OF THE COLOURS OF GOOD AND EVIL 157 



know his will with him, said it was for nothing but to 

 help him up with his burthen again : it doth not follow that 

 because death, which was the privation of the burthen, was 

 ill, therefore the burthen was good. And in this part, the 

 ordinary form of malum necessarium aptly reprehendeth this 

 colour ; for privatio mail necessarii mala, and yet that doth 

 not convert the nature of the necessary evil, but it is evil. 



Again, it cometh sometimes to pass, that there is an 

 equality in the change or privation, and as it were a dilemma 

 boni or a dilemma mali : so that the corruption of the one 

 good is a generation of the other ; Sorti pater aequus utrique 

 est : and contrary, the remedy of the one evil is the occasion 

 and commencement of another, as in Scylla and Charybdis. 



VII 



Quod bono vicinum, bonum ; quod a bono remotum, malum. 



Such is the nature of things, that things contrary and 

 distant in nature and quality are also severed and disjoined 

 in place, and things like and consenting in quality are 

 placed and as it were quartered together : for partly in 

 regard of the nature to spread, multiply, and infect in 

 similitude, and partly in regard of the nature to break, 

 expel, and alter that which is disagreeable and contrary, 

 most things do either associate and draw near to themselves 

 the like, or at least assimilate to themselves that which 

 approacheth near them, and do also drive away, chase, and 

 exterminate their contraries. And that is the reason 

 commonly yielded, why the middle region of the air 

 should be coldest, because the sun and stars are either hot 

 by direct beams or by reflexion. The direct beams heat 

 the upper region, the reflected beams from the earth and 

 seas heat the lower region. That which is in the midst, 

 being furthest distant in place from these two regions of 

 heat, are most distant in nature, that is, coldest ; which is 

 that they term cold or hot per antiperistasin, that is inviron- 

 ing by contraries : which was pleasantly taken hold of by 

 him that said, that an honest man in these days must needs 

 be more honest than in ages heretofore, propter antiperistasin^ 



