136 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, 



myself had been to handle any particular knowledge, I would 

 have respected the divisions fittest for use. The other, be 

 cause the bringing in of the deficiences did by consequence 

 alter the partitions of the rest. For let the knowledge extant 

 (for demonstration sake) be fifteen. Let the knowledge with 

 the deficiences be twenty ; the parts of fifteen are not the 

 parts of twenty ; for the parts of fifteen are three and five ; 

 the parts of twenty are two, four, five, and ten. So as these 

 things are without contradiction, and could not otherwise be. 



XX. (1) &quot;We proceed now to that knowledge which con- 

 sidereth of the appetite and will of man : whereof Solomon 

 saith, Ante omnia, fili, custodi cor tuum : nam inde procedunt 

 actiones vitce. In the handling of this science, those which 

 have written seem to me to have done as if a man, that 

 professed to teach to write, did only exhibit fair copies of 

 alphabets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or 

 directions for the carriage of the hand and framing of the 

 letters. So have they made good and fair exemplars and 

 copies, carrying the draughts and portraitures of good, virtue, 

 duty, felicity ; propounding them well described as the true 

 objects and scopes of man s will and desires. But how to 

 attain these excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue 

 the will of man to become true and conformable to these 

 pursuits, they pass it over altogether, or slightly and un- 

 profitably. For it is not the disputing that moral virtues are 

 in the mind of man by habit and not by nature, or the dis 

 tinguishing that generous spirits are won by doctrines and 

 persuasions, and the vulgar sort by reward and punishment, 

 and the like scattered glances and touches, that can excuse tht, 

 absence of this part. 



(2) The reason of this omission I suppose to be that hidden 

 rock whereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge 

 have been cast away ; which is, that men have despised to be 

 conversant in ordinary and common matters, the judicious 

 direction whereof nevertheless is the wisest doctrine (for life 

 consisteth not in novelties nor subtleties), but contrariwise 

 they have compounded sciences chiefly of a certain resplendent 

 or lustrous mass of matter, chosen to give glory either to the 

 subtlety of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses. 

 But Seneca giveth an excellent check to eloquence, Nocet illis 

 eloquentia, quibus non rerum cupiditatem facit, sed sui. Doc 

 trine should be such as should make men in love with the 

 lesson, and not with the teacher ; being directed to the au 

 ditor s benefit, and not to the author s commendation. And 

 therefore those are of the right kind which may be concluded 



