Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/347

 chiefly of a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter, chosen to give glory either to subtilty of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses. But Seneca giveth an excellent check to eloquence; "Nocet illis eloquentia, quihus non rerum cupiditatem facit, sed sui." Doctrine should be such is should make men in love with the lesson, and not with the teacher; being directed to the auditor's benefit, and not to the author's commendation: and therefore those are of the right kind, which may be concluded as Demosthenes concludes his counsel, "Quæ si feceritis, non oratorem duntaxat in præsentia laudabatis, sed vosmetipsos etiam non ita multo post statu rerum vestrarum meliore."

Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil promised himself, and indeed obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning in the expressing of the observations of husbandry, as of the heroical acts of Æneas:—

And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest, not to write at leisure that which men may read at leisure, but really to instruct and suborn action and active life, these Georgics of the mind, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity. Wherefore the main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the Exemplar or Platform of Good, and the Regiment or Culture of the Mind; the one describing the nature of Good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the Will of Man thereunto.

The doctrine touching the Platform or Nature of Good considereth it either simple or compared; either the kinds of good, or the degrees of good: in the latter whereof those infinite disputations which were touching the supreme degree thereof, which they term felicity, beatitude, or the highest good, the doctrines concerning which were as the heathen divinity, are by the Christian faith discharged. And as Aristotle saith, "That young men may be happy, but not otherwise but by hope;" so we must all acknowledge our minority and embrace the felicity which is by hope of the future world.

Freed therefore and delivered from this doctrine of the philosopher's heaven, whereby they feigned a higher elevation of man's nature than was, (for we see in what a height of style Seneca writeth "Vere magnum, habere fragilitatem, hominis securitatem Dei," we may with more sobriety and truth receive the rest of their inquiries and labours; wherein for the nature of good positive or simple, they have set it down excellently, in describing the forms of virtue and duty, with ther situations and postures; in distributing them into their kinds, parts, provinces, actions, and administrations, and the like: nay farther, they have commended them to man's nature and spirit, with great quickness of argument and beauty of persuasions; yea, and fortified and intrenched them as much as discourse can do, against corrupt and popular opinions. Again, for the degrees and comparative nature of good, they have also excellently handled it in their triplicity of good, in the comparison between a contemplative and an active life, in the distinction between virtue with reluctation and virtue secured, in their encounters between honesty and profit, in their balancing of virtue with virtue, and the like; so as this part leserveth to be reported for excellently laboured.

Notwithstanding, if before they had come to the popular and received notions of virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, and the rest, they had stayed a little longer upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good and evil, and the strings of those roots, they had given, in my opinion, a great light to that which followed; and especially if they had consulted with nature, they had made their doctrines less prolix and more profound: which being by them in part omitted and in part han died with much confusion, we will endeavour to resume and open in a more clear manner.

There is formed in every thing a double nature of good: the one, as every thing is a total or substantive in itself; the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body: whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form. Therefore we see the iron in particular sympathy moveth to the loadstone; but yet if it exceed a certain quantity, it forsaketh the affection to the loadstone, and like a good patriot moveth to the earth, which is the region and country of massy bodies; so may we go forward, and see that water and massy bodies move to the centre of the earth; but rather than to suffer a divulsion in the continuance of nature, they will move upwards from the centre of the earth, forsaking their duty to the earth in regard to their duty to the world. This double nature of good, and the comparative thereof, is much more engraven upon man, if he degenerate not; unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being: according to that memorable speech of Pompeius Magnus, when being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency and instance by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, "Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam." But it may be truly affirmed that there was never any philosophy, religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and highly exalt the good which is communicative, and depress the good which is private and