182 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



ing of fortune, than in the increase of fortune : ' Divi- 

 tiae si affluant, nolite cor apponere.' These observa- 

 tions and the like I deny not but are touched a little by 

 Aristotle as in passage in his Rhetorics, and are handled 

 in some scattered discourses : but they were never in- 

 corporate into moral philosophy, to which they do 

 essentially appertain ; as the knowledge of the diversity 

 of grounds and moulds doth to agriculture, and the 

 knowledge of the diversity of complexions and con- 

 stitutions doth to the physician ; except we mean to 

 follow the indiscretion of empirics, which minister the 

 same medicines to all patients. 



6. Another article of this knowledge is the inquiry 

 touching the affections ; for as in medicining of the 

 body, it is in order first to know the divers complexions 

 and constitutions ; secondly, the diseases ; and lastly, 

 the cures : so in medicining of the mind, after know- 

 ledge of the divers characters of men's natures, it 

 foUoweth in order to know the diseases and infirmities 

 of the mind, which are no other than the perturbations 

 and distempers of the affections. For as the ancient 

 politiques in popular estates were wont to compare the 

 people to the sea, and the orators to the winds ; be- 

 cause as the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if 

 the winds did not move and trouble it ; so the people 

 would be peaceable and tractable, if the seditious orators 

 did not set them in working and agitation : so it may 

 be fitly said, that the mind in the nature thereof would 

 be temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds, did 

 not put it into tumult and perturbation. And here 

 again I find strange, as before, that Aristotle should 

 have written divers volumes of Ethics, and never handled 

 the affections, which is the principal subject thereof ; 

 and yet in his Rhetorics, where they are considered 

 but collaterally and in a second degree (as they may be 

 moved by speech), he findeth place for them, and hand- 

 ieth them well for the quantity ; but where their true 

 place is, he pretermitteth them. For it is not his 

 disputations about pleasure and pain that can satisfy 

 this inquiry, no more than he that should generally 



