then that which one being present doth frame of himselfe bearing along with it the greatnesse of the actions without the abjectnesse of the matter Because their object is more pure conceived by meanes of the eare then by meanes of the eye that which is heard then that which is seene For a mans actions represented by fame all at once leave a kind of astonishment whereas the other being seen one by one languish the second being scarce come forth before the other be either dead or mortisied Because the Cittizen discovers the defects in his youthfull age which defects leave behind them if not a wound yet at least a scarre from which thing the stranger is free who onely manifests and discovers himselfe in that which is perfect Because envy hath no place in the former nor admiration in the latter Finally it is peradventure with a truer and more ordinary though a more concealed and deep reason for the naturall instinct of hoping for greater remedy in our affaires from the greater difficulty in attaining to it following therein nature it selfe which hath most concealed and made lesse store of those things which are most precious and given most glory to the hardest atchievements As for example there growes an herbe at our very foot and a man stands close by us the herbes are medicinall and the man able to heale us and defend us Yet wee will seeke for such in remote countries as if all our good consisted rather in the difficulty of obtaining then in the quality of things nature having imprinted in us the genius of despising what is obvious known to beleeve that which is most obscure to hope for that which is most difficult to admire that which is furthest off to make all that is great difficult to us either because it hath made it so or because we make it so to our selves Under a Prince it is not impossible but it seldome happens that a stranger shoud arrive to a chiefe degree of honour unlesse the Prince be a Tyrant or that he should continue there unlesse the Prince become one VVith the losse of life he concludes his being a favorite if he doth not maintaine himselfe in it by multiplying of banishments and slaughters But if the Prince be a Tyrant such a one may often arrive to it because the Tyrant feares the Citizens and the favourite may continue because the other makes him to be feared Finally Tullus through Jealousie Malice and hatred born to Coriolanus his vertue under pretence that hee had not prosecuted his enterprise to the destruction of his country caused him to be murthered by a conspiracy of some who were his adherents A mans Country hath in it a retentive quality for such as are borne in it and an attractive one for such as are travailed out of it This consists in the pleasure and delight which the providence of Nature alwayes communicates to needfull things and also in the aire the temperament the influences in the vertue which the place affoorded to the thing which is placed in it and peradventure in a mans being used and accustomed thereunto as much as in any thing else The efficacy and force of this last being full of contrarieties is hard to understand and unfold Sometime you shall heare the Philosophers say that the understanding dejects and dulls it selfe in a knowen thing and greedily turnes to a new one Sometimes you shall see an opinion laid hold of which will not be left to turne to any other although it be new The sense of tasting is tried with assuefaction and desires change of food The same happinesse in the sense of feeling and likewise in the sense of smelling The sense of seeing will seeme to be glutted with the sight of a thing and another which is not so beautifull will seeme fairer to it because it is new Sometimes a man being accustomed to one manner of cloathing will hardly be brought to another fashion but it will seeme ridiculous to him and sometimes also he will change for it as for a better In morall things one shunnes God a mercy custome that as a vice which another embraces as a vertue It is hard to finde out any thing that will make a man love his own destruction Hence growes the detestation of a contrary though it have novelty to take its part The understanding flies towards it because its object is not onely truth but all truths and as such it turns to it if it findes it contrary it turns from it as false and as from an enemy In fashions of Cloathes the sight will not endure a fashion much discrepant from the wonted and accustomed one and the fashions altering daily the change is not very sensible whereby a man comes to bee fatisfied and perswaded by the novelty without hitting upon unlesse it be in a very long time the contrary which he would abhorre The taste feeds upon food which in the beginning is unlike but in the end semblable the long use of it makes the body like unto it and consequently diminishes the delight seeing the appetite would have the unlike but yet you shall not see it for all this runne to that which is quite and immediatly contrary Assuefaction also likewise makes a great difference in the senses namely where they are meerly spiritall or any way materiall for this helps satiety and diminishes the taste which may manifestly be perceived in the self-same beauty sometimes seen and sometimes enjoyed All the love Nature hath put in man towards his native Countrey cannot hinder him from being drawn out of it either by necessity interest or ambition or any other powerfull motive And truly as for a mans health when all other remedies faile they use change of aire so for an averse Fortune it is good to change the Climate The aire nurses the spirits and with them I had almost sayd changes the understanding because it alters its chiefe Instruments Food causes a new temperament and therewith new behaviours The Climate changes the Influences these the Inclinations and all altered together make an alteration of Fortune Many goe without it because they will not follow it and many because they cannot finde it forsaking sometimes that vocation in which they had it and sometimes not discerning the true place where they might have attained to it Most part are of opinion that travell makes many worthy men I see the effect of it but cannot as yet discern whether it be a cause or a figne and token of their worth A cause if by reason that one seeing himselfe destitute of many meanes is forced to make use of his own vertue which restrained betweene contraries increases the more A signe if to overcome the many allurements of ones native soile and forsake it is required a great spirit a valiant and magnanimous heart whereby a man may come to attaine to eminent glory I believe there are but few so wicked as to become enemies of their Country though
CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE LIVES OF ALCIBIADES AND CORIALANUS By Marques Virgilio Malvezzi One of the Supreme Councell of Warre to His Catholick MAJESTIE Dedicated to the King his Master Englished by ROBERT GENTILIS Gent. LONDON Printed by William Wilson for Humphrey Moseley and are to be sold at the Princes Armes in St Pauls Church-yard 1650. SIR MY pen having soared in the sublime Sphere of your glories stoopes now and pearches upon these branches withered thorow antiquity not to abide here but to rest and raise my flight againe towards the Sun on which fixing mine eyes continually I shew my selfe to be the true issue of mine ancestors The sight is Aquiline because it lookes upon the Sun the quill is like it because it flies with the Eagle Of it selfe it would stay among hedge and briers under your great wings it raiseth it selfe up towards heaven I dedicate these rests and reposes to whom I dedicated my travailes I owe all to your Majesty acknowledging all to proceed both from the greatnesse of your Magnanimious breast and the liberality of your Royall hand my rest my motion my vocations mine imployments The booke is little the gift nothing but the little makes the great to shine and the nothing is the onely basis of one of the Creators greatest workes I beseech your Majesty to accept of it and in true imitation of Omnipotencie whilst with a strong hand you abate the bold attempts of great ones disdaine not with a favorable looke to raise the humility of little ones God preserve your Majesty for the good of Christendome Marques Uirgilio Malvezzi TO THE TWO ILLUSTRIOUS and Excellent Ladies Anne and Arabella Wentworths Daughters to that Heroick and Noble THOMAS Earle of Strafford IT had not beene a question in Morall Philosophie whether Heroich vertue may be in women had you most vertuous Sisters lived in that age For as in the dayes of that ever renowned Queen Elizabeth a Scholler merrily arguing upon that theme made this Syllogisme Regina Elizabetha est mulier Sed virtus heroica est in Regina Elizabetha Ergo virtus heroica potest esse in muliere The major needed no proofe and the minor hee bid the respondent denie if hee durst so now may I make the same argument You two most excellent Ladies are women But in each of you are Heroick vertues Erg. c. The major is manifest the minor none that knowes you can denie Nature is predominant in births and great inclinations to vice or vertue come into the world with children from their parents dispositions How can the issue then of such ancestors bee otherwise then endowed with admirable qualities Look on all sides of your Genealogie in the direct and collaterall lines both of Consanguinity and affinitie we see refined and eminent spirits Doe not great Straffords excellencies survive his fate and do they not daily revive in your most honorable brother Was not your Right Noble Mother a rare patterne of vertue And what Encomium shall I find worthie of that boundlesse Ocean of eminently qualified Nobilitie the Countess Dowager of Clare your most honoured Grandmother truly learned her selfe and a Patronesse of Learning A Modell of Oeconomie to all Ladies of this age absit dicto invidia and whose piety makes her already in her contemplations a cittizen of heaven Your right honorable Vncle the Earle of Clare his pious and vertuous sister the Lady Elinor your Aunt Your most honorable cosen the Lady Clinton whose nature vertues and matron-like wisedome in her youthfull age deserves admiration I will not to your selves relate your owne for coram laudare vituperare est and I feare lest those who know you not being not able to conceive nature could produce such perfectly mature fruits upon such tender stemms should falsely taxe me with slattery I will therefore conclude with humbly beseeching you to accept of this my small gift and suffer my weake translation to see light under your Patronage It is a small token of gratefull acknowledgement of the manifold obligements wherewith I am everlastingly tied unto you Divers imperfections there may be to which I humbly desire you to give this favorable construction that I would have done better if I could and presented you with a greater gift had I had it Live long and happie crowned with your owne worth on earth and with glorious immortality in heaven which shall bee the continuall wish and hearty prayers of Your Honours most humble obliged servant ROBERT GENTILIS To the Reader I Have cursorily discoursed upon eight of those famous and noted mens lives which Plutarch writ When I had employment they were my vacancies to rest when I was idle they were mine employments Contemplation is mans greatest repose idleness his worst employment for it is not idleness but a waking mans dream a delirium of one that is in health and an high way to that of the sick Man strives in vain to be idle the Imaginative faculty hinders him when discourse employes him not imagination drags him he that will not bave it wander skip nor flie about let him fix and stay it I have finished of the Vniversall history of Monarchy I print them not by reason of the vehement tempest which troubleth Europe A rule let it be never so straight if it be laid in a stirring water will seem crooked to them who give more credit to the troubled means then to the reall object I will stay till the Sea is calm and lay open that which the tempest hideth I will in the mean time finish these other lives if God doth not first end mine Ancient tbings as the Philosopher saith are despised as fabulous and modern are neglected as too well known The subjests I write of were in those days when History was not dead neither doth it now live in all men These discourses may peradventure come into divers mens hands to whom the History is not new The stile is various the conceits I hope not common to delight thee with the one and gain thee with the other CONSIDERATIONS upon the Lives of Alcibiades and Coriolanus DEath is equall in all men oblivion and glory make the difference said one who sought renowne by temerity Making glory and oblivion contraryes and judging him onely to bee inglorious who was forgotten as if oblivion were not by some much more to bee desired then to have the memory of them to vive Some doe so abhorre the being out of the world that to stay in it death is horrid unto them even then when it should be most desired and accepted as the onely remedy and period of all their miseries and evills And though necessity would force him out of it yet is he desirous to remaine in it and when sometimes he should desire an everlasting oblivion hee seekes eternall fame even out ofnotorious infamy Nothing is so tormenting to him as death and he judges it farre better to leave an abominable memory behind him then to dye
the others though it seem not nor indeed be not the same and that it is many times done by way of benefites and good turnes yet cannot be attained to without doing of dammage The one goes against the State and the person the other in the States behalfe and if it be against the Person it is no further then to discredit it Revenging ones selfe is not a recovering of reputation but a satisfying of two most wicked passions Wrath Hatred Vindicating of it recovers it with satisfaction of the best and noblest of passions namely Ambition What joy and triumph thinke yee entred into the breast of Furius Camillus when he overthrew the Gaules who had besieged the Capitoll and freed from slavery those that had banished him And how could he more gloriously revenge and vindicate his reputation than by seeing sorrow and repentance written in the hearts of them who had wronged him That Roman spake foolishly who being called home from banishment and seeing an Aâ—my put into his hands by those who had persecuted him said that as soone as he met with the enemy he would fight with him because that if he were overcome he should work a great revenge by loving his Army and if he overcame he should gain great glory If he revenge himselfe of him that took away his reputation he doth not revenge nor vindicate it He vindicates it when he takes no â—evenge But this most noble seed springs up onely in magnanimous generous breasts and they are sel dome found but in well-ordered Common-wealths Kingdoms The aire and temperament sometimes produce rebellious men but the quality of the forme much more It was hard to finde a bad Citizen in Rome while it was well-ordered and a good one when it was corrupted The goodnesse of the government causes affection to the publick the badnesse ruines it yea and changes it into a private Those Princes which have Armies habituated to fidelity need not feare either an offended or an ambitious Commander He will not hurt if he beare a noble minde nor cannot if he be treacherous If a Kingdome bee not tyrannicall nor a Common-wealth corrupted they shall oftentimes meet with such as Furius Camillus and the Duke of Alva and with ill natures exasperated with a Waldestein and a Colonell Henry de Berg. This latter willing to betray the King of Spain was forced to mâ—ke him lose the Busse first to goe to Velue and there doe a gâ—eater service if our men had knowne how to make good use of it Waldestein plotting to betray the Emperour even the very first hour that he had trusted him wâ—th his Army after he had offended him could never bring his evill intent to passe but was alwayes constrained when he was unwilling to doe one good office to perform another and oftentimes a better and at last discovered himself without doing any hurt But such a Prince or Common-wealth is not onely secure from the wrath and hatred of Commanders but even from thir ambition the fidelity of the Army being an obstacle to both which thing may be thought hindered Prospero Colonna and the Duke of Parma if they any way attempted such businesses which I will not assirme in the State of Milan the Kingdome of Naples and the Low Countries Alcibiades resolved to flye to the Lacedemonians hearing the report which was raised against him in Athens and would not beleeve he could dazell the peoples eyes or charme their eares with beauty or eloquence unprofitable weapons against wrath and fury as ancient Fables have sufficiently set downe in the case of the most beautifull and eloquent Orpheus slain by the enraged Priestesses of Bacchus Those saith Plutarch who loved Alcibiades a Citizen hated him when he was in the Army The object present is farre different from the absent the thought upon from the seene One cannot so perfectly conceive it absent but that it changes when it is really seen and being changed it must also alter and trouble the understanding and this altered and troubled will necessarily have a different operation The face of man hath somwhat of Divine in it A Prince denies it his subject to take away that pleasure from him for the punishment of some fault One enemy will not see anothers â—ace to avoid that delight which is contrary to hatred Some things are written in a letter which would not be spoken by word of mouth and some speak largely in a mans absence who in his presence will stand mute and if they doe persist in their former speeches it is not by their own absolute will but because they are obliged to doe so through shame of being reputed malicious and pusillanimous or are forced thereunto by a violâ—nt and fiery carreere which reason is not able to stop in the midst of its course The law of Nature which binds a man to love his neighbour the resemblance which doth not in a manner suffer one to abhorre him doth either diminish the hatred or increase the Synderesis connexion Wherefore some because they will not lay down their rancor or will not have their conscience distracted shun the sight of that face which would pacifie their minde if it were humane or pierce their heart though never so savage Those qualitâ—es which belong to the exterior senses require the presence to move the subject effectually for absence either much diminishes or quite caÌ„cels them The understanding would participate of those delights in its contemplation of them findes them full of imperfections He represents these imperfections to the inferior part If the object be present for the most part he findes it blind or not willing to see them But if it be remote and gone out of the Sphere of the senses though not out of that of the understandings they easily open their eyes to receive the light of truth But if the qualities concern the soveraigne and chiefe vertue as eminency in valour or learning presence abases it where the understanding and the will turn one to that which is good and the other to that which is true that being neither true nor good which is not beautifull it runnos towards the beauty and because it considers it in that manner as it usually receives it it erres in the conceiving of it taking the features and bâ—auties of the body in stead of the beauteous endowments of the mind The error lasts with the absence presence undeceives and when it doth not finde the subject which happens so for the most part such as it had conceived it it will perswade the understanding that the subject is neither the most valorous nor the most learned that he is neither true nor good because he is not the greatest nor the fairest He that operates being dragged along by a passion either sigures it greater to make it excusable or feignes another to away what is shamefull in it If he erres through love he describes it extream because others should judge nature to bee
