XX,2,] THE SECOND BOOK. 187 
sentia laudabitis, sed vosmetipsos etiam non ita multo post 
Staiu rerum vestraram melvore. 
3. Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have 
despaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil promised 
himself, and indeed obtained, who got as much glory of 
eloquence, wit, and learning in the expressing of the 
observations of husbandry, as of the heroical acts of 
fineas : 
Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum 
Quam sit, et angustis his addere rebus honorem. 
And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest, not to 
write at leisure that which men may read at leisure, but 
really to instruct and suborn action and active life, these 
Georgics of the mind, concerning the husbandry and 
tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical de- 
scriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity. Wherefore the 
main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth 
to be into the exemplar or platform of good, and the 
regiment or culture of the mind: the one describing the 
nature of good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, 
apply, and accommodate the will of man thereunto, 
4. The doctrine touching the platform or nature of 
good considereth it either simple or compared; either 
the kinds of good, or the degrees of good; in the latter 
whereof those infinite disputations which were touching 
the supreme degree thereof, which they term felicity, 
beatitude, or the highest good, the doctrines concerning 
which were as the heathen divinity, are by the Christian 
faith discharged. And as Aristotle saith, Zhat_young men 
may be happy, but not otherwise but by hope ; so we must 
all acknowledge our minority, and embrace the felicity 
which is by hopé of the future world. 
Freed therefore and delivered from this doctrine of 
