346 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



strength, and pleasure ; so the good of the mind, inquired 

 in rational and moral knowledges, tendeth to this, to make 

 the mind sound, and without perturbation ; beautiful, and 

 graced with decency; and strong and agile for all duties of 

 life. These three, as in the body so in the mind, seldom 

 meet, and commonly sever. For it is easy to observe that 

 many have strength of wit and courage, but have neither 

 health from perturbations, nor any beauty or decency in 

 their doings : some again have an elegancy or fineness of 

 carriage, which have neither soundness of honesty, nor 

 substance of sufficiency : and some again have honest and 

 reformed minds, that can neither become themselves nor 

 manage business : and sometimes two of them meet, and 

 rarely all three. As for pleasure, we have likewise deter- 

 mined that the mind ought not to be reduced to stupid, 

 but to retain pleasure ; confined rather in the subject of it, 

 than in the strength and vigour of it. 



Civil Knowledge is conversant about a subject which 

 of all others is most immersed in matter, and hardliest 

 reduced to axiom. Nevertheless, as Cato the censor said, 

 'That the Romans were like sheep, for that a man might 

 better drive a flock of them, than one of them ; for in a 

 flock, if you could get but some few go right, the rest 

 would follow ' : so in that respect moral philosophy is 

 more difficile than policy. Again, moral philosophy pro- 

 poundeth to itself the framing of internal goodness ; but 

 civil knowledge requireth only an external goodness ; for 

 that as to society sufficeth ; and therefore it cometh oft to 

 pass that there be evil times in good governments : for so 

 we find in the holy story, when the kings were good, yet 

 it is added, Sed adhuc populus non direxerat cor suum ad 

 Dominum Deum patrum suorum. Again, States, as great 

 engines, move slowly, and are not so soon put out of 

 frame : for as in Egypt the seven good years sustained the 

 seven bad, so governments for a time well grounded do 

 bear out errors following : but the resolution of particular 

 persons is more suddenly subverted. These respects do 

 somewhat qualify the extreme difficulty of civil knowledge. 



