134 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [X. 2. 



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, dress 

 ings and preparations of 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 upon their bodies ; whereas man in 

 his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite varia 

 tions : and it cannot be denied but that the body of man 

 of all other things is of the most compounded mass. The 

 soul on the other side is the simplest of substances, as is 

 well expressed : 



Purumque reliquit 

 /Ethereum sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem. 



So that it is no marvel though the soul so placed enjoy 

 no rest, if that principle be true, that Motus rerum est 

 rapidus extra locum, placidus in loco. But to the purpose : 

 this variable composition of man s body hath made it as 

 an instrument easy to distemper ; and therefore the poets 

 did well to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, be 

 cause the office of medicine is but to tune this curious 

 harp of man s body and to reduce it to harmony. So 

 then the subject being so variable, hath made the art 

 by consequent more conjectural; and the art being 



