ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 307 



out by nature to be the architect of philosophy and the 

 sciences, I have submitted to become a common workman 

 and laborer, there being many mean things necessary to the 

 erection of the structure, which others, out of a natural dis 

 dain, refused to attend to. But in ethics the philosophers 

 have culled out a certain splendid mass of matter, wherein 

 they might principally show their force of genius or power 

 of eloquence; but for other things that chiefly conduce to 

 practice, as they could not be so gracefully set off, they 

 have entirely neglected them. Yet so many eminent men, 

 surely, ought not to have despaired of a like success with 

 Virgil, who procured as much glory for eloquence, ingenu 

 ity, and learning, by explaining the homely observations of 

 agriculture as in relating the heroic acts of ^Eneas 



&quot;Nee sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere rnagnum 

 Quam sit, et angustis hunc addere rebus honorem. &quot; 6 



And certainly, if men were bent, not upon writing at leisure 

 what may be read at leisure, but really to cultivate and im 

 prove active life, the georgics of the mind ought to be as 

 highly valued as those heroical portraits of virtue, good 

 ness, and happiness wherein so much pains have been taken. 

 We divide ethics into two principal doctrines the one of 

 the model or image of good, the other of the regulation and 

 culture of the mind, which I commonly express by the word 

 georgics. The first describes the nature of good, and the 

 other prescribes rules for conforming the mind to it. The 

 doctrine of the image of good, in describing the nature 

 of good, considers it either as simple or compounded, and 

 either as to the kinds or degrees thereof. In the latter of 

 these the Christian faith has at length abolished those 

 infinite disputes and speculations as to the supreme degree 

 of good, called happiness, blessedness, or the &quot;summum 

 bonum,&quot; which was a kind of heathen theology. For, as 

 Aristotle said, &quot;Youth might be happy, though only in 

 hope&quot;; 7 so, according to the direction of faith, we must 



6 Georg. iii. 289 Nic. Ethics, i. 10; Rhet. ii. 12, 8. 



