328 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



signature of it upon other things is that which we handled 

 by the name of Active Good. So as there remaineth the 

 conserving of it, and perfecting or raising of it ; which 

 later is the highest degree of Passive Good. For to pre- 

 serve in state is the less, to preserve with advancement is 

 the greater. So in man, 



Igneus est ollis vigor, et coelestis origo. 



His approach or assumption to divine or angelical nature 

 is the perfection of his form ; the error or false imitation 

 of which good is that which is the tempest of human life ; 

 while man, upon the instinct of an advancement formal 

 and essential, is carried to seek an advancement local. 

 For as those which are sick, and find no remedy, do 

 tumble up and down and change place, as if by a remove 

 local they could obtain a remove internal ; so is it with 

 men in ambition, when failing of the mean to exalt their 

 nature, they are in a perpetual estuation to exalt their 

 place. So then Passive Good is, as was said, either Con- 

 servative or Perfective. 



To resume the good of Conservation or Comfort, which 

 consisteth in the fruition of that which is agreeable to our 

 natures ; it seemeth to be the most pure and natural of 

 pleasures, but yet the softest and the lowest. And this 

 also receiveth a difference, which has neither been well 

 judged of nor well enquired. For the good of fruition or 

 contentment is placed either in the sincereness of the 

 fruition, or in the quickness and vigour of it ; the one 

 superinduced by the equality, the other by vicissitude ; 

 the one having less mixture of evil, the other more im- 

 pression of good. Whether of these is the greater good, 

 is a question controverted ; but whether man's nature may 

 not be capable of both, is a question not enquired. 



The former question being debated between Socrates 

 and a Sophist, Socrates placing felicity in an equal and 

 constant peace of mind, and the Sophist in much desiring 

 and much enjoying, they fell from argument to ill words : 

 the Sophist saying that Socrates' felicity was the felicity of 

 a block or stone ; and Socrates saying that the Sophist's 