unremembred As it were in dispight of fate fantastically besotted with his body though extreamly afflicted and desirous to survive in others memories though with shame And the worst remembrance is more acceptable unto him then none at all Annihilation is an enemy to man not so much in respect of being nothing as of not being what he is VVe shall not peradventure find a subject so unfortunate that would be contented to be changed into another individium no not to exchange his fortune because the changing would be the annihilating of him Yet it seemes harsh that a man should have a recourse to wickednesse to make him remaine in the world to that which is not and to nothing because he would not be so and yet some do it and attaine to it whether it be because some writers willingly set downe any thing that is great or notorious sometimes to raise their stile with the relation sometimes to attract mens attentions with the rumour and with the great motion awake please and raise up the understanding they awake it but violently they raise it but to something which naturally and directly it abhorres they please it but often times corrupt it or whether it proceed from that all men take delight in such kind of relations the most wicked are comforted through the similitude the lesse bad extenuate their badnesse by comparing it the contrariety encreases the good mans merit Great actions though bad do in the matter communicate with good ones and with advantage because they do not find it limited as these last doe and so they deceive and those who think they can give instruction to others by laying them open and blaming them are oftentimes deceived They might doe some good in teaching of morall vertues if vertue as it hath a particular forme to distinguish it from vice had also a particular matter to worke upon Vertues matter is open and manifest vices is for the most part hidden and concealed and he is sometimes deceived in it that operates and he also that almost continually sees the operating One should not peradventure lose his labour in the teaching of morall vertues if there were no meanes to teach their contraries and that one might learne onely by example of imitation and not of shunning and avoyding There being onely one rectitude makes it a secure judge of obliquity It s having latitude makes it a deceitfull judger of rectitude Nature is inclined to evill and evill actions include a certaine acritude in themselves and if they be great and have a prosperous successe cause more to follow then to beware of them and make more emulators then enemies They merit but little of posterity that will relate evill actions causing that to be heard which themselves would unwillingly have seen Many evill things would be thought to have bin impossible to be done did not Historians set them down as done and how much better were it to avoyd falling into them to live deceived then warned Simplicity is a great vertue and ignorance is wisedome True it is that if the knowledge of the will which is done be taken away it makes a man sometimes runne into it but if the manner of doing it be â—â—ncealed it alwayes keepes one innocent There are times wherein bookes would bee cancelled and some men who ought not to be mentioned and seeing it is not in our power to forget them let us at least not mention them The ancient Romans did so but to what purpose was it if writers made mention in their Annals even of those men whom the Senate had cancelled out of its bookes undoing that which the Common-Wealth had done by relating that it had done it Is it not to be admired that those seven brave men which affected fame and renoune by erecting wonders in the world could not attaine to it and he that impiously burned but one of them for that purpose did get it in despight of all Greece which then strove with its uttermost might to have him blotted out of all mens memories A pestilent body leaves a contagious corps behind and though men leave being wicked yet they leave not producing of more and a delict when it is done and past serves yet for an example An infected body often communicates its infirmity but never its health though it be never so exquisitely cured I know not whether it be because that nature in providence drives away the evill from it selfe and thriftily reserves that which is good Or by reason that evill proceeds from any cause and that which is good from a sound and entire one onely The perfect mixt will have what is wholsome unwholsomnesse pâ—oceeds from a corrupt mixt in the first humility bounded by the naturall heat is fixed in the latter it flies unbounded This comes forth with its malignity and being a fumid vapour it takes hold and cleaves too the other retaines what is good and if it doth chance to come forth being a dry exhâ—lation it doth not fasten nor take hold This which befalls the body is also practised in the mind A good fame and renoune resembles rest the bad and great is like motion one is like a cleare and calme streame which though it be deep glides smoothly in its channell the other like a fierce torrent which swell'd and troubled runs violently precipitous with much noise Cur corrupt nature inclines to evill violently forceth it selfe to any good And seeing rest leaves no such impression as motion a cleere smooth streame drawes not with such violence as a troubled rough one and nature defends it selfe from its contrary and followeth its like we need not wonder if good examples seldome cure but evill ones doe for the most partinfect The renoune which remained of Alcibiades the membrance of his Counrry Parents Nurse Tutors when there was not any memory left to posterity of any of his companions no not so much as of their names causeth Plutarch to esteem him to be a man of eminent vertue Of such men I know not whether it bee because all things which belong to a great one are esteemed great or peradventure infamous the Country Parentage and Tutors are much enquired after and sometimes also what influence of the heavens he was borne under Or because wee should conceive that greatnesse is not attained is not the purchase of man himselfe but the gift of the influences of heaven of the nature of such a temperature of the assistance of Tutors and as accidentall not to bee valued in him As if he did not in himselfe include the seed of greatnesse and that to become conspicuous he must be aided by the nature of the soile the influence of the stars the temperature of his Parents and the education of his Tutors as if he were a plant no way excelling another were it not planted in a better earth nourishing by a more industrious hand and hath a more benigne influence of the heavens Man is prone to deprive himselfe of his
understanding and will and annihilate I was almost going to say his free will unman himselfe and grow beast leaving to emulate Angels and making himselfe like to a horse or mule Can he then thinke you alter nature gaine a new temperature and command that influence which hee cannot change The greatman came into the world amongst the Jews hee who indeed onely deserved the name of man presently his Country Parents and Tutors are enquired after His Country they know to bee Nazareth whence no good can come his Father they beleeve to be a Carpenter they doe not find he had any Masters or Tutors because they will not consent that man should found unto himselfe this greatnesse And not acknowledging it to proceed from Divinity because they cannot attribute it to the nature of his Country nor education of his Tutors they will have him possessed by a Devill What worser country was there then Bethsaida what better country-men then Peter Andrew John James and Philip. There could be no better Tutors and Mastors framed to teach vertuous actions and give good documents then Socrates Plato Aristotle and Seneca nor pupills and Schollars that could make lesse use of them then Alcibiades Dionisius the Titant Alexander the great and Nero. What father could be more Philosophicall then Marcus Aurelius And more learned and eloquent then the Romane Oratour and who was a more brutish Son then â—ommodus or more ignorant then Tullus Tullie forgot that which he had by experience found to bee true in his owne family and judging nature which for the most part erres to be alwayes in a certainty pretended th' Ethicks to be the work of Aristotles son imagining so eminent a Father could not have a son but of a soveraigne understanding And suffering himselfe to be overcome by the force of that argument the invaliditie of which he himselfe had experimented seemed to beleeve his sonnes case to be rather the limitation or exception of that rule then the confirmation of another contrary one He that sets downe the Probleme rests not at making learned Fathers infortunate in their children but goes further yet and affirmes ignorant men to be happy as if engendring of evill were the counterpoise of a good understanding and the comfort of ignorance the begetting of wisedome He frames hereby an exception to two approved rules Namely that no man can give that which he himselfe is not owner of And that goodnesse is of its own nature communicable One exception makes for ignorant men if they can bestow understanding which they themselves want upon their children And the other is adverse to learned men if they cannot communicate unto their issue the greatest good they possesse He saith also that the wise man is alwayes working with his intellect he is not attentive in the act of generation nor takes no great delight therein he ejects seed without spirit with a moderate pleasure contemplation distracting him from it But a blunt fellow wholly immerged in the act casts forth abundant vigorous stuffie seed and full of spirit But this proves rather the ability of the body then the vertue of the mind and that the one should have children of a soft and weake constitution and the other of a strong and robustious the greater abundance of seed causeth not more plenty of braine if the greater quantity of spirit produceth not a larger portion of understanding If it be a stuffie seed nature frames thereof much bone and a massie cranium and these being thick hinder the intellects contemplation and like a soggie and dark mist hide the beauty of the images from it The understanding requires mild and tender organs and there they will be heard subtile and cleere spirits and there they will be thick and cloudy The Philosopher from the robustiousnesse of the complexion argues a weaknesse of the intellect and concludes a strong one in a weake constitution How true soever the Probleme be in that part which concernes ignorant Parents I will go another way to unfold that which belongs to learned fathers because many though not peradventure most times we see it confirmed by experience Amongst creatures man hath the most braine amongst men the wisest or he that may be so The matter is viscous and cold it hath need of much aid to draw nourishment unto it and much spirit to digest it These are instruments of the naturall heat The soule makes them hers and taking them away from concocting raiseth them to contemplate if not against yet out of and beyond their own nature and because she would have them reach unto that which they doe not she subtilizeth them dasheth them together and tormenteth them they being subtilized evaporate tormented doe wast and weary are corrupted The naturall heat wanting for a time its instruments and having gotten it againe weake it workes not being made unable and growen feeble Man's proper place is the earth raised up into the aire he is disordered in the water he drownes in the fire he burnes The spirits place is the body which soaring above the matter afflicts and destroyes it selfe The seed according to the most eminent Physician for the most part proceeds from the braine if this be weakened it will not be powerfull to beget a male if there bee one begotten it is on the womans side Hyppocrates saith that those who are borne oftwo masculine seed prove Heroes Those that are borne but of one if it be the mans it foretokens greatnesse if it be the womans they become effeminate If this solution doth not please thee say that the forming power makes use of the seed to make the spermaticall parts and of the menstruous bloud for the sanguine Of mans weakened seed it will make a very weake braine of the vigorous bloud of the woman a strong liver and heart The rationall part will be inferiour to the irascible and concupiscible so the man will prove ignorant and vicious These documents will unfold severall Problemes This is the reason why brute beast are not so subject to catharres as men because they have a lesser masse of braine They need lesser quantity of spirits to concoct and preserve them better because they employ them not in contemplation A Philosopher by chance was deceived in the solution of this Probleme he attributed the cause to mans upright figure which being like a Limbeck easily attracts the vapours unto it He knew not that distillation is not onely by ascent but also by descent and in a plaine If a Limbeck be not like the figure of a brute beast it may be like a serpentine or winding still and the former distillation being more subtile the latter grosser a beasts head will be more aggravated then a mans Behold how the good sonne is the fathers glory and the bad one the mothers sorrow either because he is born of her seed or because the root springs out of her blood she predominating in the production of the heart and liver fountaines of all
ill regulated passions Behold why the sons of those who have the most sublime understanding have but a little and the daughters much when the woman seed prevailes there is an effeminate male brought forth and when the mans a manly female And finally behold why Mothers love their daughters children better then their sons and the Fathers the contrary The males concurre in generation with the spermaâ—icall part the females with the masse of bloud The forming power makes use of the fathers seed to frame him and frames her out of the menstrous bloud The Mother acknowledgeth her bloud in the one and the father his seed in the other and every one beares most affection to that where it hath the greatest part If thou dost not acquiesce and rest satisfied with these my reasons for the solution of the first Probleme take it from the education either because learned Fathers so much regard their spirituall sonnes that they are carelesse of the other which are fleshly and carnal Or because they are unwilling to settle them to their studies knowing none is taken notice of except he be eminent and finding by experience how difficult it is to attaine to that eminency and that if it bee attained to we thereby lose our vigour and complexion and if not wee lose our time also and remaine unhappy not having so much as the comfort of having shortned our life in exchanging a few yeares of it for a long and glorious remembrance The children looke upon the Parents as their onely scope and aime hold it a difficult thing to go beyond them and inglorious to come short of them and hold it more pleasant and easie quietly to enjoy the fruits of their labours then to imitate them And desparing to arrive to their height and eminency if it was profitable and if it was not profitable not caring to endeavour in the former case they forsake learning to embrace case and pleasure in the latter they contemne it as barren and fruitlesse If thou be not satisfied by this reason of education proceed to the temperament Great understandings an subject to black choler becoming so rather then being borne such and this temperature increasing with a mournefull metamorphosis transformes a wise man into a mad man When these men beget children melancholy is already in the last degree of its perfection The son becomes his heire as he is then not as hee was and begins where the Father ends and this humour growing to its wonted passe and wanting but little of being mad in a few yeares he wholly becomes such hence it happens that Socrates children his coolenesse making him prudent were utterly stupid and Alcibiades whose heate made him rash and temerarie his children became frantick Plutarch rehearses some actions of Alcibiades when he was yet a child I will likewise consider them this age being fitter then any other to search into the nature of subjects which nature appeares plaine when the subject is neither capable of discourse nor operation But this is not you may say the knowing of a mans nature well may it be the knowing of his body It is at that time a perfect mixt as for its being though not sufficiently mixed to be fitted for operation Experience of it selfe is not that which maketh aged men prudent neither doth ignorance alone make young men rash and inconsiderate These have not the soule so free as to withstand the passions of the body the others body is not so strong as to hinder the motions of the soule What can an almost meere impotencie worke or how can the other withstand being utterly impotent In a youth one cannot know what way he will take when he is a man Yet it might be knowne had he not a rationall soule or were it not so fettered by the temperament The wise man acknowledged himselfe ignorant in the search of what it would doe if it were freer because it is impossible to conjecture what that will bee which is not nor hath not bin When thou feest it in being thou wilt be able to discourse with the assistance of that which is of what it shall be yet it is alwayes difficult to warrant or ascertaine any such thing The actions of a child are not sufficient to teach thee his nature there is the universall and the particular nature the former is proper to the age the latter to the individuum thou shalt know the one by that which hee operates not according to the other either he adds to it or takes from it And though hee seemes with time to change it he doth not he may sometimes overcome it but never change it wandring through many universals but alwayes with its owne particular The nature is the same at all times according to the more or lesse sometimes rising sometimes faâ—ling It deceives us because we doe not know the difference in the operation which is caused by the augmentation and diminution of the degrees nor yet the various consonancie which the ever constant nature of the individuum hath with the differing natures of age It seemes new to us though it bee but changed not altered Nature guides beasts Reason should guide men They doe not ordinarily give it the totall and absolute command neither do they wholly debar it from it They lose themselves in an exceeding bad mixture of reason ill guided and nature badâ—y followed It were better totally to abandon themselves to nature at least for those who make no further use of râ—ason then onely to hinder nature There â—s one belonging to the Morall Philosopher which is it that inclines because it is corrupt for the most part it inclines to evill Another belongs to the Physicall Philosopher and that is it which teacheth and being provident most times it teacheth well The third belongs to the Physician and that is it which heales and because blind sometimes also it kills We should resist that nature which inclines and for the most part weâ— follow it We should follow that which teacheth and for the most part we crosse it We should assist that which heales and for the most part we hinder it Alcibiades contending with another boy makes use of his teeth and nailes peradventure to shame him whom hee could not hurt and being not able to strike would marke him His enemy taxeth him for being womanish he glories to be Lion-like Nailes commonly serve men beasts to cover the extremities of the veines sinnewes and arteries that the naturall animall and vitall Spirits might not evaporate that way They also serve many beasts in particular for offensive and defensive armes If nature doth not purge the humours by convenient waies it is either too weake or too much oppressed If a man vents his wrath with unsitting or unbeseeming weapons either his rage swelling too high makes him madd or his weakenesse casts him downe The shâ—pe of the mouth the scituation of it the weaknesse of the teeth are all evident signes that nature did
