168 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



and Socrates, and their schools and successions, on the 

 one side, who placed felicity in virtue simply or attended, 

 the actions and exercises whereof do chiefly embrace 

 and concern society ; and on the other side, the Cyrenaics 

 and Epicureans, who placed it in pleasure, and made 

 virtue (as it is used in some comedies of errors, wherein 

 the mistress and the maid change habits) to be but as 

 a servant, without which pleasure cannot be served and 

 attended ; and the reformed school of the Epicureans, 

 which placed it in serenity of mind and freedom from 

 perturbation ; as if they would have deposed Jupiter 

 again, and restored Saturn and the first age, when there 

 was no summer nor winter, spring nor autumn, but all 

 after one air and season ; and Herillus, which placed 

 felicity in extinguishment of the disputes of the mind, 

 making no fixed nature of good and evil, esteeming 

 things according to the clearness of the desires, or the 

 reluctation ; which opinion was revived in the heresy of 

 the Anabaptists, measuring things according to the 

 motions of the spirit, and the constancy or wavering of 

 belief : all which are manifest to tend to private repose 

 and contentment, and not to point of society. 



10. It censureth also the philosophy of Epictetus, 

 which presupposeth that felicity must be placed in those 

 things which are in our power, lest we be liable to for 

 tune and disturbance : as if it were not a thing much 

 more happy to fail in good and virtuous ends for the 

 public, than to obtain all that we can wish to ourselves 

 in our proper fortune ; as Consalvo said to his soldiers, 

 showing them Naples, and protesting he had rather die 

 one foot forwards, than to have his life secured for long 

 by one foot of retreat. Whereunto the wisdom of that 

 heavenly leader hath signed, who hath affirmed that 

 * a good conscience is a continual feast ; showing 

 plainly that the conscience of good intentions, howso 

 ever succeeding, is a more continual joy to nature, than 

 all the provision which can be made for security and 

 repose. 



11. It censureth likewise that abuse of philosophy, 

 which grew general about the time of Epictetus, in con- 



