ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 213 



their doctrines and laid them deeper. But as they have entirely 

 omitted this or confusedly touched it, we will here briefly touch 

 it over again, and endeavor to open and cleanse the springs of 

 morality, before we come to the georgics of the mind, which 

 we set down as deficient. 



All things are indued with an appetite to two kinds of good 

 the one as the thing is a whole in itself, the other as it is a part 

 of some greater whole ; and this latter is more worthy and more 

 powerful than the other, as it tends to the conservation of a 

 more ample form. The first may be called individual or self- 

 good, and the latter, good of communion. Iron, by a particu- 

 lar property, moves to the loadstone, but if the iron be heavy, it 

 drops its affection to the loadstone and tends to the earth, 

 which is the proper region of such ponderous bodies. Again, 

 though dense and heavy bodies tend to the earth, yet rather 

 than nature will suffer a separation in the continuity of things, 

 and leave a vacuum, as they speak, these heavy bodies will be 

 carried upwards, and forego their affection to the earth, to per- 

 form their office to the world. And thus it generally happens, 

 that the conservation of the more general form regulates the 

 lesser appetites. But this prerogative of the good of commun- 

 ion is more particularly impressed upon man, if he be not de- 

 generate, according to that remarkable saying of Pompey, who, 

 being governor of the city purveyance at a time of famine in 

 Rome, and entreated by his friends not to venture to sea whilst 

 a violent storm was impending, answered, " My going is neces- 

 sary, but not my life " ; so that the desire of life, which is 

 greatest in the individual, did not with him outweigh his affec- 

 tion and fidelity to the state. But no philosophy, sect, religion, 

 law, or discipline, in any age, has so highly exalted the good of 

 communion, and so far depressed the good of individuals, as the 

 Christian faith ; whence it may clearly appear that one and 

 the same God gave those laws of nature to the creatures and the 

 Christian law to men. And hence we read that some of the 

 elect and holy men, in an ecstacy of charity and impatient desire 

 of the good of communion, rather wished their names blotted 

 out of the book of life than that their brethren should miss of 

 salvation.* 



This being once laid down and firmly established, will put an 

 end to some of the soberest controversies in moral philosophy. 

 And first, it determines that question about the preference of 



