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Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626

"The Advancement of Learning"

So in man,

"Igneus est ollis vigor, et caelestis origo."

His approach or assumption to divine or angelical nature is the
perfection of his form; the error or false imitation of which good
is that which is the tempest of human life; while man, upon the
instinct of an advancement, formal and essential, is carried to seek
an advancement local. For as those which are sick, and find no
remedy, do tumble up and down and change place, as if by a remove
local they could obtain a remove internal, so is it with men in
ambition, when failing of the mean to exalt their nature, they are
in a perpetual estuation to exalt their place. So then passive good
is, as was said, either conservative or perfective.
(3) To resume the good of conservation or comfort, which consisteth
in the fruition of that which is agreeable to our natures; it
seemeth to be most pure and natural of pleasures, but yet the
softest and lowest. And this also receiveth a difference, which
hath neither been well judged of, nor well inquired; for the good of
fruition or contentment is placed either in the sincereness of the
fruition, or in the quickness and vigour of it; the one superinduced
by equality, the other by vicissitude; the one having less mixture
of evil, the other more impression of good.


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