226 BACON 



artificial and accurate dissection may be made of men's minds 

 and natures, and the secret disposition of each particular man 

 laid open, that, from a knowledge of the whole, the precepts 

 concerning the cures of the mind may be more rightly formed. 



And not only the characters of dispositions impressed by nat- 

 ure should be received into this treatise, but those also which 

 are otherwise imposed upon the mind by the sex, age, country, 

 state of health, make of body, etc. And again, those which pro- 

 ceed from fortune, as in princes, nobles, common people, the 

 rich, the poor, magistrates, the ignorant, the happy, the miser- 

 able, etc. Thus we see Plautus makes it a kind of miracle to 

 find an old man beneficent 



" Benignitas quidem hujus oppido ut adolescentuli est" / 



And St. Paul, commanding a severity of discipline towards 

 the Cretans, accuses the temper of that nation from the poet : 

 " The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies."g 

 Sallust notes it of the temper of kings, that it is frequent with 

 them to desire contradictories : " Plerumque regise volun- 

 tates, ut vehementes sunt; sic mobiles, ssepeque ipsae sibi ad- 

 versse." h Tacitus observes, that " honors and dignities com- 

 monly change the temper of mankind for the worse." " Solus 

 Vespasianus mutatus in melius." * Pindar remarks that " a 

 sudden flush of good fortune generally enervates and slackens 



the mind." 



\ 

 " Sunt qui magnam felicitatem concoquere non possunt." * 



The psalmist intimates, that it is easier to hold a mean in the 

 height, than in the increase of fortune : " If riches fly to thee, 

 set not thy heart upon them."/ It is true, Aristotle, in his Rhet- 

 orics, cursorily mentions some such observations; and so do 

 others up and down in their writings ; but they were never yet 

 incorporated into moral philosophy, whereto they principally 

 belong, as much as treatises of the difference of the soil and 

 glebe belong to agriculture, or discourses of the different com- 

 plexions or habits of the body to medicine. The thing must, 

 therefore, be now procured, unless we would imitate the rash- 

 ness of empirics, who employ the same remedies in all diseases 

 and constitutions. 



Next to this doctrine of characters follows the doctrine of 

 affections and perturbations, which, we observed above, are the 



