CHAP. I.] GOOD — INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL. 271 



individual or self-good, and the latter, good of communion. 

 Iron by a particular property moves to the loadstone, but if 

 the iron be heavy, it drops its affection to the loadstone and 

 tends to the earth, which is the proper region of such ponde- 

 rous bodies. Again, though dense and heavy bodies tend to 

 the earth, yet rather than nature will suffer a separation in 

 the continuity of things, and leave a vacuum, as they speak, 

 these heavy bodies will be carried upwards, and forego their 

 affection to the earth, to perform their office to the world. 

 And thus it generally happens, that the conservation of the 

 more general form regulates the lesser appetites. But this 

 prerogative of the good of communion is more particularly 

 impressed upon man, if he be not degenerate, according to 

 that remarkable saying of Pompey, who, being governor of 

 the city purveyance at a time of famine in Borne, and en- 

 treated by his friends not to venture to sea whilst a violent 

 storm was impending, answered, " My going is necessary, but 

 not my life;"^ so that the desire of life, which is greatest in 

 the individual, did not with him outweigh his affection and 

 fidelity to the state. But no philosophy, sect, religion, law, 

 or discipline, in any age, has so highly exalted the good of 

 communion, and so far depressed the good of individuals, as 

 the Christian faith ; whence it may clearly appear that one 

 and the same God gave those laws of nature to the creature^ 

 and the Christian law to men. And hence we read that 

 some of the elect and holy men, in an ecstasy of charity and 

 impatient desire of the good of communion, rather wished 

 their names blotted out of the book of life than that their 

 brethren should miss of salvation.^ 



This being once laid down and firmly established, will put 

 an end to some of the soberest controversies in moral philo- 

 sophy. And first, it determines that question about the 

 preference of a contemplative to an active life, against the 

 opinion of Aristotle ; as all the reasons he produces for a 

 contemplative life regard only private good, and the pleasure 

 or dignity of an individual person, in which respects the 

 contemplative life is doubtless best, and like the comparison 

 made by Pythagoras,™ to assert the honour and reputation 



* Plut. Life Pomp. * St. Paul, Rom. ix. 



•» Jamblyeus's life, in the Tus. Quasst. v 3. Cicero substitutes LeOiv 

 tius, prince of the Phoenicians, for Hieron. 