not place it there for his defence and who wil imagine the nailes to be man's armes seeing that when hee will fight he hides them and whereas other creatures strike with an open paw he onely fights with a closed fist but what a poore weapon is a fist They surely esteem it as nothing who daily complaine of nature saying it was prodigall to brute beasts and niggardly to man in furnishing him with food armâ—s and raiment The favour it hath shewen in giving him understanding seemes to appease him and as if he had it given him to counterpoise the want of other things and not to make him noted above others hee calls that an exchange which is a meere gift Can either gentility and Christianity be forgiven such an errour truely no. Nature hath bin wanting in nothing to man but he contrariwise hath been wanting to nature What need had he of raiment that did not know himself to be naked What use for Weapons when every thing did voluntarily obey him and when he had no Enemy And as for food he had it given him He sinned in eating of that also which was denied him And if he lost himself in that which was given him why doth he complaine for that which he hath not received But it was not so womanish in Alcibiades to fight with such Instruments as were not given him by Nature for that purpose as to dâ—sh agaâ—nst the ground those which Nature had invented to delight he is angry with Flutes because playing upon them disfigures his beauty and peradventure that happened because he spoyleâ— their harmony playing less then was requisite and deforming himself more then he needed to have done I pardon such a conceit concerning Musicall wind Instruments in a yong tender and wanton youth and in a Court Philosopher a Politician a Peripatetick talking with Senators and Princes when I see vocall Musick set at naught for the same or peradventure no reason at al by a Stoick mofal Philosopher The wind Musick doth not deforme the Visage it reformes yea consormes it and the vocall which is correspondent to the hearing altereth the proportion of the face to conforme it to the eâ—e The one requires settledness to be well looked upon and the other receives its perfection from motion One unfolds the beauty of the Visage the other both laies open and accompanies the sweetness of the voice Where there is a sound motion necessarily hath proceeded and the motion is with measure if the sound be hâ—rmonious Sometimes also it is voluntarily accompanied with the head eyes and mouth and that with delight though without necessity if it be with proportion That motion which offends produces no harmonious sound or doth not accompany it proportionably But singing doth not cause a bodily motion only in him that sings it causeth it also in him that hearkens if he doth not stâ—ive against it the Spirits will howsoever move let them be never so much coerced and restrained and harmony is so linked to motion that I canno but beleeve they were so in the first Movers motions He that will not grant such a thing in the superiour heavens will not howsoever deny it in the lowest in which if he do admit of it by what reason can he deny it in the greater Those who belâ—eve a motion in the heavens and confess them to be solid that grant a sire in the concavity of the Moon and that it is kindled by attrition cannot deny a sound and if they grant anâ— what a one shall it be of a most swift equall and simple motion â—f a sublime body perfectly spher call and noble in the highest degree and of an infinite mover Certainly it is harmonious and in so eminent a degree that fâ—om iâ— all inferiour harmonies receive their first origine as all motions do its motion Why doth not fire contend with the aire and how comes it that it doth not consume it Why is it not impossible for it to be contained within the Vniverse and not consume it By the preservation of nature It is well said By the vertue which the place gives to the thing placed Better And it will peradventure be best of all to say that being ravished by the harmony of the Celestiall Spheres attentive only to the raising of it self towards them it forbeares contending because it would not give over advancing nor shall we in so doing attribute more power to the heavens then ancient fables did to Orpheus nor appropriate any other nature to fire then that which all Philosophers ascribe unto it namely of mounting upwards especially in its own sphere where having no need of fewell it hath no occasion to stoop for food He that will not grant influences without motion or light if he will have the heavens severall and various motions to serve this lower world for some other use besides carrying the light about Let him not deny them harmony he that admits of influences doth already grant it The Conjunctions Sextiles Quadrates Trines and Opposites will produce it which are unisons thirds fourths fifths and sevenths And if here beneath a perfect unison increase the harmony an imperfect one spoiles it certainly above the conjunctions of good are excellent and of bad ones exceeding evill In the heavens a quadrate and an opposite make a dissonancy on earth a fourth and a seventh Harshness are here corrected with the fifth and third there the Sextile and the Trine of benevolent rayes contrary to misfortunes have force and power to strengthen Alcibiades was very eloqâ—ent and his lisping added a kind of grace to his eloquence because it was contrary to it There is greater pleasure in hearing Beasts speak though they speak ill then men though they speak better The one overcomes the other do but follow Nature Man takes great delight and which I more wonder at hath a great instinct from Nature it self to oppose it The delight would be less the profit greater if he did it for profit rather than pleasure God commanded him to manure the Earth where it was barren and that where it brought forth thorns he should cause bread to grow The Precept was to labour not to take pleasure but he where he should grow fruitfull becomes barren and where he should receive the bread of grace he feeds the thorns of sin He feels within himself that instinct of opposing nature He knows his happiness consists in the overcomming of it but equivocating therein and either for want of understanding or through a wilfull misunderstanding whereas he should strive against his own inward he opposeth the outward Nature where he finds Hills he makes Plaines where Plaines he raises Hills in pleasant places he seeks horrid ones and brings pleasantness into places of horrour he seconds that which he ought to withstand and that which he should follow he opposes and when he thinks he triumphs over anothers nature his own nature triumphs over him This is a Stratagem of the particular nature
to take notice of it If any shews it him he is vexed thinking that by slighting the occasion he derogates from the greatnesse of his power Of these two wayes of passing over troubles the Female is the most common peradventure because Pusillanimity is more easie then Fortitude True it is that it is a vice but in this case the obtaining of the reward namely compassion will not let it seeme so Men had also rather compassionate then admire with compassion one benefits a wretched man without any loss yea with game with admiration he payes an homage due to a great worth even to his own disgrace The one is the daughter of that which the catastrophe in the world useth to bestow the other of that which our weakness cannot attaine to the first one goeth voluntarily to the other he is dragged The understanding afflicts it self in the acts of compassion if there be any delight it is in the sence In that of admiration it rejoices and the inferiour part is afflicted in it And although they be both oftentimes waies to take away the tormenting passion of envy yet the leaving of it by growing great or by seeing ones self outgon is every different It is mans nature to behold with an ill countenance those afflictions which God sends him and to make them greater then they are And with a good looke those which he procures to himselfe and make them lesse to avoid shame and gaine compassion He knowes that when they proceed meerely from Gods providence they are tokens of affection when from our own imprudency of punishment and to shew his love greater and his wrath lesser in the one case he increases and in the other he lessens it and alwayes to the losse and dammage of truth Which truth we ought not to wonder that nature hath placed according to Heraclitus his opinion in a deep well or according to Democritus in an obscure cave She did it to employ us all our life time in searching for it and when we have found it wee seek after nothing more then how to corrupt it Man provokes God by complaining of evill fortune more then he ought and by not attributing to him in prosperity so much as he should He knowes not he had it before it is gone and sometimes it goes away because it was not known And when with repentance wee should call our selves ingratefull with temerity giving new offence we call fortune unstable and which is worse we make it so Finally man finds such unsavourinesse in the meane and so much acrimony in the extreame that ordinarily he drawes back most from the first when he hath not arrived unto it and advances forward most when he is come to it or gone beyond it because he will not stay at it or because he would still go further from it whence comes that the young man shortens his years the old man encreases them His domestick and familiar figure saith Quintilian is hyperbole because he is an enemy to truth But this cannot be for truth is the object of mans most noble power it is not each ones equality it is reserved only for the best that which he sees in this world is sufficient to move his desire but because it is not so much as will satisfie it he is perplexed He would have it to be so but cannot really make it so he doth it as much as he can with hyperbole so that he lyeth not in hatred but in behalfe of truth corrupting that which is not his object to make it become so Alcibiades hath many Athenian Nobles that make love to him and offer him great presents he contemnes them A Country fellow falls in love with him sells all he hath and presents the money to him Alcibiades accepts of his love and his gift and with that mony makes him presently gaine a Talent He hath reason to make more esteeme of the Country Fellows affection then of the Nobles It was greater and sincerer He that gives not all he hath to the beloved person loves him not above all things he loves that better which he hath reserved for himself The passions of simple men are plaine those of Nobles are mixed with ambition The love of the one is meere love that of the other hath pride coined with it The one seeks only to delight himself the others to subject also yea more then subject hautines prevailing in them above affection whilest sometimes through jealousie by the death of the beloved they have deprived themselves of delight because they would not endure a Companion They say that love enters not an abject and degenerous breast but links it self only to noble hearts It is true of that part of love which is pride the peculiar sin of great ones Love is a Tyrant not only because he tyrannizes over him whom he conquers but because he also imprints in in him the Character of tyrannizing They decline love to be a desire of enjoying the thing beloved But it is also a desire to captivate its body and soule and to take away free will from it He that said Lucifer sinned through pride said well He that said he sinned through excess though he did not unfold it well did not peradventure speak totally ill The Angell saw God not as he is for then he would have loved him of necessity and in an ordinary way and had not sinned He loved him voluntarily and disorderly and sinned For it being made manifest to him that God would be humanated as we may say and man Goddisied changing vertue into passion adding pride to love to the desire of enjoying the desire of tyrannizing willing to be only alone or suffer no equall he forsook the love of God Iealous armed himself with hatred against mankind to hinder it as his rivall from enjoying the clear sight of the beatificall object But how stands Socrates amidst this multitude of lovers He peradventure beleeved that where there was so much beauty there was also a great disposition to vertues I meane not speculative but morall Even as amongst Brutes that which is the fairest performes best its proper naturall operation the Lion hath most valour the Greyhound most swiftness so to the understanding of many the fairest man should best perform those operations which are proper to man who being a compound of soule and body his said operations belong rather to the practicall then to the speculative intellect The speculative goes to the knowledge of the first truth the practick to the well directing of the operations according to true wisdom the one shall see its object only at home the other can only attaine unto it in its way And how should Nature give us our end in this world which though we labour for never so hard we cannot attaine in it But in what manner can that saying agree with Alcibiades actions who being exceeding beautifull was notwithstanding ambitious dishonest and lascivious They may say that the Prognostick is not
Youth should grieve at the defects of old age and old men laugh at the ignorance of youth But they are not sorry that a young man wants wisdome but onely that he doth not know it and esteem it because they exceeding in this noble vertue the daughter and onely comfort of old Age they are grieved to see that Talent despised for which onely they can bee respected and reverenced Young men laugh at old men because the deformity which they see present being greater than the griefe moves their imagination stronglier than the future on which oftentimes they doe not think and which they know not whether it will happen or no or hope it will be better What a barbarous thing is a young man Let him that will bee safe from him shun him he walks in unknown wayes and I had almost said like a thing mixt of Man and Beast the degree of the mixture is unknown what he will be is impenetrable sometimes they are like Beasts because they doe not make use of reason sometimes worse because they abuse it The overmuch heat hinders wisdome in youth too much coldnesse extinguishes it in old age sometimes it never comes but man passes from immaturity to rottennesse and when it does come it is alwayes late and lasts but a little It is almost the onely one amongst sublunary things which doth not receive the proportion of Periods a Beginning a Being an Increase and Declining Quintilian wonders why all men being made by Nature to be good few are such I to not wonder at it doe rather consider whence it proceeds that the superior part for the most part is not so and whereas it is made to command it obeyes Peradventure the advantage of yeares is a great cause of it in which our sense doth with ease tyranny over us without meeting with any opposition or let from the soule and because they are the first yeares it takes strong root and being many it frames a habit Then comes Reason in and findes the Tyrant already in possession fortified and rooted It must fight against that which he is and that which he hath done it must subdue the forces of sense overcome the resistance of habit and destroy that Nature to frame a new one But why doe we not at the first as soon as we are born attain to reason Peradventure because we would then presently operate without a guide and wanting experience we should precipitate Learned and wisemen induced by a case which happened in our dayes and being singular and almost monstrous makes no president have believed that a Subject may securely passe over from speculation to practice without any further experience I will here set down my opinion therein with all due respect and reverence to famous Writers of great merit If truth onely wâ—re the object of our understanding and not that also which is like unto it there would be no error And if all things could be demonstrated there would be no opinions the deficiency of the one and super-abundancy of the other ruine the world The understanding despairing of demonstrating the truth gives it selfe over to vanity and goes in quest of opinion and not being able to acquiesce in it he raises himselfe higher and seekes to stirre up admiration through novelty seeing he cannot teach and direct with truth He esteems himselfe to be a brave man in Sciences that makes not the clearest but the hardest argument which though it doth not convince yet it overcomes the understanding as if the ones wisdome consisted in the others ignorance and truth which should be the easiest for the understanding to finde as the center of ponderous things is sought out by difficult obscure things How many things are there daily seen which because we know not how they are nor how they are done doe astonish and breed admiration in us for nothing else but onely because we take the lofâ—iest and most difficult way to understand what they are and how performed And afterward if the Artificer doe divulge it we finde it to be an easie and plaine way we acknowledge the error we cease our admiration and remaine ashamed The like would happen in questions concerning Sciences if truth were discored to us and that God did not hide it from man shewing him this great Fabrick of the World keeping him still in disputes not letting him understand it because he will mortifie him The Politick truth of the future being then ordinarily concealed how shall such an understanding find it which is accustomed to elevate it selfe above the matter to seek extravagant wayes to subtilize distinguish invent and imagine that if it doth not pâ—netrate into it it happens because it doth not raise elevate it self suffâ—ciently Then in our case it finds it self in a lowly gross matter not hard to be attained because the understanding doth not reach unto it but because for the most part it goes beyond it One going from Sciences where he is schollar that followes the opinions of those that went before him and he a master that invents and comming to the politick where Experience is Mistress and he a Master that followes it shall commit as many errors as the things are which he invents despairing of ever warranting or assertâ—ng any thing if he doth not turn from being a Master to be a Schollar forsaking speculation which is an enemy to Experience But above all others he shall seldome prove able in politick affaires that is accustomed to interpret the holy Scripture The difficulty proceeds not onely from the difference of tâ—mes God then making for the most part the secondary causes obedient to merit and now letting them oftentimes runne in favour of injustice but likewise from the difference which is between the Divine and Humane intellect the one infinite the other finite this an accident that a substance The holy Ghost doth not speak a word for one thing alone his sense may be interpreted for any thing that is pious for he meanes it all Hee gives scope of altering thoughts interpret and inlarge the old invent new teach with the doctrine and delight with the variety without prejudice of truth But man doth and saith one thing onely for it and and not alwayes for that which he should doe or say In what case then shall that man finde himselfe who comes from interpreting the Divine meaning which is so large and so good and goeth to interpret that of men which is alwayes short and for the most part evill seeing that in the one he cannot erre without he digresse and in the other men have often erred because they have not digressed I doe not say that discourse is not necâ—ssary for man I exclude it in speculative Sciences and admit it in what belongs to practice snow to be snow ought to be white and so ought a woman to be fair and yet notwithstanding if snow were as a woman it would not be white and if a woman were of the
stammering tongue and speech but will be applauded in him that counterfeits it And if any one enquire the reason of it Quintilian would say it were because man is an enemy to truth Aristotle would say it is because he loves to learne and when of himselfe he learnes the thing he hath conceived he delights therein as in his owne birth a thing of his owne bringing forth this delight he attaines to in imitation when it is represented unto him because thereby he apprehends as it were by argumentation the truth of the imitated Idoll I confesse the thought is acute And I question not but it is applauded I doubt whether it be because it is good or for want of a better The understanding rejoyces not much at any small thing obtained with small labour He intends greater for himselfe and with lesse delight Peradventure he takes not so much pleasure in learning as in the manner how which is by the motion passing in an instant from the false object to the knowledge of the true one Hence proceeds the strength and powerfull effect fetching its originall from a knowledge attained unto by circumstances Hence comes the smiles at the meeting of a friend Let Aristotle say what he will in mine opinion that sudden and great change to which Hyppocrates ascribes so much delight namely from falshood to truth and from the absence to the presence of the beloved object is that which causes the rejoycing which may be proved by this that if it be foreseen the rejoycing is not so great But since Alcibiades his actions which were altogether extraordinary and we conjecture extravagant what his inclination was it will nâ—t be displeasing to search further into it That Princes and Common-wealths may beware of such kinds of subjects which use to usurp the liberty of the one and cause the other to lose their dominions There is great difference between acting of an extravagancy by election and doing of it by nature even as there is between a horses bound which he is taught by a Rider and one which he naturally makes when he is madded Sometimes it is fitting to have a subject of great worth come with some extravagancies upon this worlds theater which making a noise may draw unto him mens attentions to behold this new beauty It serves for a sudden crack or clap to attract mens eares and eyes to the hearing and beholding of some great matter which being distracted another way they should not peradventure see nor heare Some actions also seem to be performed best when they are done extravagantly such are the first rewards and first punishments to the end that being deeply rooted in the imagination they may leave the love of vertue and hatâ—ed of vice for a long time imprinted therein which are the columnes upon which stands the Fabrick of the world Whereupon me thinkes that manner of bringing criminall men to their capitall punishment which they use in some places to be very strange they carry them to dye singing with flowers as it were in triumph taking as much as may be away the feare and horrour of death from them Doing thereby great prejudice to two effects which are the two maine ends and aimes of malefactors punishments namely to punish their facts who have offended and by their example to terrifie others from committing the like they take almost quite away the force of the one and very much sweeten the other But peradventure this custome is not so hurtfull to Civill Art as it is favourable to the Military But to returne to my purpose The extravagant action for the most part findes applause it brings novelty with it it cheeres the mind adds vigour to the body raiseth up the understanding with the motion and sodainnesse and if it doth not give their Spirits their being yet it stirreth them up to operation and the more vehement it is the greater force it adds to them as experience daily sheweth us in frantick men and that not without admiration How farre different is this motion which novelty causeth in the spirits and produceth mirth from that which is produced by mirth It is more meeke and hath operation for its end imagination for its guide and the understanding for its meanes Whereas the other moultered being vehehement runnes and flyes without stay or guide I know not whether it be because in griefe the spirits retire to the heart and in great joyes they dilate themselves that those two passions produce such effects as some men are of opinion Or whether by the raising abating repose motion sometimes lost sometimes unruly In my conceit all the dammage proceeds from their ceasing to operate in feare because they lose their motions in joy because they alter it in the latter the imagination gives them motion and doth not set them a working in the former it takes away both motion and operation Man dies through griefe because the motion of the spirits ceases without which they being unable to work and being not fed eâ—sily dissolved by reason of their subtilenesse they are soone corrupted What good sind we in weeping It doth not vent our griefe but it is a signe that the spirits begin to worke and that they have operation enough to sustaine them A man dyes for joy because in that act the imagination in an instant moves all the spirits with a swist motion and then losing it self forsakes them and gives over setting them to work whereupon they being in a most violent motion and having none to direct restraine or curbe them finding every thing abandoned fly out and evaporate that way which they find open and enlarged Nature seldome gives so strong an affliction or griefe but that it is accompanied with some small parcell of pleasure Or any joy so sincere but that it hath some kind of mixture of distaste to the end that in one part there may be somewhat to excite the spirits and in the other to sustaine the imaginative faculty that it may not quite abandon it self to the overthrowing of the individuum Even as the heaven works and operates in this lower world by its motion and light so do the spirits in the body The world would perish if it did not receive light and motion from the heavens and the body if it had not the like from the spirits Finally extravagant actions make so much noise amongst People that the entring into them though it be with choice and election and the prosecuting of them though in a fitting and convenient way brings by the plausibleness of them eminent danger along to engage man in the persisting in them though they be evill And if this be so in him who operates by election how will it be in him that operates by nature They have hot and subtile spirits the heat causeth them to rise and mount the subtileness to penetrate they have acute speculation and surpasse others in understanding their conceits are not common but oftentimes monstrous It is likewise so
