XXI. 5.] THE SECOND BOOK. 197 
they must needs make men think that it is\a terrible 
enemy, against whom there is no end of preparing. 
Better saith the poet : 
- Qui finem vite extremum inter munera ponat 
Nature. 
So have they sought to make men’s minds too uniform 
and harmonical, by not breaking them sufficiently to con- 
trary motions: the reason whereof I suppose to be, be- 
cause they themselves were men dedicated to a private, 
free, and unapplied course of life. For as we see, upon 
the lute or like instrument, a ground, though it be sweet 
and have show of many changes, yet breaketh not the 
hand to such strange and hard stops and passages, as 
a set song or voluntary; much after the same ‘manner 
was the diversity between a philosophical and a civil 
life. And therefore men are to imitate the wisdom of © 
jewellers ; who, if there be a grain, or a cloud, or an ice 
which may be ground forth without taking too much of 
the stone, they help it; but if it should lessen and abate 
the stone too much, they will not meddle with it: so 
ought men so to procure serenity as they destroy not 
magnanimity. 
6. Having therefore deduced the good of man which 
is private and particular, as far as seemeth fit, we will 
now return to that good of man which respecteth and 
beholdeth society, which we may term duty; because the 
term of duty is more proper to a mind well framed and 
disposed towards others, as the term of virtue is applied 
to a mind well formed and composed in itself: though 
neither can a man understand virtue without some re- 
lation to society, nor duty without an inward disposition. 
This part may seem at first to pertain to science civil 
and politic: but not if it be well observed. For it 
