1 88 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [XX. 5. 



the philosopher s heaven, whereby they feigned an higher 

 elevation of man s nature than was (for we see in what 

 height of style Seneca writeth, Vere magnum, haberefra- 

 gilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei), we may with more 

 sobriety and truth receive the rest of their inquiries and 

 labours. Wherein for the nature of good positive or 

 simple, they have set it down excellently in describing 

 the forms of virtue and duty, with their situations and 

 postures ; in distributing them into their kinds, parts, 

 provinces, actions, and administrations, and the like : nay 

 further, they have commended them to man s nature and 

 spirit with great quickness of argument and beauty of 

 persuasions; yea, and fortified and entrenched them (as 

 much as discourse can do) against corrupt and popular 

 opinions. Again, for the degrees and comparative nature 

 of good, they have also excellently handled it in their 

 triplicity of good, in the comparisons between a contem 

 plative and an active life, in the distinction between virtue 

 with reluctation and virtue secured, in their encounters 

 between honesty and profit, in their balancing of virtue 

 with virtue, and the like ; so as this part deserveth to be 

 reported for excellently laboured. 



6. Notwithstanding, if before they had comen to the 

 popular and received notions of virtue and vice, pleasure 

 and pain, and the rest, they had stayed a little longer 

 upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good and evil, 

 and the strings of those roots, they had given, in my 

 opinion, a great light to that which followed ; and spe 

 cially if they had consulted with nature, they had made 

 their do ctrines less prolix and more profound: which 

 being by them in part omitted and in part handled with 

 much confusion, we will endeavour to resume and open 

 in a more clear manner. 



