CHAP. I.] ACTION OP THE BODY UPON THE SOUL. 153 



execution the following day ; whereupon, turning round to 

 one that stood by him, he said, with a smile, " Judge, whether 

 so far I am not the winner of the game. For as soon as I 

 am dead, he," pointing to his antagonist, " will say that the 

 game was his own." Sir Thomas More, the day before his 

 execution, being waited upon by his barber, to know if he 

 would have his hair off, refused it j with this answer, that 

 •' the king and he had a dispute about his head, and till that 

 were ended he would bestow no cost upon it." And even 

 when he had laid his head upon the block, he raised himself 

 again a little, and gently putting his long beard aside, said, 

 " This surely has not offended the king." By these examples 

 it will appear that the miracles of human nature, and the 

 utmost powers and faculties, both of mind and body, are 

 what we would have collected into a volume, that should be 

 a kind of register of human triumphs. And with regard to 

 such a work, we commend the design of Valerius Maximus 

 and Pliny, but not their care and choice. 



The doctrine of union, or of the common tie of soul and 

 body, has two parts : for as, in all alliances, there is 

 mutual intelligence and mutual offices, so the union of the 

 mind and body requires a description of the manner wherein 

 they discover, and act upon each other by notices, or indica- 

 tion and impression. The description by indication has pro- 

 duced two arts of prediction : the one honoured with the 

 inquiry of Aristotle, and the other with that of Hippocrates. 

 And though later ages have debased these arts with super- 

 stitious and fantastical mixtures, yet, when purged and 

 truly restored, they have a solid foundation in nature, and 

 use in life. The first of these is physiognomy, which, by the 

 lineaments of the body, discovers the dispositions of the 

 mind ; the second is the intei*pretation of natural dreams, 

 which, from the agitations of tlie mind, discovei*s the state 

 and dispositions of the body. I find the former deficient 

 in one part ; for though Aristotle has, wdth great ingenuity 

 and diligence, treated the structure of the body at rest, he 

 dropped the consideration of it in motion or gesture,' which is 

 no less subject to the observations of art, and more useful 



' Bacon's memory here ia.i\s him ; for Aristotle in his Physiogno- 

 mia Corporis m Motu, has treated the matter §lal)oi '\tely, tliougb 

 without going much into detail. M, 



