100 THE ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. 



there should be sovereign airs, able suddenly to cure a man in 

 sickness. But the inquisition of this part is of great use, though 

 it needeth, as Socrates said, &quot;a Delian diver,&quot; being difficult 

 and profound. But unto all this knowledge de communi vinculo, 

 of the concordances between the mind and the body, that part 

 of inquiry is most necessary which considereth of the seats 

 and domiciles which the several faculties of the mind do take 

 and occupate in the organs of the body ; which knowledge hath 

 been attempted, and is controverted, and deserveth to be much 

 better inquired. For the opinion of Plato, who placed the 

 understanding in the brain, animosity (which he did unfitly 

 call anger, having a greater mixture with pride) in the heart, and 

 concupiscence or sensuality in the liver, deserveth not to be 

 despised, but much less to be allowed. So, then, we have con 

 stituted (as in our own wish and advice) the inquiry touching 

 human nature entire, as a just portion of knowledge to be 

 handled apart. 



X. (1) The knowledge that concerneth man s body is divided 

 as the good of man s body is divided, unto which it referreth. 

 The good of man s body is of four kinds health, beauty, 

 strength, and pleasure : so the knowledges are medicine, or 

 art of cure ; art of decoration, which is called cosmetic ; art of 

 activity, which is called athletic ; and art voluptuary, which 

 Tacitus truly calleth eruditus luxus. This subject of man s body 

 is, of all other things in nature, most susceptible of remedy 

 but then that remedy is most susceptible of error; for the 

 same subtlety of the subject doth cause large possibility anc 

 easy failing, and therefore the inquiry ought to be the more 

 exact. 



(2) To speak, therefore, of medicine, and to resume that we 

 have said, ascending a little higher : the ancient opinion that 

 man was microcosmus 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, dressings, and preparations o 

 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 u-pon their bodies, whereas 



