Advancement of Learning 1 5 3 



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. 



WE proceed now to that knowledge which considereth of 

 the appetite and will of man: whereof Salomon saith, 

 Ante omnia, fili, custodi cor tuum ; nam inde proccdunt 

 actiones vita. 1 In the handling of this science, those which 

 have written seem to me to have done as if a man, that 

 professed 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, 2 

 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 know 

 ledge 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 



1 Prov. iv. 23. 2 Arist. Eth. Nic. ii. i. End. Eth. i. 3, i. 



