The works of Francis Bacon, lord chancellor of England.

BooK II. ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 219
chiefly of a certain resplendent or lustrous mnass 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
ButSeneca giveth an excellentcheck 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 withlf 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,, Quoe si feceritis, non oratoremr reluctation and virtue secured, in their encounters
duntaxat in prnesentia 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." deserveth to be reported for excellently laboured.
Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have Notwithstanding, if before they had come to
despaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil pro- the popular and received notions of virtue and
mised himself, and indeed obtained, who got as vice, pleasure and pain, and the rest, they had
much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning in the stayed a little longer upon the inquiry concerning
expressing of the observations of husbandry, as the roots of good and evil, and the strings of those
of' the heroical acts of AEneas:- roots, they had given, in my opinion, a great light
"Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum to that which followed; and especially if they
QAuam sit, et angustis his addere rebus honorem." had consulted with nature, they had made their
Georg. iii. 289. doctrines less prolix and more profound: which
And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest, being by them in part omitted and in part hannot to write at leisure that which men may read died with much confusion, we will endeavour to
at leisure, but really to instruct and suborn action resume and open in a more clear manner.
and active life, these Georgics of the mind, con- There is formed in every thing a double nature
cerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no of good: the one, as every thing is a total or subless worthy than the heroical descriptions of vir- stantive in itself; the other, as it is a part or memtue, duty, and felicity. Wherefore the main and her of a greater body: whereof the latter is in
primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to degree the greater and the worthier, because it
be into the Exemplar or Platform of Good, and the tendeth to the conservation of a more general
Regiment or Culture of the Mind; the one de- form. Therefore we see the iron in particular
scribing the nature of Good, the other prescribing sympathy moveth to the loadstone; but yet if it
rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the exceed a certain quantity, it forsaketh the affecWill of Man thereunto. tion to the loadstone, and like a good patriot
The doctrine touching the Platform or Nature moveth to the earth, which is the region and
of Good considereth it either simple or compared; country of massy bodies; so may we go forward,
either the kinds of good, or the degrees of good: and see that water and massy bodies move to the
in the latter whereof those infinite disputations centre of the earth; but rather than to suffer a diwhich were touching the supreme degree thereof, vulsion in the continuance of nature, they will
which they term felicity, beatitude, or the high- move upwards from the centre of the earth, forest good, the doctrines concerning which were as saking their duty to the earth in regard to their
the heathen divinity, are by the Christian faith dis- duty to the world. This double nature of good,
charged. And as Aristotle saith, "; That young and the comparative thereof, is much more enmen may be happy, but not otherwise but by graven upon man, if he degenerate not; unto
hope;" so we must all acknowledge our minority, whom the conservation of duty to the public
and embrace the felicity which is by hope of the ought to be much more precious than the conserfuture woorld. vation of life and being: according to that memoFreed therefore and delivered from this doctrine rable speech of Pompeius Magnus, when being
of the philosopher's heaven, whereby they feigned in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome,
a higher elevation of man's nature than was, (for and being dissuaded with great vehemency and
we see in what a height of style Seneca writeth, instance by his friends about him, that he should,,Vere magnum, habere fragilitatem, hominis, not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of
securitatem Dei," we may with more sobriety and weather, he said only to them, sc Necesse est ut
truth receive the rest of their inquiries and la- eam, non ut vivam." But it may be truly affirmbours; wherein for the nature of good positive or ed that there was never any philosophy, religion,
simple, they have set it down excellently, in de- or other discipline, which did so plainly and
scribing the forms of virtue and duty, with their highly exalt the good which is communicative,
situations and post-res; in distributing them into and depress the good which is private and parti