forced and constrained act which hath no merit at all in it becomes free and meritorious And this is or I am deceived a better grounded and more effectuall reason then Seneca's where he intends to prove that a wise man is uncapable of becoming a slave because that working along with the current which runnes with the actions of the understanding and the will hee alwayes freeth himselfe and findes rest in all things Socrates would not be defended his Reason was because hee would dye free and not forced But because men of this constitution and marked with this Noble Character are very rare by an unknowne motion of Nature which in its actions is a longing desire and anxiety to preserve the freedome of will domination is hatred And thence it comes that he who is mightiest either in Citie Senate or Court wounds the eyes of him who comes newly thither with so much force that it imprints thereon a dolorous character If he meets with an unadvised harebrained man he openly opposes him and declares himselfe to be his enemy If with a subtile one he makes himselfe his companion and choaks him under colour of friendship The one is like the Summer heat which gently disperseth the naturall heat with another semblable to it The other like a Winter cold with its contrariety oppresses it The first way is hard to begin well if he presently gets not the upper hand the second to end if he do not attaine at all to it The operation by way of similitude findes lesse resistance because it seeks onely free passage and not the ruine That by contrariety findes a greater because it aimes onely at annihilation And therefore the water is easily overcome by the aire and hardly destroyed by fire Caesar had three great enemies Cato totally opposite Pompey his semblable and Brutus mixt Cato gave him occasion of shame not of feare Pompey went neare to overthrow him Brutus killd him with being semblable to him but could not overthrow him by his being different But if Sylla Pompey Caesar and so many other men of worth and valour happily came to be great by becoming friends to those who were greater How can Alcibiades his way be commended who went about it by opposing them Those Romans found the great ones divided the Athenian agreed and united Where there is partiality or faction it is best to become a friend and an opposite where there is no enemy It is too hard to sight against two or more if they be opposites in Physick Moralitie or in Policie if two unite against him that sets upon them which comes ordinarily to passe makes the issue of the undertaking impossible The want of the chiefe instrument namely discontented persons makes the beginning of the enterprize hard And in such a state of affairs though you make some such yet they doe not long last such because that he who discontents himself with one quickly is contented with another The enmity of great ones makes a man to be esteemed generous and is the true way either to rise or ruine quickly It is difficult to enter into it without losing ones self in the very first steps but if thou get but a little way on thou wilt soon have a companion and find help Every one applauds thee because a new valour causeth as much admiration as a new starre doth gazing Envious men assist him because they are ashamed to yeeld the offended because they seek revenge the discontented satisfaction and all in generall because they unwillingly bow to that great one and being brought under they rejoyce when thy finde one that will not bow to him They take heart from the example and favour him as one that should free them from sordid slavery and abject suffering They are deceived in beleeving that if they make him superiour they can without any resistance bring him againe to an equality But if they were not deceived and did believe they rather change than take away their bondage yet they would assist him They do not much hate neither are there so many discontented at this new valour because it is more innocent Envy is not yet come in and the change of domination is oftentimes judged to be a kind of liberty The passing of the disease from one part to another in a sicke man gives some hope of recovery it shewes that Nature is yet strong and the humour not so stubborn or so strongly knit together but that it may be loosened and extirpated For a subject to attain to be the greatest man in the World in a Citie or in a Court is not so hard a matter as for one to keep himselfe so He that is growing up is helped on he that is growen up is abandoned and left to himselfe and every one becomes an enemy to him that is decaying It is so easie a matter to cut off a rising power in its beginning that if man had not a naturall instinct to help him that is growing up none would become great And it is so hard to bring down him that is gotten up that if nature did not likewise incline man to destroy him greatnesse would still remain in the same place In augmentations men are never quiet untill they have brought the Subject to the highest pitch when they have brought him thither they never rest till they see him decline And when he is declining untill they have ruined him Actions which are done in favour of him that riseth in hatred of him that is risen in damage of him that is falling though they be never so well measured by understanding Politicians yet nature makes them exorbitant and without measure Let the Pilot be never so skilfull the currant of this instinct doth insensibly take off his hand and in the end of his voyage brings him quite to another place then that whither he intended to come ashore The Heaven which is an universall cause Nature which is fruitfull Necessity which binds Practice which teaches Example which perswades men which encourage Envy which provokes frame a contrary to him If the heaven become particular Nature barren the bond suffer violence swiftnesse give not time to Practice difference leave no place for example nor superiority for envy either he stayes or he changes himselfe or dyes stayed changed and kill'd by reserving nature God will not have us to enjoy so much happinesse as we should if the world were all one man's For mens sinnes it is he suffers so many Princes and Common-wealths upon earth It begun when one alone commanded it and will end when it arrives againe where it begun And therefore it necessary that he should lose him selfe that aimes at an universall Monarchy either because he cannot attaine it and so he shall lose himselfe alone or together with the world after he hath attained to it The Emulators and Enviors of Alcibiades and Nicias greatnesse not knowing the hurt they did the Common-wealth desiring by Ostracisme to banish one of them out
prepared and presently comes to a tryall finding the other unprovided wavering and doubtfull between credulity and distrust Whereas the other taken upon a sudden unprovided of meanes and wanting time which he cannot take unlesse hee likewise give it the other is often oppressed before hee bee prepared in preparing himselfe or at least ill prepared To take away and banish one onely was not not a right Cure it rather increased the Disease To take away that humour out of the Body which is not offensive and leave that which is offensive is according to understanding Physicians one of the chiefe causes of malignant Feavers If a Subject in a Citie exalt himselfe above the rest what can bee done better then to give him an opposite And what worse than to remove him from him If hee doth not frame himselfe or Nature give him one let Art bring him in one The Ostracisme banishing one onely did let the other loose made him Lord of the Citie and gave him opportunity to become a Tyrant Two great disasters according to Astrology make one good Fortune Physicians doe not take away the Bilis or Choler where they feare the Dropsie nor the Pituita or Flegmâ— where they feare a Plethora Contraries mingled doe not hurt the Body which they overthrow being divided Whilest Caesar and Pompey both remained in Rome the Common-wealth did not perish The ones going out and the others remaining within ruined it To take away the best was as much as to let the worst loose In this Aristotle himselfe was puzzled hee would not likewise have him to remaine in the Citie where hee cannot place him but as King He sends him into the Woods he compares him to Iove he would not have man worthy to bee his Companion and yet hee makes him a companion of wild beasts Hee was peradventure deceived In describing an excellent man hee seemes to attribute unto him the worst of vices If hee bee ambitious or foolish hee is not excellent if hee bee wise and modest he will shun and refuse not affect the Scepter he will subject himselfe to the Lawes as if he had need of them to Magistrates as inferior to them to obedience as if he were not borne to command It is contradictory to doe ill and be excellent The instance which Aristotle gives of a voyce exceeding the rest in a quire of Musick if he doth not take away discretion from him that hath it the voyce will not take away the harmony from the rest That of one member bigger then another hath nothing to doe with goodnesse but with Monstruosity it is as farre from Excellency in goodnesse as it is neere exceeding badnesse He that gave the humors of the body for an example where if one exceeds the rest though it be a good one yet it diseases the body he mistooke the greatest for the best and tooke the humors for the naturall heat which be it never so great doth not burne nor consume but foment preserve and vivifie He were but a very ignorant Physician that would expell it and so is he a Politician that will banish the best out of a City Some cannot suffer the best nor endure the worst They feare one for their owne sake the oother for the Common-wealth's They envy the former and are ashamed of the latter They seeke after indifferent subjects which may not dishonour the Publicke nor put them in danger and this they cannot attaine unto because nature produces but few such and taking away the best they raise up a worst as out of a mixt if the predomin ant be taken away The Cretans proved it they no sooner had banished the best but they found themselves in the hands of the worst What is the driving of a great man out of the Citie but adding the adherence of strangers to the applause which he hath gained amongst the Citizens Caesar would not give Senators leave to travell long out of Italy when they were once above twenty yeares of age Augustus not out of Rome Tyberius kept them also within the Citie whom he had chosen for Governours of Provinces Politick Writers have blamed the letting of a subject grow great in the Citie more than the banishing of him when he was grown so Aristotle desires a remedy from the Lawes others seek it from Art They keep them idle who haue any signe of great worth they transplant those who have gained great reputation in one place into another If riches gained it him they cause him to spend them if valour in warres they call him home to the Citie if he be reputed of great understanding or rashly valiant they employ the one in affaires which may over-throw him and expose the other to dangers in which he may hazard the losse of himselfe If he attained thereunto by being officious and serviceable they deny him those boones and favours which he asketh And generally upon the least occasion they punish them all most severely But all this hath more outward shew than safety There is neither Law nor Art can hinder the rising off him whom Nature doth even from his birth accompany with such beames of happinesse that either he findes no resistance or forces his way through wheresoever hee meets with it good things prove excellent to him and he can turn bad into good All kind of food serves him for nourishment and each poyson is a remedy to him These kinde of balls the harder they are dashed against the ground they higher the bownd up towards heaven Herod the great by Hireanus his first persecuter of him got the Tetrarchy by the second the Principality by the third he made himselfe Lord of his own native Countrey by the assistance of the Romanes Occasions oftentimes will not permit them to be kept idle If the tumults of Naples had gone forward the Spaniards had determined to send the great Captaine thither again The businesse of Portugal would not suffer the Duke of Alva to be idle though he were in prison And the warres of Germany forced the Militia to be returned in Waldestein's hands Transplanting and changing of place gives way for the gaining of new reputation and doth not diminish the old It had not a vailed Tiberius to have transplanted Germanicus out of the North into the East if his death had not helped him By great expences a man for the most part gains applause want of money doth not endammage a subject that is in credit and few great ones have lost themselves thereby Caesars friends were deceived therein for he then became Lord of the Common-wealth when they thought his debts would have ruined him To call one home from an army to the City is as much as to adde the peoples favour to that of the Souldiours Domitian finding he was not thereby able to deale with Agricola was constrained to make use of poison and Tiberius met with a Subject that would not part from it To put them upon businesses in which they may lose their
credit or endanger the losing of their lives is a matter full of hazard and adventure Wise men will come off in their affaires well enough howsoever the businesses prosper and valiant men for the most part overcome dangers be they never so great building their greatnesse where others had prepared a precipice for them It so happened to Saul with David and to Seleucus with Iugurth To deny them those boons and favours which they crave and oppresse their friends moves them to indignation and doth not abate their power The Prince of Orange and the Duke of Ariscot have testified that sufficiently Tiberius increased the peoples love to Germanicus more by persecuting him than if he had cherished him If it fell out well with Agesilaus touching Lysander it was because the goodnesse of the Subject helped him To punish and not utterly extinguâ—sh great ones is a great error in policie small errors in them ought to be connived at and great faults punished with death There is no medium to be used towards such between cherishing and killing If Astiages in stead of killing Arpagus sonne had put the father to death hee had not lost his Kingdome And if if Craesus had taken away Demetrius his life when he put out his eyes he had not lost himself Let it be as it will certainly it is barbarous inhuman in Comon-wealths Princes to make laws to hinder such as undertake actions worthy of everlasting fame and a glorious memory that are valorous and vertuous both in being and acting when they should rather enact such as might encourage men thereunto He that invented this most wicked Law of Ostracisme was an enemy to God Man and Nature and a ruiner of all good Lawes It aâ—mes not so much at destroying of tyranny as at the exercising of it with security whether it be in Prince Nobles or People taking away honorable and regardfull subjects whose valour and worth are the Sanctuary to which wronged subjects flye and whose presence is the onely curb to make Princes and Senators ashamed of committing wickednesse There never was any Common-wealth more abounding in worthy men than that of Rome while iâ— slourished nor that made better use of them than it did while it stood uncorrupted The people did with extraordinary applause honour a Citizens great vertue and punished with most severe justice the defects of the same man if he chanced to alter his nature When they perceived Melius to aspire to tyranny Manlius to attempt it Appius Claudius to have already attained it it did not help Melius hat he had freed them from famine Manlius that he had vindicated them from ssavery nor Appius that hee had been popular But they threw two of them downe headlong from the Tarpeian Rock and conspired the death of the other In the good time of the Common-wealth eminent vertue was much esteemed and not feared because that as soone as it aimed at sinister ends it lost together with its name both favour and applause And whereas it was reverenced whilest it was sincere when once it came to be counterfeit it was condemned The greatest dangers it ran it selfe into was not for having kept their best Citizens amongst them but exiled them As when Coriolanus came to conquer Rome and Furius Camillus was not there to defend it Let Common-wealths be so framed that all the parts thereof may be contented and let Princes rule their Subjects with a Fatherly affectioÌ„ that no desire of change may grow up and in so doing they both may cherish and prefer subjects of great worth They shall enjoy their vertue while it is upright without feare because it will be easie to chastise and punish it if once it grow corrupted Alcibiades to make use of his Talent and satisfie his unlimited ambition and desire of glory hinders the Athenians peace and goes to Warre with the Laacedemonians puts his native Countrey in hazard and brings it to a precioice Some subjects are born in Cities with most excellent inclinations and endowments Amongst those that want them as well as amongst those that are full of them some know it and some are ignorant of it One that is good for nothing and knowes he is so doth no hurt because he will not adventure himselfe neither could he do any great hurt if he did not know himself so he were known for then he would not be put to any tryall Indeed if he be not known there may bee some danger in him yet if hee doth not overthrow the Common-wealth or the Prince upon his first tryal before a second they will be undeceived and know what he is He that hath excellent parts and knows not of it is the better and he that hath them and knowes it oftentimes proves the worst And the later is like a medicine which finding no excremeÌ„ts to expell and break its force joyns with the humors finding noithng to heal corrupts the former The former is like Nature which shewes not her greatest force but upon greatest occasions One like flame set to wood having taken power by the matter bold and confident shewes out his form The other unseen like fire hidden in a stone wants the collision of occasion to manifest and disclose it The one ambitious and proud to passe on a potentia ad actum hunts after occasions many times he takes them great and sometimes they present themselves so sometimes they become so although they were once but mean whereby he loses himselfe and often times brings the ruine of the State alâ—ng with his own The other being humble seeks not after them and if they joyn with him they draw forth his good parts by the power of the matter He is the securer by so much as there is difference between the taking and seeking after occasions The one raises himselfe with the greatnesse of affaires the other is depressed one endangers the State the other drawes it out of dangers He that doth not know his owne worth dies unfortunate if occasions do not seek and finde him out sois he that knows it if he doth not finde them In States that have no occasions it were good there were no such men or if there be that they would not grow ambitious The soile which brings forth such trees if it have not roome wherein they may spread abroad their branches must seek and get some so must leave a way open for violence and â—ury to vent it selfe at For if they finde no way they will make one and there is a great deale of difference between a way rent open by ambition and one framed with prudency If a hammer worketh out a doore way or passage in a wall it doth it with designe and intent A piece of Ordnance shakes and oftentimes throwes the Wall downe but will never make a regular overture Nature spake to Scipio Nasica obscurelv It shewed him that it was not good to destroy Carthage hee understood the thing but not the sense and meaning
