364 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



is, that nothing can be found in the material globe which 

 has not its correspondent in the crystalline globe the 

 understanding, or that there is nothing found in practice 

 which has not its particular doctrine and theory. But 

 learning esteems the building of a private fortune as a 

 work of an inferior kind; for no man s private fortune 

 can be an end any way worthy of his existence; nay, it 

 frequently happens that men of eminent virtues renounce 

 their fortune to pursue the things of a sublimer nature. 

 Yet even private fortune, as it is the instrument of virtue 

 and doing good, is a particular doctrine, worthy of con 

 sideration. 



This doctrine has its precepts, some whereof are sum 

 mary or collective, and others scattered and various. The 

 collective precepts are founded in a just knowledge 1, of 

 ourselves; and, 2, of others. Let this, therefore, be the 

 first whereon the knowledge of the rest principally turns, 

 that we procure to ourselves, as far as possible, the window 

 once required by Momus, who, seeing so many corners and 

 recesses in the structure of the human heart, found fault 

 that it should want a window, through which those dark and 

 crooked turnings might be viewed. 59 This window may be 

 procured by diligently informing ourselves of the particular 

 persons we have to deal with their tempers, desires, views, 

 customs, habits; the assistances, helps, and assurances 

 whereon they principally rely, and whence they receive 

 their power; their defects and weaknesses, whereat they 

 chiefly lie open and are accessible; their friends, factions, 

 patrons, dependants, enemies, enviers, rivals; their times 

 and manner of access 



&quot;Sola viri molles aditus et tempora noras&quot; ; 60 



their principles, and the rules they prescribe themselves, 

 etc. Butr our information should not wholly rest in the 

 persons, but also extend to the particular actions, which 



59 Plato, Reip. ; Lncan, Hermot. xx. ; and Eras. Chii. i. 74. 



60 ^Eneid, iv. 423. 



