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BACON 



the Olympic games are long since ceased, and a mediocrity in 

 these things is sufficient for use, whilst excellency in them 

 serves commonly but for mercenary show. 



The arts of elegance are divided with respect to the two 

 senses of sight and hearing. Painting particularly delights the 

 eye ; so do numerous other magnificent arts, relating to build- 

 ings, gardens, apparel, vessels, gems, etc. Music pleases the 

 ear with great variety and apparatus of sounds, voices, strings, 

 and instruments ; and anciently water-organs were esteemed as 

 great master-pieces in this art, though now grown into disuse. 

 The arts which relate to the eye and ear, are, above the rest, 

 accounted liberal ; these two senses being the more pure, and 

 the sciences thereof more learned, as having mathematics to 

 attend then. The one also has some relation to the memory 

 and demonstrations ; the other, to manners and the passions of 

 the mind. The pleasures of the other senses, and the arts em- 

 ployed about then, are in less repute, as approaching nearer to 

 sensuality than magnificence. Unguents, perfumes, the furni- 

 ture of the table, but principally incitements to lust, should 

 rather be censured than taught. And it has been well observed, 

 that, while states were in their increase, military arts flourished ; 

 when at their heights, the liberal arts ; but when upon their de- 

 cline, the arts of luxury. With the arts of pleasure, we join 

 also the jocular arts : for the deception of the senses may be reck- 

 oned one of their delights. 



And, now, as so many things require to be considered with 

 relation to the human body, viz., the parts, humors, functions, 

 faculties, accidents, etc., since we ought to have an entire 

 doctrine of the body of man, which should comprehend them 

 all ; yet lest arts should be thus too much multiplied, or their 

 ancient limits too much disordered, we receive into the system 

 of medicine, the doctrines of the parts, functions, and humors 

 of the body ; respiration, sleep, generation ; the foetus, gestation 

 in the womb ; growth, puberty, baldness, fatness, and the like ; 

 though these do not properly belong either to the preservation 

 of health, the cure of diseases, or the prolongation of life, but 

 because the human body is, in every respect, the subject of 

 medicine. But for voluntary motion and sense, we refer them 

 to the doctrine of the soul as two principal parts thereof. And 

 thus we conclude the doctrine of the body, which is but as a 

 tabernacle to the soul. 



