an extreme tumult and combustion for there arising a mutiny amongst them upon the death of Augustus Cæsar, Blæsus the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak, which he did in this manner:-"These poor innocent wretches, appointed to cruel death, you have restored to behold the light; but who shall restore my brother to me, or life unto my brother, that was sent hither in message from the legions of Germany, to treat of the common cause? and he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. Answer, Blæsus, what is done with his body? The mortalest enemies do not deny burial. When I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain beside him; so that these my fellows, for our good meaning, and our true hearts to the legions, may have leave to bury us.'

With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar: whereas truth was he had no brother, neither was there any such matter; but he played it merely as if he had been upon the stage.

But to return: we are now come to a period of Rational Knowledges; wherein if I have made

Solomon saith, "Ante omnia, fili, custodi cor tuum: nam inde procedunt actiones vitæ." In the handling of this science, those which have written seem to me to have done as if a man, that professeth to teach to write, did only exhibit fair copies of alphabets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or directions for the carriage of the hand and framing of the letters: so have they made good and fair exemplars and copies, carrying the draughts and portraitures of good, virtue, duty, felicity; propounding them well described as the true objects and scopes of man's will and desires; but how to attain these excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue the will of man to become true and conformable to these pursuits, they pass it over altogether, or slightly and unprofitably; for it is not the disputing, that moral virtues are in the mind of man by habit and not by nature, or the distinguishing that generous spirits are won by doctrines and persuasions, and the vulgar sort by reward and punishment, and the like scattered glances and touches, that can excuse the absence of this part.

The reason of this omission I suppose to be that hidden rock whereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge have been cast away; which is, that men have despised to be conversant in ordinary and common matters, (the judicious direction whereof nevertheless is the wisest doctrine, for life consisteth not in novelties or subtilties,) but contrariwise they have compounded sciences

chiefly of a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of their kinds, parts, provinces, actions, and admimatter, chosen to give glory either to subtilty of nistrations, and the like: nay farther, they have disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses. commended them to man's nature and spirit, with But Seneca giveth an excellent check to eloquence; great quickness of argument and beauty of per"Nocet illis eloquentia, quibus non rerum cupi- suasions; yea, and fortified and intrenched them ditatem facit, sed sui." Doctrine should be such as much as discourse can do, against corrupt and as should make men in love with the lesson, and popular opinions. Again, for the degrees and not with the teacher; being directed to the auditor's comparative nature of good, they have also excelbenefit, and not to the author's commendation: lently handled it in their triplicity of good, in the and therefore those are of the right kind, which comparison between a contemplative and an acmay be concluded as Demosthenes concludes tive life, in the distinction between virtue with his counsel, "Quæ si feceritis, non oratorem reluctation and virtue secured, in their encounters duntaxat in præsentia laudabatis, sed vosmetipsos between honesty and profit, in their balancing of etiam non ita multo post statu rerum vestrarum | virtue with virtue, and the like; so as this part meliore."

Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil promised himself, and indeed obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning in the expressing of the observations of husbandry, as of the heroical acts of Æneas:

"Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum Quam sit, et angustis his addere rebus honorem."

Georg. iii. 289. And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest, not to write at leisure that which men may read at leisure, but really to instruct and suborn action and active life, these Georgics of the mind, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity. Wherefore the main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the Exemplar or Platform of Good, and the Regiment or Culture of the Mind; the one describing the nature of Good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the Will of Man thereunto.

deserveth to be reported for excellently laboured. Notwithstanding, if before they had come to the popular and received notions of virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, and the rest, they had stayed a little longer upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good and evil, and the strings of those roots, they had given, in my opinion, a great light to that which followed; and especially if they had consulted with nature, they had made their doctrines less prolix and more profound: which being by them in part omitted and in part handled with much confusion, we will endeavour to resume and open in a more clear manner.

There is formed in every thing a double nature of good: the one, as every thing is a total or substantive in itself; the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body: whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form. Therefore we see the iron in particular sympathy moveth to the loadstone; but yet if it exceed a certain quantity, it forsaketh the affection to the loadstone, and like a good patriot moveth to the earth, which is the region and country of massy bodies; so may we go forward, and see that water and massy bodies move to the centre of the earth; but rather than to suffer a divulsion in the continuance of nature, they will

The doctrine touching the Platform or Nature of Good considereth it either simple or compared; either the kinds of good, or the degrees of good in the latter whereof those infinite disputations which were touching the supreme degree thereof, which they term felicity, beatitude, or the high-move upwards from the centre of the earth, forest good, the doctrines concerning which were as the heathen divinity, are by the Christian faith discharged. And as Aristotle saith, "That young men may be happy, but not otherwise but by hope;" so we must all acknowledge our minority, and embrace the felicity which is by hope of the future world.