judge the greatest action to bee best Hence it is that the rash and foolehardy man is rather applauded then the valiant the prodigall rather then the liberall The little difference that is between vertue and vice hath also a share in this mistake where vice is accompanied with ambition because that though the subject suffer himselfe to be hurried away by the senses to vices ye he so carrries himselfe therein that amongst the vices now and then shines forth some act not through vertue but through vehemency sometimes of liberality sometimes of magnanimity sometimes of fortitude sometimes of affability And sometimes also in the midst of incontinency a thing which seemes very strange and yet is true he shewes signes of great continency The roote is not really in vertue as if it were not yet utterly extinguished it is in the embers of it heated by the vice of ambition A great vertue is a speciall meanes to have a great vice born withall and pardoned like to a glance of light which it brings along with it and with the splendor makes the judgement to eâ—re there can be no eminent understanding without some parcell of folly It is set downe by wise men for an infallible axiom The reason of it is not easily given There bee understandings which seeme to be great and are rather unbrideled and wild ones They draw men away before they can follow them They run and in a manner flie moved by a heate which doth not onely warme but enflame and set them on fire the Carrier is swift It is a horse which runnes loose and hath not wisedome sitting upon him to governe and guide him This kind of understanding is peradventure one of those which Seneca calls uncontinent and which St Paul desires might be sober Attributes which seem metaphorical and are most proper because that manner of speculation is a note of the manner of operating seeing that the same heate which let loose the reines to the higher part sets the lower also at liberty And as the unbrideled understanding goes where it ought not to goe so the senses set at liberty run whither they will Men who cleerely see the defects of the inferior part and in the superior can discerne nothing but what is great they judge that subject to abound in many vertues and many vices when that is also a vice in him which seemes not to be so Other understandings there be which are so attentive and fixed upon speculation that being wholly set upon it dividing in a manner the soule from the body raise themselves with the former and grow carelesse os the latter and whilest they endeavour to shew the greater part to be man they discover the other to be beast To this ancient Poets had a relation when they represented Satyres their upper parts like men and the lower like goates Whilst the understanding is busie in speculation the senses runne and skip about like goates having none to direct or rule them Meane understandings doe not raise themselves so high as to make such a division and whereas the other are men and beasts these are men-beasts and if they do not attaine to be such eminent subjects they doe not likewise come to be such great beasts Behold whence proceeds the inequality of eminent understandings because that according to Plato they have a parcell of madnesse in them Alcibiades was one of the first sort and so was almost all the Heroes Diogenes and most part of the Philosophers were of the second I know not by what spirit Galen was moved when instead of defending such a mans knowledge he defended his folly and incontinency Alcibiades advises the Athenians to make warre against the Sicilians He had no other reason to doe it but his owne desire of glory and to surpasse his emulator He that suffers himselfe to be overcome by this passion is never quiet nor suffers any one else to be so The appetite of the taste already satisfied with food runnes not to the desiring of new though better and if it doth runne to it it is not nature but intemperancy that perswades it Having received it into the stomack it is satisfied if it remaines there too long it loaths it if it quickly disgests he returnes to desire more The appetite of glory goes likewise to the object although mistaken Scarce is it touched by naturall heate to disgest it but poison-like it stupefies the understanding which scarce discovers it but it loaths it If one should take it away from it when it hath had it but a little while it would againe returne to desiring of it But those things which serve for an object to humane ambition have volatile spirits soaring upon the superficies and not fixed in the substance the understanding quickly takes them out and sodainly consumes them The thing remaines not living but a carkasse which because it remaines is not desired and because a carkasse doth not satisfie seeing that nature for a short time is contented with a little and is not for ever satisfied with an infinite It is a great dammage to not enjoy at all the glory one hath acquired and worse to keepe it but for an instant the one incites to greater things and the other oftentimes hinders from attaining them Unfortunate man that cannot be content with a little â— unlesse novelty trouble the discourse nor with much unlesse raâ—e and fury take it away All is but madnesse whereof the one is bound fast because it lasts the other would be bound if it lasted That which the wisest man in the world cannot doe a mad man sometimes doth it One doth not content himselfe with the state wherein he is the other is contented with that which he hath not because hee is deceived by a fixed desire which doth not set the defect before him he imagines he hath it as he desires and hath not so much free understanding left as to reason upon it how it would be if hee had obtained it and so to refell the deceits of imagination with arguments of reason Nature would shew that worldly happinesse doth not consist in having it but in the manner of considering that he onely hath it who contemplates things in their inside and possesses in that which he gaines the good which caused him to desire it They both erre the mad man with delight the wise man with trouble one in beleeving he hath obtained wherewith to content himselfe the other because he knowes not that hee hath obtained it The Athenians make Alcibiades head of the enterprise which himselfe had set forward and perswaded them to An ordinary way of proceeding both in Common-wealths Principalities because other men will not accept of that charge as another mans business Or peradventure he is judged fittest to be employed in it as having most interest in the good issue of it or as better informed of the meanes to attaine unto it I know not whether those influences which made the counsell acceptable
oppressed and not inclined If he operates through envy he cloaks it with feare and makes shew of a faint heart to conceale a mâ—licious one and will perswade he followes Nature which obliges one to defend himselfe when he goeth against it in hating that which is good But he doth not hate it before he defames it Envy and a worm resemble one another they close with the best part of a fruit or of a man they stop not before they have corrupted the one really and the other imaginarily and whereas the worme feeds and rests in the corruption envy is fed and tossed up and down by that which is imagined Evill is hated and not envied goodnesse is not hated but envied Rancor is without any reall object it runs towards goodnesse but towards that which is apparent and not the true it sees vertue and valour in him whom it emulates First an equality seemed inglorious to him now inferiority appeares shamefull if it be in a great spirit it still goes on in emulation if it be in a faint heart it embraces envy a vice inseparable from pusillanimity it looks upoÌ„ the honour which the other gets and that which himself loses If he imagines him to be an enemy proud rash and presumptuous he beleeves nothing can give him better content then to overcome him desires nothing more than by advancing his own Trophee to abase and bring him low and employes his vertue and valour in nothing else But if afterward he sees him before his eyes beautifull eloquent valiant affable not boasting of his valour but moderating his vertue and reassume the same posture in which he was by nature set and forsake that which he had fabricated to himself It is impossible for him to retain his hatred because qualities though they be naturall if they meet with a contrary that is greater in its presence they must receive it though the form drive it out altered but not corrupted Modesty moderates envy but doth not extinguish it Misery turnes it into compassion and eminency into amazement That Proposition of the Master that hatred is irreconcilable seems directly opposite to the other proposition That the cause ceasing the effect ceases and yet they are both true Hatred and love peradventure cannot be framed in us without the help of Nature The freedome of will reacheth not thereunto it may overcome it but not destroy it bridle it but not change it whence comes that sometimes we operate with one as though we hated him and yet we love him as though wee loved him and yet we hate him The causes of operations are externall of passions internall The change of qualities changes the operating and that of the substance extinguishes the being And because it is thought that we have two Natures in us one of Flesh and the other of Spirit and both of them in the same individuum the one may love and the other hate because Love and Hatred are not contraries if they meet with two contraries otherwise to love ones Neighbour and hate sinne could not consist together Alcibiades attires and cloathes himselfe with the Lacedemonians vertues and will thereby perswade that hee hath disrobed himselfe of all manner of vices This Metamoâ—phosis though it last not very long is not used but by great understanding onely assaulted by vehement passions of Glory and Feare Rome had at one time two Emperours Otto who was made in the Citie Vitellius who was set up by the Army both of them vicious The one presently forsakes his old and usuall course of life the other followes it still Otto was wont to deny his own affections to promote his interests so that the power of commanding excited and stirred up vertue in him and in Vitellius it increased his defects The former being incontinent and ambitious the latter intemperate and simple Otto adventured to assume the Empire because hee could not live privat Vitellius accepted of it because he knew not how to refuse it and not knowing how to seek after the delight of the understanding abandoned himselfe to that of the senses The Romane Senate was amazed at Otto's forsaking his vices and at his counterfeited vertue The same being done by Alcibiades might have given the Lacedemonians cause of suspition if not of feare seeing they might be sure the vices would returne greater in bulk and more violently through the acrimony which they would acquire by being so long stopped and dissembled Even so it befalls him that thinkes to help a swift running streame which overflowes his medowes without turning it another way only with making the bankes up he may stay it for a while but on a suddaine he turnes it all upon himselfe and whereas before it would gently have overflowed his land it beares down trees by the rootes overthrowes buildings and beats downe all that comes in its way that opposition having gotten together a greater heape of waters and made them more violently sierce Those that restrayning their passions retaine keepe in their smallest and meanest ones if they did goe calmely along with them they might in part vent out their evill genius without expecting the last fury and violence which a feigned vertue being unabled to resist they blindly and furiously are precipitated in it So had Otto done if death had not prevented him and so did Alcibiades wickedly committing adultery with Agis the King of Sparta his wife Agis was not very circumspect seeing he did not perceive that some great end must of necessity be hidden under so great a change which hee ought to beleeve had taken its originall from an unlimited ambition and to mistrust that thereby and through his luxury he would one day get away from him two indivisible things his wife and his kingdome and indeed he got away the one and in all likelihood laid a plot to gain the other seeing he used that meanes to attaine thereunto which others have happily put in practise to doe the like First to make his valour known then to publish the adultery and finally to make shew that he contemned Agis what was it else then to endeavour to gaine his kingdome inviting by this meanes discontented persons to side with him animating and securing them But I know not whether Tacitus did well understand from whence proceeded that feare when he ascribed it to disguised and cloaked vices and falsified vertues Ottoes vices were lust idleÌ„nesse and gormandizing which were indeed to be wished of him yet not to be feared if they had returned to him Uertues though false carry for the most part their corruption within them glistring and shining on the outside as if they were true and pure vertues and are more pernicious to them that make use of them then to those for whose sakes and against whom they are employed And howsoever they doe lesse hurt in this manner feigned then an open impudent shamelesnesse in vices The Senate in mine opinion seeing Otto thus plunged in passions not thinking that he
could leave them though peradventure he might disguise and alter them feared lest instead of idlenesse he would take delight in labour and affaires and in stead of luxury he would be filled with feare and jealousie and through one take away the Magistrates authority and through the other the most honorable mens lives There are some respects which bind mâ—e upon occasion of Alcibiades lust to speake what I thinke of Princes soiled with such a defect If the good temperature of a man consists in a perfect symmetry of the first elements which blended together may compose a mixt in which neither heat nor cold nor moisture nor drought be prevalent its quality will be lukewarme a meane between hot and cold its operations moderate it will cause the subject to be of a healthfull complexion of calme sences indifferent morall no eminent Philosopher rather void of vices then endowed with any eminent vertues Such a man to be maintained in health must still he under the Physicians hand and the Physician had need to be an Esculapius I marvaile at one of the ancient Sagâ—s or wise men who caâ—ls such a kind of man happy yet sayes at the same time that this man must have his sleep his rest his motion his food his thoughts his breathing all measured and lâ—mited so that he shall not have so much as a fâ—ee moment left to himselfe as if happinesse according to Mecenas his disorderly opinion consisted onely in living though most unhappy This complexion is not to be wished to a Prince and if he had it it ought not to bee maintained in him seeing that to preserve it he ought to be wholly his owne to become a slave to the Physician whereas a Prince should never be so farre his owne as to make himselfe a slave to his subjects If then there be no such temperament to be found and if there be any such either it cannot or ought not be maintained we must needs consequently fall into some excesse which may serve for nourishment and roote both to vice and vertue because as Iacob and Esau were borne both of one Mother so froÌ„ the selfe same temperament may proceed both a great vertue a great vice He that was of opinion that there could be no great vertue in a man unlesse there were also some great vice was not peradventure deceived if he meant of a naturall inclination thereunto And if any vice be a signe of a great understanding it is that of luxury which useth to be great where it findes the fire of the Flava bilis or yelow choller and the acritude of the atra or black We see that those brute beasts which have most humane knowledge and seeme almost to discourse as Apes and the like are exceeding luxurious and that at all times beyond the custome of other beasts And to this peradventure the ancient inventers of fables had a relation when they feigned all the Gods much addicted to this defect of lust as the Poets also did their Heroes If I were to frame unto my selfe a Prince according to mine owne mind I would have him continent by vertue and not by nature For the naturall continency proceeds from coldnesse of the temperament and alwayes excludes acrimony and coldnesse without acrimony causeth stupidity and not prudency which requires melancholy not the dreggs but the flower of blood not that which is borne adust and carries imprinted in the acrimony of its ashes the character of the efficient as the learnedest and wisest men of the world have beleeved And St Paul continually complains of the troubles which the acrimony of the prick in the flesh did bring him into Lust is alwayes bad for him that is subject to it but it is not alwayes hurtfull to a Common-wealth If it doth not passe from the person to the office it is the defect of the man and not of the Prince seeing that in this case hee may be a good Politician though a bad Moralist There have beene some in our dayes that have in their youth run themselves a little out in amarous passions yet they have guided themselves therein with so much prudency that our Ancestors would have termed those passions vertues as they did Catoes drunkennesse And truely it is no small matter for one that is irregular himself to be continent and to overcome that passion by which he is overcome It is in a manner a freeing the superior paâ—t from it and confining it within th' ignoble part of the senses and an absolute way to make it appeare that nature hath the predominance over evill Then the Physician may stand idle and administer no Physick for feare of doing hurt Cruâ—ities cannot bee stirred without doing hurt and that which is concocted needs no cure It is no great matter for a man that is free and loose to overcome his enemy but to doe it when he is shackled and bound without unshackling or unbinding is very much If it were lawfull for me to relate some things which have happened in our dayes it would surely cause such as have too sharply in this point touched the reputation of a Soveraigne Prince and his favourite to recant and change their opinions they would find and heare such things that to admit of an extraordinary vertue they would winke at a small vice judging it not to be a reall but a feigned vice and rather an affectation then a passion That cannot be a good horse that hath not bin a crosse Colt but all kind of crossenesse in a Colt is not a signe that he will prove a good horse Some Colts will be bounding leaping and running not to draw their necks out of the collar or to shun their labour but to shew their generous mettle and spirit to be sportfull and frollick and not to refuse the bit And other some againe will use the same tricks out of a resty and sloathfull spirit onely to shunne worke and labour and though a stander by can hardly find any difference in their motion yet he that governes and rides them can easily perceive it The land which brings forth wild plants is not alwayes bad yet it is alwayes unmanured A bad weed doth sometimes betoken the goodnesse of the land Let it then bee lawfull for me to conclude that great lust is oftentimes a signe of a great understanding and that amongst the defects of a Prince luxury is one of the least if so he doe in some part suppresse it by not committing therein any violent or unjust act and in all this I meane of such actions onely as hee commits in his youthfull yeares Every one hath some defects which are proper to that age as well of the body as of the mind The Physician whose worth wil not suffer any man to beleeve that he erred was wont to say that diseases are most dangerous when they come in unseasonable seasons the malignity and greatnesse of them shewing it selfe in that that the adverse season of the
