i;2 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Book 



wise physicians in their prescriptions of their regiments, to their patient:, 

 do ever consider acddentia aniini % as of great force to further or hinder 

 remedies, or recoveries ; and more especially it is an inquiry of great depth 

 and worth concerning imagination, how, and how far it alteieth the body 

 proper of the imaginant. For although it hath a manifest power to hurt, 

 it followethnot it hath the same degree of power to help ; no more than 

 a man can conclude, that because there be pestilent airs, able suddenly 

 to kill a man in health, therefore there should be sovereign airs, able 

 suddenly to cure a man in sickness. But the inquisition of this part 

 is of great use, though it needeth, as Socrates said, &quot;a Delian diver,&quot; 

 being difficult and profound. But unto all this knowledge de commnni 

 vi/iCH/0,ofthc concordances between the mind and the body, that part ot 

 inquiry is most necessary, which considered! of the seats and domiciles, 

 which the several faculties of the mind do take and occupate in the 

 organs of the body ; which knowledge hath been attempted, and is con 

 troverted, and deserveth to be much better inquired. For the opinion 

 of Plato, who placed the understanding in the brain, animosity (which 

 he did unfitly call anger, having a greater mixture with pride) in the 

 heart, and concupiscence or sensuality in the liver, deserveth not to be 

 despised, but much less to be allowed. So then we have constituted, 

 as in our own wish and advice, the inquiry touching human nature 

 entire, as a just portion of knowledge to be handled apart. 



The knowledge that concerneth man s Body, is divided as the 

 good of man s body is divided, unto which it referreth. The good 

 of man s body is of four kinds, health, beauty, strength, and pleasure : 

 so the knowledges are medicine, or art of cure ; art of decoration, 

 which is called cosmetic ; art of activity, which is called athletic ; and 

 art voluptuary, which Tacitus truly calleth &quot;eruditus luxus.&quot; This 

 subject of man s body is of all other things in nature most susceptible 

 of remedy ; but then that remedy is most susceptible of error. For 

 the same subtility of the subject doth cause large possibility, and easy 

 failing ; and therefore the inquiry ought to be the more exact. 



To speak therefore of medicine, and \~&amp;gt; resume that we rave said, 

 ascending a little higher ; the ancient opinion that man was micro- 

 cosmns, an abstract or model of the world, hath been fantastically 

 strained by Paracelsus and the alchemists, as if there were to be found 

 in man s body certain correspondences and parallels, which should 

 have respect to all varieties of things, as stars, planets, minerals, which 

 are extant in the great world. But thus much is evidently true, that 

 of all substances which nature hath produced, man s body is the most 

 extremely compounded : For we see herbs and plants are nourished 

 by earth and water ; beasts for the most part by herbs and fruits ; 

 man by the flesh of beasts, birds, fishes, herbs, grains, fruits, water, 

 and the manifold alterations, dressings, and preparations of these 

 several bodies, before they come to be his food and aliment. Add 

 hereunto, that beasts have a more simple order of life, and Ices change 

 of affections to work upon their bodies ; whereas man, in his mansion, 

 sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite variations ; and it cannot be 

 denied, but that the body of man of all other things ;s of the most 



