Advancement of Learning 109 



deserveth to be much better inquired. For the opinion of 

 PJato, 1 who placed the understanding in the brain, animosity 

 (which he did unfitly call anger, having a greater mixture 

 with pride) in the heart, and concupiscence or sensuality in 

 the liver, deserveth not to de despised ; but much less to be 

 allowed. So then we have constituted, as in our own wish 

 and advice, the inquiry touching human nature entire, as a 

 just portion of knowledge to be handled apart. 



The knowledge that concerneth man s body is divided as 

 the good of man s body is divided, unto which it referreth. 

 The good of man s body is of four kinds, Health, Beauty, 

 Strength, and Pleasure : so the knowledges are Medicine, or 

 art of Cure; art of Decoration, which is called Cosmetic; 

 art of Activity, which is called Athletic ; and art Voluptuary, 

 which Tacitus truly calleth eruditits luxus. 2 This subject 

 of man s body is of all other things in nature most suscep 

 tible of remedy; but then that remedy is most susceptible 

 of error. For the same subtility of the subject doth 

 cause large possibility and easy failing; and therefore the 

 inquiry ought to be the more exact. 



To speak therefore of .Medicine, and to resume that we 

 have said, ascending a little higher : the ancient opinion that 

 man was microcosmus, an abstract or model of the world, 

 hath been fantastically strained by Paracelsus 3 and the 

 alchemists, as if there were to be found in man s body 

 certain correspondences and parallels, which should have 

 respect to all varieties of things, as stars, planets, minerals, 

 which are extant in the great world. But thus much is 

 evidently true, that of all substances which nature hath 

 produced, man s body is the most extremely compounded. 

 For we see herbs and plants are nourished by earth and 

 water; beasts for the most part by herbs and fruits; man 

 by the flesh of beasts, birds, fishes, herbs, grains, fruits, 

 water, and the manifold alterations, dressings, and prepara- 



1 Plat. Tim. 69, 70 (Steph.). In the head, r6 0tiov: then below 

 the isthmus of the neck, the mortal part of man; first TO ^T\OV 

 TT/S ^i x*?s dvopeias KO.I 0v/j.ov; (so that Bacon is scarcely right in his 

 censure ; for neither dvdpeia nor 0t //.6s is anger) ; then the diaphragm 

 to divide the parts; then in the heart he placed Odppos ical 06/Sos; 

 and below it TO tiri9i /j.T]Ti.K&v, tio-rrep v &amp;lt;pdrvy . . . KaraSeoe^vov in 

 the liver. 



2 Tac. Ann. xvi. 18. 



3 See Ellis and Spedding s note to Nov. Org. ii. 48 (p. 339). 