perswade him that is possessed of a good and healthfull body replenished with the best humors that can be in man not endammaged by any action that he hath need to take Physick if experience had not taught it Hyppocrates and his authority us None would go about to perswade it and questionlesse no man would suffer himselfe to be perswaded thereunto No more then we should be able to perswade a Monarch or a Common-wealth which had obtained some great conquest that it were very usefull for him or it to yeeld up againe what it had conquered There would be requisite for such a purpose a Politick Hippocrates full of knowledge experience and authority and peradventure he would hardly be able to perswade it Scipio Nasica was of great esteeme in the Common-wealth of Rome yet was he not able to disswade the ruining of Carthage Such is the power of likely hood it is hard to meet with an understanding that can find out truth a heart that will advise it and a Prince that will follow it Such an advise is for the most part unfortunate when it is not accepted of it wants its effect when it is accepted it is not seen and because it goes against a thing which is seen it is not beleeved The Author comes to be blamed for ignorance and malice Anniball was advised and peradventure it was done with wisdome to not go to Rome after the defeate of Cannas and because he did not goe he was taxed with ignorance Hunno would have perswaded the Carthaginians peradventure through malice in the midst of victories when Rome seemed even ready to fall to seeke after peace and because he could not perswade it he was esteemed wise It is ordinary for human malice to judge that advice to be best which hath not bin accepted And for its ignorance to refuse to be cleered in matters which have likelyhood in them any way but by the evill successe To give counsell against likely-hood requires a great understanding or a great passion The one cannot perswade unlesse it it be knowen the other if it be not concealed It is sufficient for the understanding to be reputed Passion must be feared and may make it but not perswade it to be executed being known it loses its credit and yet it is alwayes known being little it is not effectuall and being great it cannot be concealed The happy man will not think upon the future for feare of grieving himselfe the envious will for his comfort That which is keepes him in torment Onely the hope that it will not last revives him The understanding subtilizeth itselfe to make it be beleeved and if there be any reason it findes it out if there be none it feignes one whence comes that others do not beleeve it through the difficulty there is in discerning the true birth of the understanding from the feigned and fantasticall one of the desire Alcibiades having intelligence in the City of Selibria made a match to be brought into it by a signall given by fire suspition that one of the conspirators would discover the treaty caused an anticipation He not being prepared and seeing the signall given ran thither with a few giving order for the rest to follow But being come into the City he found so much opposition that he was not able to resist the too advantagious power He causeth a trumpet to be sounded Commands the Cittizens to lay down their armes if they value their lives When a man is in danger and hath his sword in his hand all the spirits retired to the heart and having in a manner forsaken the braine it is an easie matter to be deceived whence proceeds the danger which is in speaking whilest one is skirmishing so that many times enterprizes have bin lost after they have bin in a manner attained and wonne onely by a word miss-understood The Selibrians hear the enemies within the walls they imagine they are all there they heare a trumpet which doth courteously and friendly invite them to yeeld their braine is not apt to search out the matter and find out the deceit and having their weapons in their hands to defendtheir City and their lives judging it impossible to defend the one and seeing the way opened to secure the other they accept of the proffer The commanding and resolute speech and voice did cooperate greatly in this sanatick terror the command causes obedience the resolvednesse terrifies especially where disobedience is death To not beleeve it they must of necessity have had time to discourse upon it and therefore the imminent punishment giving no time to discourse they were forced to beleeve Seeing then it was hard to avoid the danger and canvasse the matter and harder to goe against the senses without canvassing of it that was beleeved to secure life which without discourse could not chuse but be beleeved and could not be discoursed without hazard of life When the Roman Army commanded by Germanicus at the River of Rhine mutined Mennius reduced that part which was most violent insolent with resolute cōmanding words which separated the universall from the particular a thing which terrifies the more forcing a man in his thoughts to forsake that union which makes him insolent and bold He takes hold of the eagle or ensigne and boldly cries he that doth not follow me is an enemy to Caesar Saul being slighted by a part of the Israelites takes two Oxen and hewes them in pieces sends the pieces into all the quarters of Israel and sends them word that so shall his Oxe be served that doth not follow him The commanding and resolute message which made the publick cause particular wrought in such manner that all Israel followed him Alcibiades assaulted by a sodaine chance instead of hazarding himselfe with those few Souldiers which followed him and casting himselfe into the midst of the danger hath recourse to deceit And that makes me to esteem him rather subtile then valiant Seeing that nature being sodainly brought into a streight flyes presently for reliefe to that part from which it hopes for most assistance If it bee from the braine we lay by strength if from strength we make no use of wit And if wit had bin laid aside and not made use of in this case how could he have found out such a subtle device as could hardly have bin contrived being out of danger and settled in mind In a great passion we leave art and flye to nature The one needs attention when it operates the other needs none And because in great passions man oftentimes abandons himself that passion then prevailes which operates though it be abandoned Nature and art taken in a streight especially by feare cannot help but hinder one another The one is not followed by discourse and the other being abandoned cannot make use of it Nature hath left but few void of defence but she seldome suffers sagacity and valour to be in one subject To whom she hath given a heart
Evill will takes the reputation from the man not from the Artist Ignorance from the Artist not from the man If an eminent Painter drawes a pourtraiture defectively the Common sorte say he would not doe it better his emulator that he could not his friend that he was not in the humour nor right veine of working He that loves him will rather admit that he was drunk then ignorant to sustaine his ability and talent Hee that hates him wil sooner say he was ignorant than drunk seeking to overthrow him In nature art and all other things belonging to understanding a fault committed out of malice and wilfulnesse is not so bad as one committed for want of ability or through ignorance But in such things as belong to manners and morall actions it is quite contrary He that will see the difference between the judgement of Nobles that are touched with envie and the Peoples which are taken with admiration let him consisider that Plutarch speaking thereof saith that Alcibiades had no will to overcome and brings forth Nicias a Noble man accusing him for the same ill successe to the people and saying that he did it through ignorance carelesnesse folly and vanity attributing it not to his evil heart but to his ill understanding and other things which might disparage his wisdome A great reputation is an enemy to him that hath no merit to him that hath it not equall to his reputation and also to him that hath it but equall It is onely favourable to him that hath a talent surpassing that great esteeme He enjoyes not only that which he hath but also that which he hath not but hopes to attain unto And because humane felicity doth not consist in obtaining the greater things but in the greatest hope of obtaining them because that a continued act in a small time produces a habit from which springs satiety or insensibility and hee shall be more happy then the other whose merit and repute is equall It is a great misfortune for a man to have worth and want repute and farre greater to have repute and want worth The feare of the future disgrace spoils his present pleasure He cannot ground his delight upon that which is false if he doth not deceive himselfe he expects shame from being undeceived Although he findes not himselfe faulty for having deceived yet hee would be happy in some measure if he could but call in that error which he cannot perpetuate in others because the knowledge of ones selfe which is mans chiefe vertue is the Hangman which torments him Finally a great repute is the greatest help a man can have that will not operate and the greatest dammage for him that is put to the Test and is tried for either he proves according to expectation and then he gaines nothing or proves beneath the expectation and loses all he had gained Reputation is not diminished by degrees nor cannot be broken piece-meale if it be not reserved intire it quite abandoneth one If a particular man hath gottten it let him be content with having it if a Prince let him not if he can avoid it put it to a triall It is better to die ingreat repute than put it to adventure to leave it doubtfull in the world what would have followed than to put ones self in danger of what wil follow Voluntarily one ought not put it to triall but being forced thereunto adventure himselfe with it and upon occasion of losing it lose himselfe also Not only that victory which Alcibiades got over the Citie of Selibria but all the rest of his actions likewise discover him rather to have been full of cunning subtilty than of wisdome From whence in my opinion proceeded the instability of his fortune Wisdome infused by the gift of grace hath somewhat in it that is Angelicall and sets a man in the way to be rather a Citizen of heaven than a Ruler in the world Cunning and subtilty hath something of Diabolicall in it and is made for hell Acquired wisdome mâ—kes a man apt for all things but he that should alwayes take it in a strict way in many affaires might use it with much disadvantage by reason of mens malice Hence it comâ—s that it is not alwaves one and thâ— same but is divided into Morall Politicall â—economicall and Military In all of them is râ—quired a candidnesse of heart if the end â—e good But if you except the Morall it is because the meanes aâ—e not direct and then becomes sagacity which is a part and species of wisdome For an oblique meanes doth not alwayes take away the vertue when it tends to a good end and that the meanes it selfe it not vicious A Generall of an Army deceives an enemy by some wile to overcome him The Physician the Patient to cure him and yet the wisdome of these men consists in well mixing the Actives with the Passives All this seemes to be in those words Be ye as wise as Serpents and as innocent as Doves That Serpent could not be called wise which in another place is said to be the most subtile Beast of the sield If Subtilty with candidnesse of heart were not wisdome inferior indeed to morall wisdome in a morall private life but most necessary in a Politick Military and Oeconomicall Government And this subtilty is not peradventure so befitting a Morall man as a Polititian The morall mans end is the good of the individuum which end the more vertuous the operations are the larger it is The Politick mans end is the good of the species which oftentimes doth not admit of pure meere vertue without adding somwhat to it or taking somwhat from it It changes if not the nature yet the circumstances in passing from him that lives to himselfe to him that lives for others because there is great difference between a Governor or Ruler and a Tutor A. Prince must not make use of vice in governing nor yet of such vertues as ruine the people Clemency liberality mercy fortitude and all other vertues are coÌ„mendable in a privat man In a Prince I commend rigor above clemeÌ„cy parsimony above liberality roughness above mercy and cautell above fortitude Rigor will preserve his peace at home parsimony wil defend him froÌ„ externall war without endangering the blood of his subjects or emptying unmeasurably his Exchequers Roughnesse will preserve justice and prevent so many ill effects which compassion produces to which we must imagine Aristotle had a relation when in his Poetick which is also a part of his Politicks he made so principall a business the instruction of Princes to let them learn Tragick Poems as a thing that would purge their dispositions from mercy Finally cautelousnesse will not suffer him to expose his life which is of such value to gain a vain and unprofitable repute of being valorous David whilest he was a private man did always shew great signes of valour but being once King he suffered himselfe to be perswaded by Ioab to absent
thing there is in pictures for there are some coloured in such sort that at the first sight they doe constraine the judgement of ignorant somtimes of understanding men also yet with this difference that the first still continue and persevere in their opinions and these alter it as soon as they have examined the businesse Such kinds of qualities which so violently attract in Policie Rethorick Poetry Painting and other Arts doe proceed as I said from a kinde of Fury which is seen in the visage of an active man and in the visage and gesture of the Orator Tacitus was not content with calling it a River but increases the Epithet with the name of High sounding to expresse the noise with which it violently runs Seneca calls it Impetuous and doth not say it inclines but ravishes the mindes of hearers The same Fury though it bee not seen nor heard in Painters yet it is seen imprinted in the works The works of Tintoretto though they be inferior to Raphael's pictures yet with these qualities they take away their advantage They are both good but at the first glance if you doe not take time you will applaud Tintoretto's most if you consider them well Raphaels He that coloureth best shall finde greater applause at the vulgars hands than he that designes and drawes best although he colour well also So likewise falls it out in Poetry and Rethorick that which prevailes in that part that belongs most to the sense being highliest applauded For that presently represents it self to the eye of man and the sight straightway carries it to the understanding and without letting it have time to discourse upon it obliges it to give judgement on apparances side A man fit for great employment ought to be endowed with wisdome to know what he is to undertake and with activenesse to goe through with businesse when he hath deliberated upon it If you finde two subjects one most wise and sufficient but not very active the other most active though not so wise activity being easier to know than prudence and immediatly perceived in the visage gestures and eyes of him that is endowed therewith Prudence being invisible as internall and concealed vertue which is not discovered but onely in occasions surely wise men will passe their verdicts on the active mans side he shal be put upon all the employments Let Princes beware of these lively Spirits of these beautifull tinctures this harmony of verse this streame of eloquence for fear lest it take away their judgement to the endangering and utter ruine of the State Alcibiades above all other things was noted for inequality he was eloquent in a degree above man fairer than woman eminent in understanding liberall and pleasing but unjust lustfull and tyrannicall Those who have such a mixture of great vices and great vertues sometime precipitate and fall almost as soon as they are born sometimes also they make a great noyse in the world when they happen upon times which will beare with such vices and stand in need of such vertues Alcibiades met with a popular Common-wealth fitted to his inequality that applauded his liberality and beauty suffered it selfe to be perswaded by his eloquence admired his resolution humorousnesse and valour did run along with him in his vices of luxury surfeiting tyranny and injustice which were pleasing to people so long as they were employed against the Nobility Nero who was blemished with such defects and yet gained the Romane peoples applause more than any other Romane Emperour Indeed it was by reason that he met with times differing from Alcibiades times the Senate then being predominant over the people which lived depressed and without authority his ruine could not be prevented whereas Alcibiades did not take so much harm within the Common-wealth in getting honours as abroad in managing of affaires for although his temperament was well enough accommodated and fitted to the state which the Citie was in yet he found it otherwise in forraigne affaires whereby he was necessitated to fall And though he did rise again divers times assisted by his great and good parts yet being at the last over-born by his evill ones he remained oppressed Equality is not onely judged to be an endowment of a wise man but also a signe that he is one seeing it is he that commands the starres If a heaven variable in its motions moves above us the stars alwayes varying in their aspects have their influences upon us and an aire mutable every moment doth encompasse us and we are our selves framed of an unequall temperament who shall be able to keep himself continually in the same tone in despight of heavens stars elements and temperaments Certainly a wise man shall We are made a spectacle to God and men said St. Paul And is it not a worthy spectacle to see a wretched man a handfull of earth a point a nothing to oppose the vastnesse of the heavens the influences of the starres the masse of the Elements his owne nature and conquer them all Equality signorizes over the influences because it constantly goes alwayes against them inequality is commanded by them because it alwayes followes them various Finally after so many Catastrophes Alcibiades by the Lacedemonians deceits and Farnabazus his treachery ended his life by the Sword When Nature fights with a disease and shewes it selfe sometimes superior and sometimes inferior it betokens and argues weaknesse in it at last it remains conquered the disease increasing in malignity and nature decreasing in strength which it loses even then when it overcomes Relapses for the most part are deadly because that nature overcame not the disease at first but onely when it used its last endeavour and when the disease riseth again above its nature wanting a new and greater endeavour must of necessity succumb perish Even so man wrastling with Fortune and somtimes being superior sometimes inferior must needs at last remain inferior be overcome For an unfortunate man to strive against Fortune for the first time is ignorance being once beaten downe to rise againe and returne to the combat is obstinacie but to prosecute and follow it is meer and absolute follie What ease would it be to a man to know himselfe the very first houre to be unfortunate he would shun the resort of men to make himselfe a Companion of wild beasts and in stead of Cityes and Palaces Caves and Woods would be his habitation And if Fortune did seeke him out instead of giving him her hand she would turne her back to him He would have his recourse to night to not behold the light which is so tormenting to him the Sun and Heavens that are so contrary and would also wish the night darke that he might not see in it those starâ—s which threaten him dammage and ruine Happinesse shewes ill in a mans eyes in the darke and unhappinesse in the light It had bin better for such a one to not have bin borne or to have dyed as soone
And if this be true education being like a garden will make the masculine vigour grow effeminate take a-away the horridnesse which produces feare the Majesty which causeth reverence and will change the Sex and metamorphose Man into Woman Many Princes have found it so who having conquered fierce stubborn nations have not taken more pains in any thing to keep them under the yoke of bondage than in polishing what was rough tame what was wilde and effeminate by manuring and trimming in a Garden the masculine conditions of those wilde but robustious plants yet I doe not mean to vilifie Education but rather intend to speake in commendation of it not digressing from the example of Agriculture which Plutarch sets down A husbandman sometimes meets with an excellent soile to sowe Corne upon and if he does but even as it were break it up with the Plough and sowes but a little quantity of seed upon it it will yeeld a fruitfull and abundant harvest because the goodnesse of the soile not oppressed by the multitude of seed doth beyond measure increase that little and being not softened with overmuch tilling it strengthens the stemme and with great fertility comes to maturity But if the unskilfull husbandman too carefully manures and tills it and sowes a great deale of seed upon it at the first comming up he shall see an abounding crop sprung which being growen up with the fruite shall lye upon the ground and being laid will be over-growne with weeds and shall gather great eares but empty and putrified A husbandman sometimes meetes with a soile that is so barren that he leaves it in the hands of nature after he hath tilled it and sowen it with very good seed and it will bring forth grasse instead of Corne and cockle instead of Wheat But if he chance to meete with an indifferent soile there he uses all the art and skill he hath in husbandry there he soweth seed in abundance and whereas in excellent soil with little art hindering as it were nature in indifferent soile with great Art assisting it hereapes a most plentifull and abounding Harvest This is an instruction for men Let not an evill nature be too much tilled nor fed with seed it is offended by being fed and too much tillage offends it either the seed doth not fadge and take root there or it turnes to poyson Let an indifferent nature have a great deale of education and a good one but a little if you will not have it grow weak and effeminate The ancient Romanes whilest the excellent soile lasted did not tenderly till it with learning because they would not weaken the sturdinesse of their Citizens nor cause their corn to lie upon the ground through too much ranknesse but did educate them rustically in a Military way and so they brought forth a plentifull generation of Heroick persons The curious dressing of a Garden is fit for Tulips and such kindes of Flowers which for the most part delight the eye but are without savour sent or substance and such are those men who brought up in Musicke singing and dancing serve for ornament but are fruitlesse and vain in a Common-wealth The advantage which an excellent soile being but roughly tilled hath above that which is carefully manured and fed will more plainly appeare in passing over two other parts we multiply the comparison Titianus was questionless an admirable