Freed therefore and delivered from this doctrine of the philosopher's heaven, whereby they feigned a higher elevation of man's nature than was, (for we see in what a height of style Seneca writeth, "Vere magnum, habere fragilitatem, hominis, securitatem Dei," we may with more sobriety and truth receive the rest of their inquiries and labours; wherein for the nature of good positive or simple, they have set it down excellently, in describing the forms of virtue and duty, with their situations and postures; in distributing them into

saking their duty to the earth in regard to their duty to the world. This double nature of good, and the comparative thereof, is much more engraven upon man, if he degenerate not; unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being: according to that memorable speech of Pompeius Magnus, when being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency and instance by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, "Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam." But it may be truly affirmed that there was never any philosophy, religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and highly exalt the good which is communicative, and depress the good which is private and parti

cular, as the Holy Faith; well declaring, that it would have deposed Jupiter again, and restored was the same God that gave the Christian law to Saturn and the first age, when there was no summen, who gave those laws of nature to inanimate | mer nor winter, spring nor autumn, but all after creatures that we speak of before; for we read one air and season,) and Herillus, who placed fethat the elected saints of God have wished them-licity in extinguishment of the disputes of the selves anathematized and razed out of the book mind, making no fixed nature of good and evil, of life, in an ecstasy of charity and infinite feeling esteeming things according to the clearness of the of communion. desires, or the reluctation; which opinion was revived in the heresy of the Anabaptists, measuring things according to the mctions of the spirit, and the constancy or wavering of belief: all which are manifest to tend to private repose and contentment, and not to point of society. It censureth also the philosophy of Epictetus,

This being set down and strongly planted, doth judge and determine most of the controversies wherein moral philosophy is conversant. For first, it decideth the question touching the preferment of the contemplative or active life, and decideth it against Aristotle. For all the reasons which he bringeth for the contemplative are pri- | which presupposeth that felicity must be placed vate, and respecting the pleasure and dignity of a in those things which are in our power, lest we be man's self, in which respects, no question, the liable to fortune and disturbance: as if it were contemplative life hath the pre-eminence: not not a thing much more happy to fail in good and much unlike to that comparison, which Pythago- virtuous ends for the public, than to obtain all that ras made for the gracing and magnifying of phi- we can wish to ourselves in our proper fortune; losophy and contemplation; who, being asked as Gonsalvo said to his soldiers, showing them what he was, answered, "That if Hiero were Naples, and protesting, "He had rather die cre ever at the Olympian games, he knew the manner, foot forwards, than to have his life secured for that some came to try their fortune for the prizes, long by one foot of retreat." Whereunto the and some came as merchants to utter their com- wisdom of that heavenly leader hath signed, who modities, and some came to make good cheer and hath affirmed that a good conscience is a continmeet their friends, and some came to look on; and ual feast; showing plainly that the conscience of that he was one of them that came to look on." good intentions, howsoever succeeding, is a mcre But men must know, that in this theatre of man's continual joy to nature than all the provision life it is reserved only for God and angels to be which can be made for security and repose. lookers on neither could the like question ever It censureth likewise that abuse of philosophy, have been received in the church, (notwithstand- which grew general about the time of Epictetus, ing their "Pretiosa in oculis Domini mors sancto-in converting it into an occupation or profession; rum ejus," by which place they would exalt their civil death and regular professions,) but upon this defence, that the monastical life is not simply contemplative, but performeth the duty either of incessant prayers and supplications, which hath been truly esteemed as an office in the church, or else of writing or in taking instructions for writing concerning the law of God, as Moses did when he abode so long in the mount. And so we see Enoch the seventh from Adam, who was the first contemplative, and walked with God, yet did also endow the church with prophecy, which St. Jude citeth. But for contemplation which should be finished in itself, without casting beams upon society, assuredly divinity knoweth it not. It decideth also the controversies between Zeno and Socrates, and their schools and successions, on the one side, who placed felicity in virtue sim-shortest stop or turn. ply or attended, the actions and exercises whereof Lastly, it censureth the tenderness and want do chiefly embrace and concern society; and on of application in some of the most ancient and the other side, the Cyrenaics and Epicureans, who placed it in pleasure, and made virtue, (as it is used in some comedies of errors, wherein the mistress and the maid change habits,) to be but as a servant, without which pleasure cannot be served and attended, and the reformed school of the Epicureans, which placed it in serenity of mind and freedom from perturbation, (as if they

as if the purpose had been, not to resist and extinguish perturbations, but to fly and avoid the causes of them, and to shape a particular kind and course of life to that end; introducing such a health of mind, as was that health of body of which Aristotle speaketh of Herodicus, who did nothing all his life long but intend his health: whereas if men refer themselves to duties of society, as that health of body is best, which is ablest to endure all alterations and extremities: so likewise that health of mind is most proper, which can go through the greatest temptations and perturbations. So as Diogenes's opinion is to be accepted, who commended not them which abstained, but them which sustained, and could refrain their mind "in præcipitio," and could give unto the mind, as is used in horsemanship, the

reverend philosophers and philosophical men, that did retire too easily from civil business, for avoiding of indignities and perturbations: whereas the resolution of men truly moral ought to be such as the same Gonsalvo said the honour of a soldier should be, "e telâ crassiore," and not so fine as that every thing should catch in it and endanger it.

