Advancement of Learning 171 



but are touched a little by Aristotle, as in passage in his 

 Rhetorics, 1 and are handled in some scattered discourses : 

 but they were never incorporated into moral philosophy, 

 to which they do essentially appertain; as the knowledge 

 of the diversity of grounds and moulds doth to agriculture, 

 and the knowledge of the diversity of complexions and 

 constitutions doth to the physician; except we mean to 

 follow the indiscretion of empirics, which minister the 

 same medicines to all patients. 



Another article of this knowledge is the inquiry touching 

 the affections; for as in medicining of the body, it is in 

 order first to know the divers complexions and constitu 

 tions; secondly, the diseases; and lastly, the cures: so in 

 medicining of the mind, after knowledge of the divers 

 characters of men s natures, it followeth, in order, to know 

 the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which are no other 

 than the perturbations and distempers of the affections. 

 For as the ancient politiques in popular states 2 were wont 

 to compare the people to the sea, and the orators to the 

 winds; because as the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, 

 if the winds did not move and trouble it; so the people 

 would be peaceable and tractable, if the seditious orators 

 did not set them in working and agitation: so it may be 

 fitly said, that the mind in the nature thereof would be 

 temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds, did not 

 put it into tumult and perturbation. And here again I 

 find strange, as before, that Aristotle should have written 

 divers volumes of ethics, and never handled the affections, 

 which is the principal subject thereof; and yet in his 

 Rhetorics, where they are considered but collaterally, and 

 in a second degree, as they may be moved by speech, he 

 findeth place for them, 3 and handleth them well for the 

 quantity; but where their true place is, he pretermitteth 

 them. For it is not his disputations about pleasure and 

 pain that can satisfy this inquiry, no more than he that 

 should generally handle the nature of light can be said to 

 handle the nature of colours; for pleasure and pain are to 

 the particular affections as light is to particular colours. 



1 Arist. Rhet. ii. 12-17. 



2 Bacon here seems to refer to Solon s lines on Pisistratus. Ellis 

 edition quotes Cic. pro Cluent. 49. 



8 Arist. Rhet. ii. i-u. 