Painter sometimes hee was so accurate in the Draughts of his Pensill and so exact in his limming that it seemed hee would make the very haires numerable and sometimes hee would content himselfe with drawing of some pictures with few and rough strokes An understanding Spectator of such a different proceeding in his Art will in the one finde a feminine trimnesse in the other a masculine sturdinesse Hee will passe over the first with praise the latter hee will fixe upon with admiration hee will have a sweet inclination to the first but the last will violently and forcibly draw along his admiraâ—ion and affection What was Cato whom Antiquity was never weary of commending but a plant growing in an excellent soile a Picture drawn with rough strokes And the two Brutes one of which expelled the Tyrant and the other slew him who will not say but they were trees of the forrest The second was inferior to the first in fortune because he exceeded him in knowledge Hee knew the defect after hee had been hurt by it and when he lay a dying he stiled all Sciences vain Lucius hardened by the savagenesse of the forrest kild his own Children Marcus softned with the delicacie of tillage suffers Caesars frinds to live losing that Common-wealth with his learning which the other had built up with his ignorance The people of Rome who hoped for liberty through Marcus his valour feared he would lose the beauty of his forestick horridnesse by meanes of manuring Caesar almost assured himselfe that he had lost it They were both deceived for with that part of savageness which remained he could kill Caesar and ruine the Common-wealth with that softnesse which he had acquired When education is contrary to nature if it doth produce a new character of its own yet can it hardly quite cancell that which it found it may mitigate but not overcome it One subject made basis to two contraries soÌ„times operating according to nature sometimes to educatioÌ„ works with opposite motions and with that inequality loses it selfe If Marcus Brutus had bin wholly soft he had not undertaken so cruell an act if he had bin wholly rough he had happily atchieved and performed it Plutarch confesses the truth in denying it This herbe the more it is troden the sweeter in smells this dust the more it is stamped upon the more it rises Hee commends learning because it softens the mind and this is effeminating of it because it reduces to a mediocrity and that is annihilating of greatnesse He also granteth that the Romanes education aimed onely at the bringing in of the vertue of fortitude The crowne of Oake which Coriolanus gained in his young yeares gives us to understand what plants they would have to grow in the Common-wealth and in what manner manured But why had the Oake this prerogative Peradventure saith Plutarch by reason of the the Arcadians who honoured it Or of Iupiter who decked himselfe with it or because of the sturdinesse or fruitfulnesse of the tree Or peradventure they considered the vertue of the Oake which lying under water doth not corrupt or soften but growes as hard as stone whereas if part of it stand above water in the aire it rots in a short time As if they would signifie thereby that in a man of worth and valour vertue doth increase by his being continually plunged in employments and contrariwise it withers and fades away when any part of him is exposed to sensuality Those who would have the reward of the Oaken crowne to come againe let them take away Meum Tuum Let them
from a beautifull to a vile and abject matter the excellency of the metals being not the reason why Gold and Silver are had in such esteeme but because coine and money is made thereof which is of greatest value so that the way had been to take money quite away which could not possibly be done unlesse he had likewise taken away meâ—m tuum viz. every mans propriety Wherefore Plato having better considered upon it resolved to put it quite out of his CoÌ„mon-wealth not erring in the finding of the error but erring in that he beleeved that it might be corrected Princes did likewise coÌ„cur in yeelding repute to riches by honoring those that had wealth and many times not so much because they are necessary to get honour for it may also be gotten by valour but because Princes are alwayes richest but not alwayes valiantest it was reason in State to hold wealth up in mens esteem to not augment the reputation of others and fall into contempt themselves it being also a common desire in man that the thing which they have most of should be most in esteem Then Princes in Monarchicall government are participant of this error the Senate in Common-wealths and People in all kind of States and therefore together with the corruption of the common wealth came the corruption of rewards into Rome neither suffâ—ces it though the one part stands sirme if so be the other falls nor is it sufficient to have an excellent Prince if hee meet with corrupt People So that it seemes to be a very hard thing to bring in a reformation of rewards and being once brought in it is impossible it should last without reforming the whole world which is run on so farâ—e that he that would now returne to the ancient customes would sooner be stiled avaricious then prudent Peradventure the Romans did ill in not changing the punishments with the rewards They did indeed receive some change at the discretion of Tyrants and that was when Cinna Marius Silla Pompey Caesar Crassus Antonie and Augustus came in the Axe beginning then to fall upon the most eminent and noted Citizens heads to wreake and vent their hatred and secure their feare which if they had born respect to civill justice onely and not to their Despoticall interest there could not have wanted gentler and milder meanes and every way as effectuall to save it from contempt All that imbrue their hands in bloud for hatred are Tyrants and all those as doe it for feare if they cannot be called Tyrants the feare being grounded upon reason may very well bee esteemed unfortunate Princes The corruption of rewards was then introduced by the want and corruption of the People and Policy of the Soveraignes The corruption of punishments by the Tyranny of Princes and treachery of the Nobles It is easie where Princes are excellent and the Nobility faithfull to continue and preserve punishments in that perfection as they were in the primitive times of the Roman common-wealth and this is even the same manner as is now used in Spaine where infamy and disgrace are sufficient punishments for Noble mens Politick evill actions which concerne the Prince's service The debarring them the Prince's sight Removing them from the Court leaving them in oblivion is as much as efficacious in that most happy Country as banishing imprisoning and beheading in other Kingdomes Those who blame this manner of proceeding that the effect which the example should be are peradventure deceived For an irregulare and temerary mind it will not be sufficient and for a generous breast it needs not But because all nations doe not conforme themselves in giving the preheminency and superiority of this thing which we call reputation to one and the same thing Some attributing it to Wealth some to Nobility many to VVisdome and some to beauty some extolling the great man and some the most valiant it will not be amisse a little to argue and search out to which of these it is due And because amongst so many different opinions we cannot have the decision from man we will take it from nature and bow to that vertue in which nature hath placed the command Lawyers are of opinion that there is no naturall servitude and that all men are borne free And though Aristotle seeme to say the contrary yet he doth not meane to yeeld to any more then a character which shall shew not what another is but what he should be therewith setting out not the act but the inclination Ptolomie meant the same thing in the division of the signes into commanding and obeying ones and no man will deny such instincts who reading Hostories will consider so many Nations which without any outward violence to force them or art to perswade them have voluntarily submitted themselves to the command of him whom they have held in greatest repute But in assigning of that vertue which naturally is commanding I will take leave to differ and recede from Aristotles opinion for whilest he seekes to set down what men ought to command and who to obey making or else I erre an evill distinction of men He doth not resolve the question well by saying that some are borne with much strength and little understanding others with much understanding and little strength the one kind being fit to serve and the other to command the first shall be borne to servitude the last to command He leaves out one part of men who are borne with both these and another who have neither of them and are incapable either of serving or commanding He to whom nature hath given onely a great understanding was made but to contemplate and teach if he were made to command it was onely in a Schoole He that hath valour onely whom we call temerary troubles all the world and is nothing but violence To the third namely to him that hath both the Scepter in my opinion is due and to him indeed for the most part People have granted it when it hath bin in their power to give it as to Saturne Iupiter Hercules Romulus and so many others The Gentiles so highly esteeming him that hath those two characters of valour and wisedome which both goe to the framing of true Fortitude that where they have found them both united they have even adored them I doe indeed find that sometimes men have also submitted themselves to a man who hath bin onely of an eminent understanding as to Pythagoras Lyeurgus and Nâ—ma Pompilius But I hold this dominion to be but little more naturall then the other which hath onely valour appropriated to it though one be given the other violently taken this latter called Tyrannicall and the other Kingly Peradventure they are both tyrannicall one offering as I may say no lesse violence with his art to the soule then the other doth with his force to the bodies And if we consider well the dominion which is obtained by understanding it alwayes brings along with it one of the attributes
of the violent namely of not being durable Wherefore those that are such to keep themselves long in command have had their recourse to art when the favour of nature hath failed them feigning to have had some commerce with the Gods So that in mine opinion we may say that the understandingest doth command by cunning the most rash by violence and he that is endowed with true Fortitude by nature And indeed nature whose chiefe aime is to preserve the Species inclines man to obey him who may best preserve him And because he that hath fortitude is such a one he shall before others be set in this naturall state free from all violence and men will obey him in whom they shall see this vertue shine more then in others Coriolanus did not so much desire to bee honoured himselfe as to be commended to his Mother he esteemed of honours because they caused joy in her But why should others joy increase ours whether it be that of our Parents and Kindreds or our friends Man is so set upon the satisfying of his passions and the passions are so joyned and linked together and also desirous to be satisfied that the perfectly pleasing of ones passion or the being content with having pleased it is not ordinarily attained unto when the rest are froward and distasted For satisfaction of the sense of tasting savoury meat would be sufficient But he that will have it perfumed seekes to content the smelling also If he desires colour handsomnesse and shape he seeks to have the eye also pleased therewith and that the hearing likewise may have its delight he will eate his meat where there is playing and singing Neither there doth the sensuality of man composed of soule and body rest though his body wallow in delights the passions of the soul must also have some food feeding his ambition with finenesse of Table-linnen richnesse of vessels number of attendants invention disposition and singularity In the sense of feeling man should be content with softnesse but hee will have beauty for the eyes he desires perfumes to please the smell Nobility and vertue to appay his ambition and to content his irascicall part could he not also satisfie himselfe with the death of his enemy No fully to please the passions of his minde though he oftentimes doe it with losse and danger he will vain-gloriously have it known that it was he that slue him and the greater his innocency was the more he rejoyces in his revenge These examples are so cleare that they put it out of all question that mans desire is not content with the satisfaction of the passions of the body if he doth likewise in some sort partly satisfie his ambition The same as I believe happens as truly though not so plainly in the satisfying of ambition Cold and unsavoury seeme the advancements to honours and dignities all increases of greatnesse let them be of never so great moment seem despicable if there be not some content likewise given to the two chiefe passions of the body Irascible and Concupiscible Thereunto hath regard the desire of having at that time both those we love and those we haâ—e alive that we may rejoyce at the griefe which wee see in the one and the pleasure which we espy in the other That is a kinde of revenge belonging to the Irascible and this a kind of benefit done to him who is beloved which may be reduced to the Concupiscible Hee will thinke himselfe unfortunate who arriving to any happinesse hath not these two spectators a friend and an enemy Hence proceâ—ds the originall cause of his excessive delight who comes to great preferment in his fathers life time because that in this case both the foresaid affections are satisfied the sonne being both beloved also emulated by the father And though the emulation bee not so apparant yet sometimes there is as much of it as there is of love lesse discovered but sometimes more sharp whereupon he did very well that made it the chiefe of his joyes that his Father and his mother had seen him ride in triumph And it is no marvell if he did desire the presence of the one more than of the other because in the other wants emulation And indeed the delight is more perfect which we receive from the love that belongs to both than from the emulation which belongs particularly to the Father it failing unlesse it be by reflection of any desire which may produce griefe But how can it bee that a mans joy encreasing by his friends rejoycing his sorrowes should decrease by his friends grieving at his sorrowes St. Thomas saith that the friends griefe is considered not as a reall thing but as a mark and signe of one not as a dolorous passion but as a signe of love whereby the comfort is received To this learned saying might also be added That a friend being beloved as ones selfe we desire that all his actions should be perfect wherefore it doth trouble us to see him rejoyce in our calamities and we are glad when with his sorrow hee sympathizes with us in them The former being a signe of his slighting us and the other of his constancy in affection Adde to this finally the delight a man takes when he findes he hath made a happy choice of a friend and grief which oppresses him if he proves false Sannieticus King of Aegypt being taken prisoner by Cambyses sees his daughter in a servile habit drawing of water his sonne guarded by armed men to his death he looks upon them both with dry eyes Afterwards he sees one of his friends half naked and almost starved begging food to keepe him alive hee abandons himself to griefe weeping and lamentation The solution of this knot is very difficult Cambyses desires to know the reason and causeth Sanneticus to be examined about it as if he that does a thing alwayes knew the reason why hee doth it He many times is ignorant of it and oftentimes whereas the action produces the effects he makes it to be produced by the effects either to conceale the true cause or to boast of a wisdome which he hath not but onely preposterous ascribing the worke of Fortune to his own prudency The captive King answeres That he having no griefe to equall to the two first calamities had sacrificed it to the third as worthy of it Others will say that the two first brought him to the highest pitch of suffering and the third forced him to run headlong into lamentation Neither of these solutions satisfie me One savours of Poetry and the other is not altogether Philosophicall The greater grief according to Hippocrates doctrine doth not suffer the lesser to be felt then it was either greater or of another nature greater onely would not have been sufficient to extract teares it would rather have hindered the eyes from weeping it was of another nature namely a mixture of joy and griefe the first with its heat being able to make
many spirits as will reach to it and not enough to follow and prosecute it A most acute and learned Author gives another reason Truth saith he is a most bright light it suffers it selfe to be looked upon but not to be examined He that looks upon the Sunne sees it not at the first sight but if he sixes his lookes upon it he loses both Sunne and sight This reason is more faire than sound and is averred by an example more beautifull than fit The thing which is too sensible doth not appay the senses but destroy them their object is a mean and too great a one is an enemy to them The understanding runs towards the greatest intelligible it doth not stand upon the mean one neither doth any other truth limit it than that which is unlimitted The distance which is between the materiall and the immateriall takes away the proportion to frame the example The great sensible having taken possession of a sense makes the knowledge of a lesser impossible for it because it is a substance The great intelligible makes it easie to the understanding because it is a spirit The Common-wealth of Rome might have taken a healthfull Antidote out of this poyson of Coriolanus if they had kept him under a civill not under a military Discipline and if they had kept him under a military one it should haue been to obey not to command The Citie mended him the Camp made him worse Mortifications taught and directed him applauses overthrew him One may do amisse through valour rooted in pride or in affection One deserves punishment the other reward the first is most pernitious to the Common-wealth the other exceeding profitable Time increases defect in the former in the latter vertue PoÌ„ponius Tribune of the people accuses Manlius his son which after was Manlius Torquatus who though his father had dâ—stasted him being advised rather by courage than by wit teÌ„der in years yet more teÌ„der in love with a rurall yet affectionate resolution comes out of the Countrey where he dwelt continually to the City goes to the Tribunes house calls him aside and takes hold on him in such a manner that he was not able to stirre from him and drawing a dagger forces him either to promise to desist from his intention and let fall his accusation or to lose his life The Tribune promises him and desists This case was divulged in Rome There was neither Plebeian nor Patrician that blamed him For his tememerity he had deserved death for his love he was rewarded they all hope hee will being instructed learn to doe that through the direction of vertue which he had done by violence of Nature and as much for his Countrey as he had for his father Where a man erres through valour and love the matter deserves correction rather than punishment and he that did it deserves a reward rather than a penalty Moses with this Character full of divine zeale kills an Egyptian Peter cuts off Malchus his eare The one is made the head of the old Law conductor of the children of Israel and Pharaohs God the other a head of the new law a Pastor and head of the Church Coriolanus his valour was grounded upon pride for it could not be said it was grounded upon affection to his countrey coming against it armed and putting it into such straits that it was very neare lost There are some defects in young men which I was going to say are commendable I will say compatible and some vertues I will not say blame-worthy yet are not to be desired Where the action is not good because it is superabundant and the error hath a kinde of conformity with the years time doth help and it hurts where it is inconformable and the sin is more in the quality than the quantity more in the form than the matter A teÌ„petate liver in youth is good for one to live healthfull to live long it is better to have it exceed in heat It cools continually according as the man grows in years it loses his superfluous heat so that as the man grows old it grows temperate The hurtfulnes of the excess is in the strength of age which is able to resist it doth not kil The profit of its temperatnesse is when Nature hath most need of help and sustains and assists it But if the excesse were in the quality of the heat and in those yeares that it should be favourable it should shew it selfe nipping whereas the one because it alwayes decreases with age ought to bee left to grow old the other because it alwayes increases must be rooted up So those young men who erre through quantity of heat should grow old in the Citie and those extirpated who pâ—ecipitate by reason of their evill qualities Of the first quality was Manlius Torquatus and they reward him of the second was the son of Brutus and they kill him If a young man of a fiery nature be rash the firecools and before the time of operating comes is reduced to a degree that he may operate well but if he be prudent cold being required for such an effect and the temperament cooling with the increase of yeares it may be feared that before he arrives to the time in which he should make use of its vertue he wil degenerate into vice and whereas in one case the rash man comes to attaine true fortitude in the other the valiant man becomes pusillanimous Quintilian would have the Orator in his young age rather bold than fearfull The latter would become cold whereas the first yeares favouring him will make him moderate Boldness ought to overcome judgment when it is time to learn but when it is time to operate it ought to be subdued It will be more easie for Art to coole hardinesse than to heat judgment because Nature is favourable to the one and contrary to the other All that which is violent is difficult yet with a difference between that which is against and that which is conformable to Nature One may easilier throw a stone toward the the Center than the Circumference for it is easier to follow than to oppose an inclination If patience meet with greatness or vigour of minde it raiseth to that degree of glory towards which many with an unbridled insufferency but in vain directing themselvs find nothing but precipices Suffering best befits him that can easiliest revenge himself and gives most glory where it finds greatest reputation Where feare cannot be ascribed to baseness of heart nor the not knowing to dulness of brain his contempt must be called magnanimity and his dissimulation must be termed prudency The least offences are not easiest to be endured either because they most conceale the revenge or because they sting more sharply or because they are more frequently met with These are they which ruine Princes overthrow Monarchies they grow infallibly and yet insensibly and greatness coming in gives no way to forbearance of revenge without losse
