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XXI. 2.] "THE SECOND BOOK. — 195 
extending their form upon other things: whereof the 
multiplying, or signature of it upon other things, is that 
which we handled by the name of active good. So as 
there remaineth the conserving of it, and perfecting or 
raising of it; which latter is the highest degree of 
passive good. For to preserve in state is the less, 
to preserve with advancement is the greater. So in 
man, 
Igneus est ollis vigor, et czlestis origo. 
His approach or assumption to divine or angelica] na- 
ture is the perfection of his form; the error or false 
imitation of which good is that which is the tempest of 
human life; while man, upon the instinct of an advance- 
ment formal and essential, is carried to seek an ad- 
vancement local. For as those which are sick, and find 
no remedy, do tumble up and down and change place, 
as if by a remove local they could obtain a remove in- 
ternal; so is it with men in ambition, when failing of 
the mean to exalt their nature, they are in a perpetual 
estuation to exalt their place. So then passive good is, 
as was said, either conservative or perfective. 
3. To resume the good of conservation or comfort, 
which consisteth in the fruition of that which is agree- 
able to our natures; it seemeth to be the most pure 
and natural of pleasures, but yet the softest and the 
lowest. And this also receiveth a difference, which hath 
neither been well judged of, nor well inquired: for the 
_good of fruition or contentment is placed either in the 
sincereness of the fruition, or in the quickness and 
vigour of it; the one superinduced by equality, the 
other by vicissitude; the one having less mixture of evil, 
the other more impression of good. Whether of these is 
the greater good is a question controverted; but whether 
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