Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/346

 wit be caught away out a moment, one is to begin anew. And as sciences have a propriety towards faculties for cure and help, so faculties or powers have a sympathy towards sciences for excellency or speedy profiting; and therefore it is an inquiry of great wisdom, what kinds of wits and natures are most apt and proper for what sciences.

Fourthly, the ordering of exercises is matter of great consequence to hurt or help: for, as is well observed by Cicero, men in exercising their faculties, if they be not well advised, do exercise their faults and get ill habits as well as good; so there is a great judgment to be had in the continuance and intermission of exercises. It were too long to particularize a number of other considerations of this nature, things but of mean appearance, but of singular efficacy. For as the wronging or cherishing of seeds or young plants is that that is most important to their thriving: (and as it was noted that the first six kings, being in truth as tutors of the state of Rome in the infancy thereof, was the principal cause of the immense greatness of that state which followed:) so the culture and manurance of minds in youth hath such a forcible, though unseen, operation, as hardly any length of time or contention of labour can countervail it afterwards. And it is not amiss to observe also how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men or great matters, do work great and important effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus of two stage players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who by their faculty of playing put the Pannonian armies into an extreme tumult and combustion: for there arising a mutiny amongst them upon the death of Augustus Cæsar, Blæsus the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak, which he did in this manner:—"These poor innocent wretches, appointed to cruel death, you have restored to behold the light; but who shall restore my brother to me, or life unto my brother, that was sent hither in message from the legions of Germany, to treat of the common cause? and he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. Answer, Blæsus, what is done with his body? The mortalest enemies do not deny burial. When I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain beside him; so that these my fellows, for our good meaning, and our true hearts to the legions, may have leave to bury us." With 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; werein if I have made the divisions other than those that are received, 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 differed! 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 state should sort his papers, it is like in his study or general cabinet he would sort together things of a nature, as treaties, instructions, &c., 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 particular knowledge, I would have respected the divisions fittest for use. The other, because the bringing in of the deficiencies did by consequence alter the partitions of the rest: for let the knowledge extant, for demonstration sake, be fifteen; let the knowledge with the deficiencies be twenty; the parts of fifteen are not the parts of twenty; for the 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.

proceed now to that knowledge which considereth of the Appetite and Will of Man, whereof Solomon saith, "Ante omnia, fili, custodi cortuum: nam inde procedunt actiones vitæ." In the handling of this science, those which have written seem to me to have done as if a man, that professeth 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 punishment, and the like scattered glances and touches, that can 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 ordinary and common matters, (the judicious direction whereof nevertheless is the wisest doctrine, for life consisteth not in novelties or subtilties,) but contrariwise they have compounded sciences