‘y = 
134 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [X. 2. 
opinion that man was mzcrocosmus, an abstract or model 
of the world, hath been fantastically strained by Paracelsus 
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 com- 
pounded. 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, dress- 
ings and preparations of these 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 varia-. 
tions: 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 
fEthereum sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem. 
So that it is no marvel though the soul so placed enjoy 
no rest, if that principle be true, that J/o/us 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, be- 
cause 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 mdde the art 
by consequent more conjectural; and the art being 
