118 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



X. 1. The knowledge that concerneth man s body 

 is divided as the good of man s body is divided, unto 

 which it referreth. The good of man s body is of four 

 kinds, health, beauty, strength and pleasure : so the 

 knowledges are medicine, or art of cure : art of decora 

 tion, which is called cosmetic ; art of activity, which is 

 called athletic ; and art voluptuary, which Tacitus 

 truly calleth eruditus luxus. This subject of man s 

 body is of all other things in nature most susceptible 

 of remedy ; but then that remedy is most susceptible 

 of error. For the same subtility of the subject doth 

 cause large possibility and easy failing ; and therefore 

 the inquiry ought to be the more exact. 



2. To speak therefore of medicine, and to resume 

 that we have said, ascending a little higher : the ancient 

 opinion that man was microcosmus, an abstract or 

 model of the world, hath been fantastically strained 

 by Paracelsus and the alchemists, as if there were to 

 be found in man s body certain correspondences and 

 parallels, which should have respect to all varieties of 

 things, as stars, planets, minerals, which are extant 

 in the great world. But thus much is evidently true, 

 that of all substances which nature hath produced, 

 man s body is the most extremely compounded. For 

 we see herbs and plants are nourished by earth and 

 water ; beasts for the most part by herbs and fruits ; 

 man by the flesh of beasts, birds, fishes, herbs, grains, 

 fruits, water, and the manifold alterations, dressings 

 and preparations of these several bodies, before they 

 come to be his food and aliment. Add hereunto that 

 beasts have a more simple order of life, and less change 

 of affections to work upon their bodies ; whereas man 

 in his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite 

 variations : and it cannot be denied but that the body 

 of man of all other things is of the most compounded 

 mass. The soul on the other side is the simplest of 

 substances, as is well expressed : 



Pur um quo reliquit 

 Aethereum sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem. 



