1 1 o Bacon 



tions of the several bodies, before they come to be his food 

 and aliment. Add hereunto, that beasts have a more simple 

 order of life, and less change of affections to work upon 

 their bodies: whereas man in his mansion, sleep, exercise, 

 passions, hath infinite variations : and it cannot be denied 

 but that the Body of man of all other things is of the 

 most compounded mass. The Soul on the other side is the 

 simplest of substances, as is well expressed: 



Purumque reliquit 

 ^Ethereum sensum atque aural simplicis ignem. 1 



So that it is no marvel though the soul so placed enjoy no 

 rest, if that principle be true, that Motus rerum est rapidus 

 extra locum, placidus in loco. But to the purpose: this 

 variable composition of man s body hath made it as an 

 instrument easy to distemper; and therefore the poets did 

 well to conjoin Music and Medicine in Apollo, 2 because the 

 office of Medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man s 

 body and to reduce it to harmony. So then the subject 

 being so variable, hath made the art by consequence more 

 conjectural; and the art being conjectural hath made so 

 much the more place to be left for imposture. For almost 

 all other arts and sciences are judged by acts, or master 

 pieces, as I may term them, and not by the successes and 

 events. The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, 

 and not by the issue of the cause ; the master of the ship is 

 judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the 

 fortune of the voyage; but the physician, and perhaps the 

 politique, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his 

 ability, but is judged most by the event ; which is ever but 

 as it is taken : for who can tell if a patient die or recover, or 

 if a state be preserved or ruined, whether it be art or acci 

 dent ? And therefore many times the impostor is prized, 

 and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see the weakness 

 and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a 

 mountebank 3 or witch before a learned physician. And 

 therefore the poets were clear-sighted in discerning this 

 extreme folly, when they made ^sculapius and Circe 



1 Virg. JEn. vi. 747. 2 Ovid, Metam. i. 521. 



3 Montabank in the old editions from montambanco, a quack- 

 doctor. Holland, in his Plutarch, renders the word mount-bank. 

 The word was confined in meaning to a quack in Bacon s day. 