"Igneus est ollis vigor, et cœlestis origo."

To resume private or particular good, it falleth | vision of conservative and perfective. For let us into the division of good active and passive: for take a brief review of that which we have said: this difference of good, not unlike to that which we have spoken first of the good of society, the amongst the Romans was expressed in the fami- intention whereof embraceth the form of human liar or household terms of Promus and Condus, nature, whereof we are members and portions, is formed also in all things, and is best disclosed and not our own proper and individual form: we in the two several appetites in creatures; the one have spoken of active good, and supposed it as a to preserve or continue themselves, and the other part of private and particular good: and rightly, to dilate or multiply themselves; whereof the for there is impressed upon all things a triple delatter seemeth to be the worthier: for in nature sire or appetite proceeding from love to themthe heavens, which are the more worthy, are the selves; one of preserving and continuing their agent; and the earth, which is the less worthy, form; another of advancing and perfecting their is the patient. In the pleasures of living crea- form; and a third of multiplying and extending tures, that of generation is greater than that of their form upon other things; whereof the multifood; in divine doctrine, "Beatius est dare plying, or signature of it upon other things, is that quam accipere;" and in life, there is no man's which we handled by the name of active good. spirit so soft, but esteemeth the effecting of some- So as there remaineth the conserving of it, and what that he hath fixed in his desire, more than perfecting or raising of it; which latter is the sensuality: which priority of the active good, is highest degree of passive good. For to preserve much upheld by the consideration of our estate in state is the less, to preserve with advancement to be mortal and exposed to fortune for if we is the greater. So in man,-might have a perpetuity and certainty in our pleasures, the state of them would advance their price: but when we see it is but "Magni æsti- His approach or assumption to divine or angelimamus mori tardius," and "Ne glorieris de cras- cal nature is the perfection of his form; the error tino, nescis partum diei,” it maketh us to desire or false imitation of which good is that which is to have somewhat secured and exempted from the tempest of human life; while man, upon the time, which are only our deeds and works: as it instinct of an advancement formal and essential, is is said, "Opera eorum sequuntur eos." The pre- carried to seek an advancement local. For as those eminence likewise of this active good is upheld which are sick, and find no remedy, do tumble up by the affection which is natural in man towards and down and change place, as if by a remove variety and proceeding; which in the pleasures local they could obtain a remove internal; so is of the sense, which is the principal part of pas-it with men in ambition, when failing of the means sive good, can have no great latitude: "Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; cibus, somnus, ludus per hunc circulum curritur; mori velle non tantum fortis, aut miser, aut prudens, sed etiam fastidiosus potest." But in enterprises, pursuits, and purposes of life, there is much variety; whereof men are sensible with pleasure in their inceptions, progressions, recoils, reintegrations, approaches and attainings to their ends: so as it was well said, "Vita sine proposito languida et vaga est." Neither hath this active good an identity with the good of society, though in some case it hath an incidence into it: for although it do many times bring forth acts of beneficence, yet it is with a respect private to a man's own power, glory, amplification, continuance; as appeareth plainly, when it findeth a contrary subject. For that gigantine state of mind which possesseth the troublers of the world, (such as was Lucius Sylla, The former question being debated between and infinite other in smaller model, who would Socrates and a sophist, Socrates placing felicity have all men happy or unhappy as they were their in an equal and constant peace of mind, and the friends or enemies, and would give form to the sophist in much desiring and much enjoying, they world, according to their own humours, which is fell from argument to ill words: the sophist saythe true theomachy,) pretendeth and aspireth to ing that Socrates's felicity was the felicity of a active good, though it recedeth farthest from good block or stone; and Socrates saying that the soof society, which we have determined to be the phist's felicity was the felicity of one that had the itch, who did nothing but itch and scratch. And greater. To resume passive good, it receiveth a subdi-both these opinions do not want their supports

to exalt their nature, they are in a perpetual estuation to exalt their place. So then passive good is, as was said, either conservative or perfective.

