284 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



understanding, it is a vain and flattering opinion to think 

 any medicine can be so sovereign or so happy, as that the 

 receipt or use of it can work any great effect upon the body 

 of man. It were a strange speech which spoken, or spoken 

 oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he were by 

 nature subject. It is order, pursuit, sequence, and inter- 

 change of application, which is mighty in nature ; which 

 although it require more exact knowledge in prescribing 

 and more precise obedience in observing, yet is recom- 

 pensed with the magnitude of effects. And although a 

 man would think, by the daily visitations of the physicians, 

 that there were a pursuance in the cure ; yet let a man 

 look into their prescripts and ministrations, and he shall 

 find them but inconstancies and every day's devices, with- 

 out any settled providence or project. Not that every 

 scrupulous or superstitious prescript is effectual, no more 

 than every straight way is the way to heaven ; but the 

 truth of the direction must precede severity of observance. 



For Cosmetic, it hath parts civil, and parts effeminate : 

 for cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a 

 due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves. As for 

 artificial decoration, it is well worthy of the deficiencies 

 which it hath ; being neither fine enough to deceive, nor 

 handsome to use, nor wholesome to please. 



For Athletic, I take the subject of it largely ; that is to 

 say, from any point of ability v/hereunto the body of man 

 may be brought, whether it be of activity or of patience ; 

 whereof activity hath two parts, strength and swiftness; 

 and patience likewise hath two parts, hardness against wants 

 and extremities, and indurance of pain or torment : whereof 

 we see the practices in tumblers, in savages, and in those 

 that suffer punishment : nay, if there be any other faculty 

 which falls not within any of the former divisions, as in 

 those that dive, that obtain a strange power of containing 

 respiration, and the like, I refer it to this part. Of these 

 things the practices are known, but the philosophy that 

 concerneth them is not much enquired ; the rather, I think, 

 because they are supposed to be obtained either by an 

 aptness of nature, which cannot be taught, or only by 



