Is not the
ground, which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning
governments, that the way to establish and preserve them is to
reduce them ad principia--a rule in religion and nature, as well as
in civil administration? Was not the Persian magic a reduction or
correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the
rules and policy of governments? Is not the precept of a musician,
to fall from a discord or harsh accord upon a concord or sweet
accord, alike true in affection? Is not the trope of music, to
avoid or slide from the close or cadence, common with the trope of
rhetoric of deceiving expectation? Is not the delight of the
quavering upon a stop in music the same with the playing of light
upon the water?
"Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus."
Are not the organs of the senses of one kind with the organs of
reflection, the eye with a glass, the ear with a cave or strait,
determined and bounded? Neither are these only similitudes, as men
of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same
footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or
matters.
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