188 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [XX. 5. 
the philosopher’s heaven, whereby they feigned an higher 
elevation of man’s nature than was (for we see in what 
height of style Seneca writeth, Vere magnum, habere fra- 
gilitatem hominis, securitatem Det), we may with more 
sobriety and truth receive the rest of their inquiries and 
labours. Wherein for the nature of good positive or 
simple, they have set it down excellently in describing 
the forms of virtue and duty, with their situations and 
postures; in distributing them into their kinds, parts, 
provinces, actions, and administrations, and the like: nay 
further, they have commended them to man’s nature and 
spirit with great quickness of argument and beauty of 
persuasions; yea, and fortified and entrenched them (as 
much as discourse can do) against corrupt and popular 
opinions. Again, for the degrees and comparative nature 
of good, they have also excellently handled it in their 
triplicity of good, in the comparisons between a contem- 
plative and an active life, in the distinction between virtue 
with reluctation and virtue secured, in their encounters 
between honesty and profit, in their balancing of virtue 
with virtue, and the like; so as this part deserveth to be 
reported for excellently laboured. 
6. Notwithstanding, if before they had comen to the 
popular and received notions of virtue and vice, pleasure 
and pain, and the rest, they had stayed a little longer 
upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good and evil, 
and the strings of those roots, they had given, in my 
opinion, a great light to that which followed; and spe- 
cially if they had consulted with nature, they had made 
their doctrines less prolix and more profound: which 
being by them in part omitted and in part handled with 
much confusion, we will endeavour to resume and open 
in a more clear manner. 
