ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 309 



they would have shortened their doctrines and laid them 

 deeper. But as they have entirely omitted this or con 

 fusedly touched it, we will here briefly touch it over again, 

 and endeavor to open and cleanse the springs of morality, 

 before we come to the georgics of the mind, which we set 

 down as deficient. 



All things are indued with an appetite to two kinds of 

 good the one as the thing is a whole in itself, the other as 

 it is a part of some greater whole; and this latter is more J 

 worthy and more powerful than the other, as it tends to the 

 conservation of a more ample form. The first may be called j 

 individual or self good, and the latter, good of communion. 

 Iron by a particular property moves to the loadstone, but 

 if the iron be heavy, it drops its affection to the loadstone 

 and tends to the earth, which is the proper region of such 

 ponderous bodies. Again, though dense and heavy bodies 

 tend to the earth, yet rather than nature will suffer a separa 

 tion in the continuity of things, and leave a vacuum, as they 

 speak, these heavy bodies will be carried upward, and forego 

 their affection to the earth, to perform their office to the 

 world. And thus it generally happens, that the conserva 

 tion of the more general form regulates the lesser appetites. 

 But this prerogative of the good of communion is more 

 particularly impressed upon man, if he be not degenerate, 

 according to that remarkable saying of Pompey, who, being 

 governor of the city purveyance at a time of famine in 

 Rome, and entreated by his friends not to venture to sea 

 while a violent storm was impending, answered, &quot;My going 

 is necessary, but not my life&quot;; 10 so that the desire of life, 

 which is greatest in the individual, did not with him out 

 weigh his affection and fidelity to the state. But no phi 

 losophy, sect, religion, law, or discipline, in any age, has so 

 highly exalted the good of communion, and so far depressed 

 the good of individuals, as the Christian faith; whence it 

 may clearly appear that one and the same God gave those 



10 Plut. Life Pomp. 



