60 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [VII. 12. 



12. And herein again it may seem a thing scholastical, 

 and somewhat idle, to recite things that every man know- 

 eth ; but yet, since the argument I handle leadeth me 

 thereunto, I am glad that men shall perceive I am as 

 willing to flatter (if they will so call it) an Alexander, or 

 a Caesar, or an Antoninus, that are dead many hundred 

 years since, as any that now liveth : for it is the display 

 ing of the glory of learning in sovereignty that I pro 

 pound to myself, and not an humour of declaiming in 

 any man s praises. Observe then the speech he used of 

 Diogenes, and see if it tend not to the true state of one of 

 the greatest questions of moral philosophy ; whether the 

 enjoying of outward things, or the contemning of them, 

 be the greatest happiness : for when he saw Diogenes so 

 perfectly contented with so little, he said to those that 

 mocked at his condition, Were / not Alexander, I would 

 wish to be Diogenes. But Seneca inverteth it, and saith; 

 Plus erat, quod hie nollet accipere, quam quod ille posset 

 dare. There were more things which Diogenes would have 

 refused, than those were which Alexander could have given 

 or enjoyed. 



13. Observe again that speech which was usual with 

 him, That he felt his mortality chiefly in two things, sleep 

 and lust ; and see if it were not a speech extracted out of 

 the depth of natural philosophy, and liker to have comen 

 out of the mouth of Aristotle or Democntus, than from 

 Alexander. 



14. See again that speech of humanity and poesy; 

 when upon the bleeding of his wounds, he called unto 

 him one of his flatterers, that was wont to ascribe to him 

 divine honour, and said, Look, this zs very blood ; this is 

 not such a liquor as Homer speaketh of, which ran from 

 Venus hand, when it was pierced by Diomedes. 



