II.] ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. ?or 



duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain 

 besides him, so that these my fellows, for our good meaning and our 

 true hearts to the legions, may have leave to bury us.&quot; \Viih which 

 speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar; whereas truth 

 was he had no brother, neither was there any such matter, but he 

 played it merely as if he had been upon the stage. 



But to return, we are now come to a period of rational knowledges, 

 wherein if I have made the divisions other than those that arc re 

 ceived, yet would I not be thought to disallow all those divisions which 

 I do not use; for there is a double necessity imposed upon me of 

 altering the divisions. The one, because it differeth in end and 

 purpose, to sort together those things which are next in nature, and 

 those things which are next in use; for if a secretary of estate should 

 sort his papers, it is like in his study, or general cabinet, he would sort 

 together things of a nature, as treaties, instructions, etc. but in his 

 boxes, or particular cabinet, he would sort together those that he were 

 like to use together, though of several natures ; so in this general 

 cabinet of knowledge it was necessary for me to follow the divisions of 

 the nature of things; whereas if myself had been to handle any par 

 ticular knowledge I would have respected the divisions fittest for use. 

 The other, because the bringing in of the deficiencies did by con 

 sequence alter the partitions of the rest : for let the knowledge extant, 

 for demonstration sake, be fifteen, let the knowledge with the de 

 ficiencies be twenty, the parts of fifteen are not the parts of twenty, for 

 tfie parts of fifteen are three and five, the parts of twenty are two, four, 

 five and ten; so as these things are without contradiction, and 

 could not otherwise be. 



WE proceed now to that knowledge which considereth of the 

 Appetite and Will of Man, whereof Solomon saith, &quot; Ante omnia, fili, 

 custodi cor tuum, nam inde procedunt actiones vitas.&quot; In the handling 

 of this science, those which have written seem to me to have done as 

 if a man that professed to teach to write, did only exhibit fair copies of 

 alphabets, and letters joined, without giving any precepts or directions 

 for the carriage of the hand and framing of the letters ; so have they 

 made good and fair exemplars and copies, carrying the draughts and 

 portraitures of good, virtue, duty, felicity; propounding them well 

 described as the true objects and scopes of man s will and desires ; but 

 how to attain these excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue the 

 will of man to become true and conformable to these pursuits, they 

 pass it over altogether, or slightly and unprofitably ; for it is not the 

 disputing that moral virtues are in the mind of man by habit and not 

 by nature, or the distinguishing that generous spirits are won by 

 doctrines and persuasions, and the vulgar sort by reward and punish 

 ment, and the like scattered glances and touches, that cau excuse the 

 absence of this part. 



The reason of this omission I suppose to be that hidden rock 

 whereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge have been 

 cast away; which is, that men have despised to be conversant in 



