154 The Advancement of Learning 



of a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter, chosen 

 to give glory either to the subtilty of disputations, or to the 

 eloquence of discourses. But Seneca giveth an excellent 

 check to eloquence ; Nocet illis eloquentia, quibus non rerum 

 cupiditatem facit, sed sui} Doctrine should be such as should 

 make men in love with the lesson, and not with the teacher ; 

 being directed to the auditor's benefit, and not to the 

 author's commendation. And therefore those are of the 

 right kind which may be concluded as Demosthenes con- 

 cludes his counsel, Qucb si feceritis, non oratorem duntaxat 

 in prcBsentia laudabitis, sed vosmetipsos etiam non ita multo 

 post statu rerum vestrarum meliore.^ 



3. Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have de- 

 spaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil promised himself, 

 and indeed obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, 

 wit, and learning in the expressing of the observations of 

 husbandry, as of the heroical acts of iEneas: — 



Nee sum animi debius, verbis ea vincere magnum 

 Quam sit, et angustis his addere rebus honorem.' 



And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest, not to write 

 at leisure that which men may read at leisure, but really to 

 instruct and suborn action and active life, these Georgics 

 of the mind, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, 

 are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of virtue, 

 duty, and felicity. Wherefore the main and primitive 

 division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the exemplar 

 or platform of good, and the regiment or culture of the mind : 

 the one describing the nature of good, the other prescribing 

 rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the will of 

 man thereunto. 



4, The doctrine touching the platform or nature of good con- 

 sidereth it either simple or compared; either the kinds of 

 good, or the degrees of good; in the latter whereof those 

 infinite disputations, which were touching the supreme 

 degree thereof, which they term felicity, beatitude, or the 

 highest good, the doctrines concerning which were as the 

 heathen divinity,* are by the Christian faith discharged. 



* Sen. ad Lucilium, Ep. 52. 



* Demosth. Olynth. B. ad fin. * Georg. iii. 289. 



* I.e. Stood to the Heathen in the place of Divinity. " Quae 

 ethnicis instar Theologiae erant." 



