degree of privation; for in the mind of man gradus diminutionis may work a wavering between hope and fear, and so keep the mind in suspense from settling and accommodating in patience and resolution. Hereof the common forms are, better eye out than always ache, make or mar, &c. For the second branch of this colour, it depends upon the same general reason: hence grew the common place of extolling the beginning of everything: dimidium qui bene cœpit habet: [Well begun is half done.] This made the astrologers so idle as to judge of a man's nature and destiny by the constellation of the moment of his nativity or conception. This colour is reprehended, because many inceptions are but, as Epicurus termeth them, tentamenta, that is, imperfect offers and essays, which vanish and come to no substance without an iteration; so as in such cases the second degree seems the worthiest, as the body-horse in the cart, that draweth more than the fore-horse. Hereof the common forms are, The second blow makes the fray, The second word makes the bargain: Alter principium dedit, alter modum abstulit,1 [the one made a beginning of the mischief, the other made no end] &c. Another reprehension of this colour is in respect of defatigation, which makes perseverance of greater dignity than inception : for chance or instinct of nature may cause inception : but settled affection or judgment maketh the continu ance. 2 Thirdly, this colour is reprehended in such things, which have a natural course and inclination contrary to an inception. So that the inception is continually 1 alter abstulit, in the original. 2 In the original, this whole clause (for . . . inception) is omitted. evacuated and gets no start, but there behoveth perpetua inceptio; as in the common form, Non progredi est regredi; Qui non proficit deficit: [Not to go forward is to go back: he that does not get on, falls off:] running against the hill, rowing against the stream, &c. For if it be with the stream or with the hill, then the degree of inception is more than all the rest. Fourthly, this colour is to be understood of gradus inceptionis a potentia ad actum, comparatus cum gradu ab actu ad incrementum: [the step from power to act compared with the step from act to increase.] For otherwise major videtur gradus ab impotentia ad potentiam, quam a potentia ad actum: [from impotence to power appears to be a greater step than from power to act.] PREFACE. THIS fragment might perhaps have been placed more properly among the philosophical works. The subject of it is touched, though very briefly, in the fourth chapter of the sixth book of the De Augmentis, under the head of Ars Pædagogica; which, had it been completed, would apparently have been its proper place. And considering that Bacon had taken the subject so far into consideration, found that there was much to be said about it, and proceeded so short a way with it himself, it is rather strange to me that he did not set down these Georgica Intellectus in his catalogue of Desiderata. It forms no part however of his Philosophy properly so called; and may take its place here among the Civilia et Moralia without any impropriety; what there is of it being very welcome, and only making one wish that there were more. It was first printed by Dr. Rawley in the Resuscitatio (1657); and appears to have been written some time between 1596 and 1604: not before 1596, because it was in that year that Savill became Provost of Eton; not later than 1604, because in the two most authentic manuscripts which I have met with the letter begins "Mr. Savill ;" and it was in 1604 that he became Sir Henry. One of these manuscripts is in a collection o |