68 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, [VUl.t. 
provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, 
of some fights and services there, which were commonly 
for a passage, or a fort, or some walled town at the most, 
he said, /¢ seemed to him, that he was.advertised of the 
battles of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of. 
So certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal 
frame of nature, the earth with men upon it (the divine- 
ness of souls except) will not seem much other than an 
ant-hill, whereas some ants carry corn, and some carry 
their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little 
ap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death 
v4 adverse fortune; which is one of thé greatest»impedi- 
ments of virtue, and_imperfections-of-manners. For if a 
man’s mind be deeply seasoned with the consideration of 
the mortality and corruptible nature of things, he will 
easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day and 
saw a woman weeping for her pitcher of earth that was 
broken, and went forth the next day and saw a woman 
weeping for her son that was dead, and thereupon said, 
Heri? vidi fragilem frangi, hodie vidi mortalem mori. 
And therefore Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple 
the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears 
together, as concomi/anita. 
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum 
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. 
2. It were too long to go over the particular remedies 
which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the 
mind; sometimes purging” the ill humours, sometimes 
apeniie the obstructions, sometimes. helping digestion, 
sometimes increasimg appetite, sometimes healing the 
wounds and exulcerations thereof, and the like; and 
} 4, therefore I will conclude with that which hath rastonem 
