So have they made good and fair exemplars and
copies, carrying the draughts and portraitures of good, virtue,
duty, felicity; propounding them well described as the true objects
and scopes of man's will and desires. But how to attain these
excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue the will of man to
become true and conformable to these pursuits, they pass it over
altogether, or slightly and unprofitably. For it is not the
disputing that moral virtues are in the mind of man by habit and not
by nature, or the distinguishing that generous spirits are won by
doctrines and persuasions, and the vulgar sort by reward and
punishment, and the like scattered glances and touches, that can
excuse the absence of this part.
(2) The reason of this omission I suppose to be that hidden rock
whereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge have been cast
away; which is, that men have despised to be conversant in ordinary
and common matters, the judicious direction whereof nevertheless is
the wisest doctrine (for life consisteth not in novelties nor
subtleties), but contrariwise they have compounded sciences chiefly
of a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter, chosen to give
glory either to the subtlety of disputatious, or to the eloquence of
discourses.
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