SEVENTH BOOK 



CHAPTER I 



Ethics divided into the Doctrine of Models and the Georgics (Culture) 

 of the Mind. Division of Models into the Absolute and Compar- 

 ative Good. Absolute Good divided into Personal and National 



WE next, excellent King, proceed to ethics, which has 

 the human will for its subject. Reason governs the 

 will, but apparent good seduces it: its motives are 

 the affections, and its ministers the organs and voluntary mo- 

 tions. It is of this doctrine that Solomon says, " Keep thy 

 heart with all diligence^ for out of it are the actions of life." 

 The writers upon this science appear like writing-masters, who 

 lay before their scholars a number of beautiful copies, but give 

 them no directions how to guide their pen or shape their let- 

 ters; for so the writers upon ethics have given us shining 

 draughts, descriptions, and exact images of goodness, virtue, 

 duties, happiness, etc., as the true objects and scope of the 

 human will and desire ; but for obtaining these excellent and 

 well-described ends, or by what means the mind may be broke 

 and fashioned for obtaining them, they either touch this sub- 

 ject not at all or slightly. We may dispute as much as we 

 please, that moral virtues are in the human mind by habit, not 

 by nature ; that generous spirits are led by reason, but the 

 herd by reward and punishment ; that the mind must be set 

 straight, like a crooked stick, by bending it the contrary way, 

 etc.& But nothing of this kind of glance-and-touch can in any 

 way supply the want of the thing we are now in quest of. 



The cause of this neglect I take to be that latent rock whereon 

 so many of the sciences have split, viz., the aversion that writers 

 have to treat of trite and vulgar matters, which are neither subtle 

 enough for dispute nor eminent enough for ornament. It is 

 not easy to see how great a misfortune hath proceeded hence 

 that men, through natural pride and vain-glory, should choose 



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