222 BACON 



will doubtless find things enough to cavil at, and few to improve 

 by. But the serious and prudent treatment of the subject we 

 speak of may be reckoned among the strongest bulwarks of 

 virtue and probity ; for as it is fabulously related of the basilisk, 

 that if he sees a man first, the man presently dies ; but if the 

 man has the first glance, he kills the basilisk ; so frauds, impos- 

 tures, and tricks do not hurt, if first discovered; but if they 

 strike first, it is then they become dangerous, and not other- 

 wise : hence we are beholden to Machiavel, and writers of that 

 kind, who openly and unmasked declare what men do in fact, 

 and not what they ought to do ; for it is impossible to join the 

 wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove, without 

 a previous knowledge of the nature of evil ; as without this, 

 virtue lies exposed and unguarded. And further, a good and 

 just man cannot correct and amend the vicious and the wicked, 

 unless he has first searched into all the depths and dungeons 

 of wickedness ; for men of a corrupt and depraved judgment 

 ever suppose that honesty proceeds from ignorance, or a cer- 

 tain simplicity of manners, and is rooted only in a belief of 

 our tutors, instructors, books, moral precepts, and vulgar dis- 

 course, whence unless they plainly perceive that their per- 

 verse opinions, their corrupt and distorted principles, are thor- 

 oughly known to those who exhort and admonish them as well 

 as to themselves they despise all wholesome advice ; accord- 

 ing to that admirable saying of Solomon, " A fool receives not 

 the words of the wise, unless thou speakest the very things that 

 are in his heart. "k And this part of morality, concerning cau- 

 tions and respective vice, we set down as wanting, under the 

 name of sober satire, or the insides of things. 



To the doctrine of respective duties belong also the mutual 

 duties between husband and wife, parent and child, master and 

 servant, as also the laws of friendship, gratitude, and the civil 

 obligations of fraternities, colleges, neighborhoods, and the 

 like, always understanding that these things are to be treated, 

 not as parts of civil society, in which view they belong to poli- 

 tics, but so far as the minds of particulars ought to be instructed 

 and disposed to preserve these bonds of society. 



The doctrine of the good of communion, as well as of self- 

 good, treats good not only simply, but comparatively, and thus 

 regards the balancing of duty betwixt man and man, case and 

 case, private and public, present and future, etc. as we may 