To resume the good of conservation or comfort, which consisteth in the fruition of that which is agreeable to our natures; it seemeth to be the most pure and natural of pleasures, but yet the softest and the lowest. And this also receiveth a difference, which hath neither been well judged of, nor well inquired: for the good of fruition or contentment is placed either in the sincereness of the fruition, or in the quickness and vigour of it: the one superinduced by the quality, the other by vicissitude; the one having less mixture of evil, the other more impression of good. Which of these is the greater good, is a question controverted; but whether man's nature may not be capable of both, is a question not inquired.

for the opinion of Socrates is much upheld by the | well observed; for it concerneth the regimen and general consent even of the Epicures themselves, government of every man over himself, and not that virtue beareth a great part in felicity; and if over others. And as in architecture the direction so, certain it is, that virtue hath more use in of framing the posts, beams, and other parts of clearing perturbations than in compassing desires. building, is not the same with the manner of The sophist's opinion is much favoured by the joining them and erecting the building; and in assertion we last spake of, that good of advance-mechanicals, the direction how to frame an inment is greater than good of simple preservation; because every obtaining a desire hath a show of advancement, as motion, though in a circle, hath a show of progression.

strument or engine, is not the same with the manner of setting it on work and employing it, (and yet nevertheless in expressing of the one you incidently express the aptness towards the other;) so the doctrine of conjugation of men in society differeth from that of their conformity thereunto.

But the second question, decided the true way, maketh the former superfluous. For can it be doubted, but that there are some who take more pleasure in enjoying pleasures than some other, This part of duty is subdivided into two parts; and yet nevertheless are less troubled with the the common duty of every man, as a man or loss or leaving of them? so as this same, "Non member of a state; the other, the respective or uti ut non appetas, non appetere ut non metuas, sunt special duty of every man, in his profession, voanimi pusilli et diffidentis." And it seemeth to cation, and place. And it seemeth to cation, and place. The first of these is extant me, that most of the doctrines of the philosophers and well laboured, as hath been said. The seare more fearful and cautionary than the nature cond likewise I may report rather dispersed than of things requireth. So have they increased the deficient; which manner of dispersed writing in fear of death in offering to cure it: for when they this kind of argument I acknowledge to be best: would have a man's whole life to be but a disci- | for who can take upon him to write of the proper pline or preparation to die, they must needs make | duty, virtue, challenge, and right of every several man think that it is a terrible enemy, against vocation, profession and place? For although whom there is no end of preparing. Better saith sometimes a looker on may see more than a gamethe poet: ster, and there be a proverb more arrogant than sound, "That the vale best discovereth the hill;" yet there is small doubt but that men can write best, and most really and materially, in their own professions; and that the writing of speculative men of active matter, for the most part, doth seem to men of experience, as Phormio's argument of the wars seemed to Hannibal, to be but dreams and dotage. Only there is one vice which accompanieth them that write in their own professions, that they magnify them in excess. But generally it were to be wished, as that which would make learning indeed solid and fruitful, that active men would or could become writers.

"Qui finem vitæ extremum inter munera ponat Naturæ."

So have they sought to make men's minds too uniform and harmonical, by not breaking them sufficiently to contrary motions: the reason whereof I suppose to be, because they themselves were men dedicated to a private, free, and unapplied course of life. For as we see, upon the lute or like instrument, a ground, though it be sweet and have show of many changes, yet breaketh not the hand to such strange and hard stops and passages, as a set song or voluntary; much after the same manner was the diversity between a philosophical and a civil life. And therefore men are to imitate the wisdom of jewellers; who, if there be a grain, or a cloud, or an ice which may be ground forth without taking too much of the stone, they help it; but if it should lessen and abate the stone too much, they will not meddle with it: so ought men so to procure serenity as they destroy not magnanimity.

In which kind I cannot but mention, “honoris causa," your majesty's excellent book touching the duty of a king: a work richly compounded of divinity, morality, and policy, with great aspersion of all other arts; and being, in mine opinion, one of the most sound and healthful writings that I have read; not distempered in the heat of invention, nor in the coolness of negliHaving, therefore, deduced the good of man gence; not sick of business, as those are who which is private and particular, as far as seemeth lose themselves in their order; nor of convulsions, fit; we will now return to that good of man which as those which cramp in matters impertinent; respecteth and beholdeth society, which we may not savouring of perfumes and paintings, as those term Duty; because the term of Duty is more do who seek to please the reader more than nature proper to a mind well framed and disposed to-beareth; and chiefly well disposed in the spirits wards others, as the term of virtue is applied to a thereof, being agreeable to truth and apt for acmind well formed and composed in itself: though|tion; and far removed from that natural infirmity, neither can a man understand virtue without some whereunto I noted those that write in their own relation to society, nor duty without an inward disposition. This part may seem at first to pertain to science civil and politic: but not if it be

professions to be subject, which is, that they exalt it above measure: for your majesty hath truly described, not a king of Assyria or Persia in their