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AND does not justice rule the affairs of mortals,—nor impartiality, nor moderation, nor decorum? But was it of Fortune and long of Fortune that Aristides remained obstinate in his poverty, although he could have made himself master of much wealth? And that Scipio, when he had taken Carthage, neither received nor so much as saw any part of the booty ? Was it of Fortune and long of Fortune that Philocrates, having received a sum of gold of King Philip, laid it out in whores and fish? And that Lasthenes and Euthycrates, by measuring their happiness by their bellies and the most abject of follies, lost Olynthus? Was it of Fortune that Alexander son of Philip refrained from the captive women himself, and punished those that offered them any indignity; while Alexander, son of Priam, long of an evil Daemon and Fortune, first vitiated his host's wife and then took her away with him, and filled both the continents with war and calamities? And if such things as these can come by Fortune, what hinders but that we may as well plead that cats, goats, and monkeys are constrained by Fortune to be ravenous, lustful, and ridiculous?
But if there be such things to be found as moderation, justice, and fortitude, how can it stand with reason
and when elsewhere he made this distribution of things.
For what is to be sought or what is to be learned by
mortals, if all things go by Fortune ? And what senate
of a republic is not overthrown, or what council of a
prince is not dissolved, if all things are subject to
Fortune?—which we use to upbraid with blindness because we blindly fall into it. And indeed how can we
Imagine that now some one of us should say,
Seers' affairs Fortune not eyesight rules,
nor yet the eyes, which Plato calls light-bearers; and
again,
Hearers' affairs are by blind Fortune ruled,
and not by a certain power receptive of the strokes of the
air, conveyed to it through the organ of the ear and brain.
It would beseem us then, doubtless, to pay a due respect
to our sense. But our sight, hearing, and smelling, with
the other parts of our bodies' faculties, were bestowed
upon us by nature to minister unto good conduct and discretion. And It is the mind that sees, and the mind that
hears; the rest are deaf and blind.
And as, were there
not a sun, we might, for all the other stars, pass our
days in darkness (as Heraclitus says); so had man
neither mind nor reason, his life would be, for all his
senses, nothing better than that of brutes. But it is by
neither Fortune nor chance that we exceed them and bear
sway over them; but Prometheus (that is, reason) is the
cause,
as Aeschylus speaks. For the greater part of brutes are
much happier than we, as to the fortune and form of their
constitution; for some of them are armed with horns, some
with teeth, and some with stings; and the urchin's back,
(saith Empedocles) bristles with prickly thorns; others
again are shod, others are clad with scales, others with
shaggy hair, and others with hard claws and hoofs;
but man alone (as Plato speaks) was left by Nature
naked, unarmed, unshod, and uncovered. But all those
The lightest and swiftest things are horses; but they
run for man. A dog is a fierce and an angry animal; but
it guards man. Fish is the sweetest thing, and swine the
fattest; but they are man's nourishment and cheer. What
is bigger than an elephant ? But this also is become man's
plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities, and it
learns to skip, dance, and kneel. Such things as these
are not introduced in vain, but that we may learn by them
whither knowledge advances man, and above what things
it sets him, and how he comes to be master, and exceed
all other things.
Yea, in all these we are far more unhappy than the brutes. But by our experience, memory, wit, and dexterity (as Anaxagoras speaks) we make use of what is theirs; we press out their honey, we milk them, we catch them, and drive them up and down as we please. So that in all this there is nothing that depends on Fortune, but all on counsel and forecast.
Moreover, the affairs of carpenters are affairs of mortals, and so are those of copper-founders, builders, and
statuaries; amongst whom yet we can see nothing brought
to perfection by chance or at random. For that there falls in
but little of Fortune to an expert artist, whether founder
or builder, but that the most and greatest part of their
workmanship is performed by mere art, hath been thus
insinuated by a certain poet:
For the trades have Ergana and Minerva for their patroness, and not Fortune. It is indeed reported of one that, as he was drawing a horse and had hit right in all the rest, both shapes and colors, but was not well satisfied with the draught he had made of a puff of froth that was tempered by the bit and wrought out with the horse's breathing, he therefore had often wiped it off; but that at length he in a great fume struck his sponge full of colors, as it was, against the board, and that this, as it lighted, to admiration made a most lively impress, and so filled up what was defective in the piece. This is the only artificial work of Fortune that history mentions. Artists everywhere make use of rules, lines, measures, and arithmetical proportions, that their works may nowhere have in them any thing that is casual or fortuitous. And the truth is, arts are styled a sort of petty wisdoms, though they might be much better called certain sheddings or filings of it sprinkled upon the several needful services of human life; as is obscurely riddled to us in the fire feigned to have been first divided by Prometheus, and then scattered up and down the world. For just so, certain little particles and fragments of wisdom as it were crumbled and broken small fell into ranks and methods.
It seems therefore very strange how it came to pass
that arts should stand in no need of Fortune to compass
their proper end, but that which is the greatest and most
complete of all arts, and which is the very sum of man's
worth and commendation, should prove to be nothing at
all. But there is a kind of good counsel in stretching and
slackening of strings, which they call the art of music; and
in dressing of meats, which we call cookery; and in washing of clothes, which we call the art of fulling; and we
teach our children how to put on their shoes and clothes,
and to take their meat in their right hand, and hold their
bread in their left; as being sensible that even such common
In like manner wisdom is itself neither gold nor
silver nor fame nor wealth nor health nor strength nor
beauty. What then is it? It is what can use all these
with decorum, and by means of which every one of these
is made pleasant, commendable, and useful, and without
which they become useless, unprofitable, and prejudicial,
and the burthen and shame of their possessors. Hesiod's
Prometheus therefore gives very good advice to Epimetheus:
meaning things of Fortune and external. For, as if he
had bid him not to play on a flute if ignorant of music,
nor to read a book if he knew not his letters, nor to ride if
he understood not a horse, so it would be if he advised
him not to govern if a fool, nor to be a rich man if a miser,