of reputation There is a great difference betweene an offence being great at first and its becoming such One findes man cold and free the other heated and engaged neither can hee seem to grow carelesse of it when it is grown up that did not contemne it when it was but small And having already lost the name of prudent by prosecuting of it to that time he wiâ—l gaine the name of Pusillanimous if hee then gives it over A disease which becomes malignant by degrees is more mortall than that which begun so The Prince which wil not bear with his subjects endangers the changing his name of Prince into Tyrant and he that will not beare with strangers endangers his kingdom to become a private man A prince his own patience is not sufficient for the quiet of his kingdome if his officers also be not endued with it in whom it being equally requisite it is farre more difficult A man may easily suffer in his own interests who is impatient in his Lords For the one he hopes to reap glory and profit through his patience and so beares In the other to gaine it from revenge and so he puts forward Hee that offends the Prince before his Officer offends both the Prince and his Officer whereby obliging him to two patiences hee makes the sufferance almost intollerable These imagine that the zeale of their masters reputation moves them to a resentment and oftentimes it is their own arrogancy wherewith they embroyle Princes obliging them to warres into which they are engaged more by others than their own impatiences and this happens oftenest where the States and Dominions are most remote That remotenesse which is most favourable to the Prince for his suffering is contrary to the Officers One doth not see the injuries the other the Prince When Aristotle blames the Lacedemonians for attributing every thing to the vertue of fortitude said that one vertue was not sufficient and if one alone were to be chosen Fortitude was not it He named not that to which he attributed the chiefe honour if he had named it in mine opinion it had bin patience because virtually it containes all other vertues in it as the seed doth both roote fruit and stemme If morall vertues are ordained to good in as much as they keep within the bounds of reason against the violence of passions and when these doe joyne with any vice patience is the onely guide of them who can deny it to hold the first and supreame place amongst them As the Physician cures the diseases of the body so patience corrects the defects of the soule They both worke by removing the obstacles I confesse more like instrumentall then efficient causes But if the Physician bee said to occasion health though it be not he but nature Patience shall likewise be called the productrix of all vertues So that Coriolanus his impatience for we must call him impatient if we will not attribute the name of base to the Senate put him in danger of his life and though his great vertue reverenced by the People was sufficient to free him from death yet by reason that was feared also it was not able to keepe him from banishment One of the greatest and ordinariest errors that crosses the good direction of Politick affaires is that Princes and common-wealths either know not how or through malignity will not in time make use of that valour which fortune hath abundantly bestowed upon some subject of theirs Dominions are increased by the hand and meanes of a subject which is advantagiously valorous and fortunate Whose valour by bringing to passe the most difficultest enterprises findes no obstacle able to resist it all that he sees he conquers Whose fortune meets with no chance but it proves favourable to him all what he does not see is likewise assisting to him Such a man is now and then borne in an estate of so low a degree and himselfe so poore that without ever doing any thing or at least equall or partly worthy his fortune and valour he dies inglorious but seldome without leaving at least some little modell whereby others may as with prospective glasse see what a Colossus they have neglected to build through want of matter That character which in a great statue attracts even the dimmest eyes to behold it in a little one is not seene many times by the most perspicuous sight Sometimes also this man is borne in some conspicuous place and of such a fortune that at the very first flashing of his actions he makes that beame shines out which lies inclosed in his breast But those which rule Kingdomes or governe Common-wealths though they have good intentions yet looking more upon the age then the fortune of the man advancing him by degrees seldome admit him to great affaires where he might have performed some high and specially services till it is too late and hee growen old after he hath tired his fortune in actions of no moment and his declining age hath made him good for little To linger out fortune of a great subject is a great error yet not worthy of any severe punishment Ignorance herein may be excused Carelessenesse endured but hee that hinders it through envy hatred and malice calls Gods wrath upon him and sometimes sees it visibly come Losing himselfe for want of him whom he hath lost Or to prevent his owne ruine bowing to him whom he hath despised Such a man is happy and by him his dominions if he be borne a Prince Most happy if in such a time as enterprises are already set on foot and he able to follow them Or that obstacles be removed in such sort that they may not oblige him to tire his fortune upon them before he goes about them If Henry the Fourth had found the Kingdome of France entire slourishing peaceable within and at wars abroad as he found it divided destroyed unquiet plunged in civill wars what could he not have done with so much fortune and valour he did much indeed yet did he not a whit increase his dominions He wasted himselfe in gayning his owne and when he begun to cast his mind upon other mens both fortune and time failed him If Gustavus King of Sweed could at the very first have employed all his fortune and power in Germany and had not bin intangled in the Muscoviters Polish wars I know not who could have hindred or crossed him from attaining to his vast and unlimited desires If Alexander had bin to begin the wars of Greece not found them almost finished by his father he had never come to be the Great because he would not have had time to settle so great a Monarchy By this meanes those King domes do much increase which successively meet with many warlike valorous fortunate subjects and by this meanes grew up the Turkish Monarchy Assisting of confederates is a great aide to the gaining of conquests the violence of the enemies fortune broken upon them and tired
hee should be pitied Yet this may not be true seeing compassion may peradventure faile as well as envie which when the corrivall is come to such a pitch of greatnesse that he is quite beyond our reach shame ceasing which is onely in things possible envie ceases likewise So on the otherside when the corrivall is come to so low and unhappy a condition that the other thinks it is impossible for him to fall so low because the fear ceasing which is not in things impossible compassion likewise ceases The same Coriolanus whom the Senate compassionated in his miseries envied him in his prosperities Peradventure the harshnesse of this pranke which he had plaid together with his inbred valour his having gotten forraigne assistance and his forgetting the love which he bare to his Countrey might give the Senate cause enough to feare that if he returned he would become a tyrant and the people who had driven him away because hee should not become one now recalling him did likewise make the world think that being afraid of becoming a prey to the Volsci they would accept of him The people to the utmost of their powers make choyce of subjecting themselves to their Countrey-man rather than to a stranger but the Senate will rather submit to the enemy than to their corrivall the different carriage of the Senate in this businesse may also proceed from another cause Coriolanus was valiant free in speech and surly kinds of carriage which do not gain the love of the heart though they overcome the understanding in a manner tyrannize over the wil causing theÌ„selves to be followed like the Primum Mobile rather drawing along than enticing or alluring This is no violent motion proceeding from Nature neither can it be called voluntary because knowledge doth not precede it Man goeth along in this motion not against but without his will not knowing wherefore he goeth He delights not in being carried away and yet suffers it he doth not love but admire that thing which ravishes him and obediently followes it as its commanding genius Of this kinde of metall sometimes are favourites made who by those as do not know this are termed bewiâ—chers Mne confess they know not the Devils cunning and yet they will pretend to penetrate into the secrets of Nature If they meet with any thing they doe not understand they take away from one to give to another in one place they pull down and in the other they raise they abase themselves by seeking to rise they call that Witchcraft which is a Gift as if Nature could not as well as the Devill produce wonderfull things by Art in mixing actives with passives This operation is mixed as one should say of violent and of naturall of voluntary and involuntary and thence it comes that it produces effects mixt of pleasure and distast of love and hate with I know not what of feare accompanied with respect and admiration The thing is beloved which ravisheth and yet to be ravished is hatefull We delight in him alive whom we could wish had not been born We are glad to have him neare and yet should not be displeased to have him farre from us we can neither keep him nor put him away for we are willing both to have him and to be without him He that will thrive with his Lord through his secret qualities let him conceale the manifest ones if the Genius be commanding let him make himself obedient How should Ebony cure the French Disease and Triacle the pestilent Fever if their manifest qualities were not controlled They would doe as much prejudice with their extrinsecall qualities as they would doe good with their intrinsecall form What good would it doe a Lord to see one lie at his feet who should bee seated above his head If the getting above him whom fortune of birth hath made equall to us bee one of the savouriest dainties that humane ambition feeds upon what will it bee to Lord it over them to whom the nature of the Genius hath made us inferior Whosoever observes this Rule shall not need to fear any thing but some extraordinary great accident which may produce some extraordinary violence but seldome can we goe against the genius whence it comes that some last alwaies and others are suddenly overthrown Sejanus after he had gained Tiberius his understanding with commanding qualities won his heart with obeying ones But whether it were his outward qualitie of flattering and obsequiousnesse that moved him or the inward qualitie of his ambition and genius that drew him to it he could not constantly persevere to the last He made Tiberius for a while to stand in doubt it seeming unto him that he did buâ— stagger at last finding no outward violence to overthrow him he produced it in himself going so far with his open qualities that he took all power from the secret ones Neither yet did Tiberius know how to free himselfe he desired others should doe it sometimes calling upon the Senators authority and sometimes secretly upon Macro his malice as one that will and will not or would and durst not The people of Rome endured the commanding Genius of Coriolanus They loved him even at that time also when suing for the Consulship humble and mild he controlled the manifest qualities of pride and harshnesse so hurtfull to him though deriving from him And though he by and by after returned to his owne nature yet did not the people know how to free themselves from him being as it were bewitched to him if the Tribunes violence had not opposed it selfe to the Semi-violence of Coriolanus his imperious Genius The Senate which felt not the burthen of such a kind of Character because it did not the prejudice of the manifest qualities which proceed from it though it made use of him sometimes for defence of the CoÌ„mon-wealth against the enemies sometimes for their owne against the People yet were they faine to make use of the Tribunes violence to be well rid of him And when he was driven away they violently opposed the Tribunes because they should not bring him in againe So much did this Genius prevaile when it was present and lose when it was absent He that subjects himselfe to it desires not to be freed nor returne into subjection when he is free I know not how truely Plutarch guessed when he considered of the Peoples love and hatted towards Coriolanus and Alcibiades in his Judgement there proceedings therein and usage of them was different The ambition was the same yet more tolerable in the Greeke because profitable more blame worthy in the Roman because Prejudiciall The former causing himselfe to be beloved even when he did hurt and the latter gaining ill will and being abhorred even when he did good The ends which move men to seeke the highest degrees of honour in their owne Country are many times different and for the most part contrary Some aspire thereunto for their owne proper interests to make
than see himselfe abandoned by prosperous ones Mans life is a Warfare take combating from him and you take away life neither is that taken away but changed an inâ—ernal enemy using to step in when an outward one failes and a civill war commonly succeeding a forraigne one But grant there be a great subject of so calm a minde as will be content with the estate wherein he finds himselfe how wll the content last if the state doth not and how shall not the one change if the other changes continually Fortune hath no nail to fix it if it doth not go forward it must go backward Renown hath a worm in its intrails which never leaves gnawing it is scarce born but it begins to diminish when flying it is once come to our notice the mouth doth not speed it away as the eare received it we naturally add somwhat of our own to it to the end that it may gain as much going as it loses standing stil yet inwardly it diminishes even as a man who be he never so well fed in his youth and seeming outwardly to grow yet inwardly he every moment dies infallibly and remediless The glory of man remains amongstus when his carkass remains soul-lesse it extends further 't is true because envy ceases but it diminishes in it selfe because compassion growes up and afterwards contempt A torrent which in time of raine runs most violently stately bearing down trees by the rootes and tearing up stones and rocks the sky being cleared up is foordable by every passenger his greatness is no more admired his pride is being so extream in him who within a few houres was to be reduced to so wretched a condition So the mighty man after hee hath by valour won many battels taken Cities overcome Nations and filled the universe with the report of his glory when Atropos cuts off the thred of his life instead of obtaining praise he stirs up admiration men wondring how so much vanity and pride should reigne in a body which would shortly become the putrified food of stinking wormes As if the whole world could not have contained that body which within a small time was to be inclosed within a few palms of the basest element Envy followes humane glory it shews where it is it doth not leave iâ— til it is not it devours him that feedes it and feedes him whom it would destroy It increases and diminishes not at that sweetnesse which should produce sâ—tiety adding acrimony to it which revives the appeâ—ite The glory of the dead runnes but coldly It remaines in the world but withered and wanting novelty is not looked upon by reason of its oldnesse Death gives a great blow but the civill death gives the greater it doth not utterly extinguish envy as the naturall doeth nor doth not like it counterpoise that which it takes away with the sense which it hath taken away No marvaile then if others avoid retiring because they will not strive with it Death cannot stay and naile fast fortunes wheele from descending yet it stayes it that it may not precipitate And seeing it very seldome lasts a mans age happy is that man that lasts but fortunes time And because the time of the one is not measured and the others life is onely looked after we sometimes complaine of death for pulling up of that green when we should thanke it for gathering it when it is ripe It is favourable to him whom it cuts off when hee is growen up into a high degree and but newly arrived to it It makes him to bee imagined of infinite vertue because it hath not bin measured nor the end of it seene It attributes unto him the glory of that which he hath nor yet done when peradventure he would have lost that which hee had already gotten Death which is one to all men is not equally favourable to all she cuts off one before he is ripe she lets the other hang till he falls off rotten and gathers but few in the flower of their ripenesse It is a great fortune to dye when fortune is at highest One cannot long stand at a stay it is impossible to advance and to decrease is of necessity He that cannot receive this favour from the originall let him seeke it from the copy and he that cannot die let him retire for any thing is better then to precipitate If the Summum bonum of the body Politick were as manifest as that of the humane and that we did know as well what fortune requires as we know what nature desires wee might when wee come to such a state leave for a time and returne to take it againe but knowing neither of both few yeild when what and so much as they should yeild It seemed to a fortunate man to be come to the height of happinesse and to such a pitch that he was to fear a downfal To avoid it he throwes a most precious gemme into the Sea Ere long it was brought to his Table againe in a Fishes belly fortune returned him that which hee had given her because it was not that which she would have had he joyfully receives it againe and takes that for a favour which should have served him for an instruction Coriolanus that could not leave his fortune left his life this happens for the most part to strangers that have bin called or of themselves have crept up to the highest eminencies of a Common-wealth The most valiant have lost their lives the weakest have bin banished If there is in a Common-wealth an eminent Citizen as Tullus was amongst the Volsci when Coriolanus came in amongst them as Agis was in Sparta when Alcibiades came thither as the Prince of Orange was in Holland when the Archduke Matthias the Duke of Alencon and the Duke of Lancaster were called in there Either they come in of themselves by promising of some great matâ—ers and if they come off of their engagement well they are sent away with admiration if ill with disgrace Where they are brought in they send them away too If it were in case of necessity when that is past if it were to deceive any one after that was performed if to be deceived when they were undeceived When there is not in the Common-wealth any one Citizen more eminent then the rest and in respect of domestick discords they call in some noble man of great bloud to governe them or in regard of forraigne warres they send for some eminent Souldiour to command them let this man either prepare himselfe to be nothing at all our Lord and Master or an exile and because there are none that will be nothing it being repugnant to an ambitious nature and it being a hard matter to become Lord being men greater in repute then power hee must expect either from jealousie banishment or from feare death But if strangers be easilie driven away they are also as easily called in for the opinion which fortune frames in absence and farre off is greater