XXI. 5-J THE SECOND BOOK. 197 



they must needs make men think that it is a terrible 

 enemy, against whom there is no end of preparing. 

 Better saith the poet : 



Qui finem vitae extremum inter munera ponat 

 Naturae. 



So have they sought to make men s minds too uniform 

 and harmonical, by not breaking them sufficiently to con 

 trary motions : the reason whereof I suppose to be, be 

 cause they themselves were men dedicated to a private, 

 free, and unapplied course of life. For as we see, upon 

 the lute or like instrument, a ground, though it be sweet 

 and have show of many changes, yet breaketh not the 

 hand to such strange and hard stops and passages, as 

 a set song or voluntary; much after the same manner 

 was the diversity between a philosophical and a civil 

 life. And therefore men are to imitate the wisdom of 

 jewellers ; who, if there be a grain, or a cloud, or an ice 

 which may be ground forth without taking too much of 

 the stone, they help it ; but if it should lessen and abate 

 the stone too much, they will not meddle with it: so 

 ought men so to procure serenity as they destroy not 

 magnanimity. 



6. Having therefore deduced the good of man which 

 is private and particular, as far as seemeth fit, we will 

 now return to that good of man which respecteth and 

 beholdeth society, which we may term duty ; because the 

 term of duty is more proper to a mind well framed and 

 disposed towards others, as the term of virtue is applied 

 to a mind well formed and composed in itself: though , 

 neither can a man understand virtue without some re 

 lation to society, nor duty without an inward disposition. 

 This part may seem at first to pertain to science civil 

 and politic: but not if it be well observed. For it 



