ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 237 



choice of times and opportunities. Solomon admirably says : 

 44 He that regards the winds shall not sow, and he that regards 

 the clouds shall not reap.'V For we must make opportunities 

 oftener than we find them. In a word, urbanity is like a gar- 

 ment to the mind, and therefore ought to have the conditions of 

 a garment ; that is, i. it should be fashionable ; 2. not too delicate 

 or costly ; 3. it should be so made, as principally to show the 

 reigning virtue of the mind, and to supply or conceal deformity ; 

 4. and lastly, above all things, it must not be too strait, so as to 

 cramp the mind and confine its motions in business. But this 

 part of civil doctrine relating to conversation is elegantly treated 

 by some writers, and can by no means be reported as deficient. 



CHAPTER II 



The Art of Negotiation divided into the Knowledge of Dispersed Oc- 

 casions (Conduct in Particular Emergencies), and into the Science 

 of Rising in Life. Examples of the former drawn from Solomon. 

 Precepts relating to Self-advancement. 



We divide the doctrine of business into the doctrine of various 

 occasions, and the doctrine of rising in life. The first includes 

 all the possible variety of affairs, and is as the amanuensis to 

 common life ; but the other collects and suggests such things 

 only as regard the improvement of a man's private fortune, and 

 may therefore serve each person as a private register of his 

 affairs. 



No one hath hitherto treated the doctrine of business suitably 

 to its merit, to the great prejudice of the character both of learn- 

 ing and learned men ; for from hence proceeds the mischief, 

 which has fixed it as a reproach upon men of letters, that learn- 

 ing and civil prudence are seldom found together. And, if we 

 rightly observe those three kinds of prudence, which we lately 

 said belong to civil life, that of conversation is generally de- 

 spised by men of learning as a servile thing and an enemy to 

 contemplation; and for the government of states, though 

 learned men acquit themselves well when advanced to the helm, 

 yet this promotion happens to few of them ; but, for the present 

 subject, the prudence of business, upon which our lives princi- 

 pally turn, there are no books extant about it, except a few civil 

 admonitions, collected into a little volume or two, by no means 



