In the handling of this science, those which have written seem to me to have done as if a man, that professed to teach to write, did only exhibit fair copies of alphabets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or directions for the carriage of the hand and framing of the letters. 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. But Seneca giveth an excellent check to eloquence, Nocet illis eloquentia, quibus non rerum cupiditatem facit, sed sui. Doctrine should be such as should make men in love with the lesson, and not with the teacher; being directed to the auditor's benefit, and not to the author's commendation. And therefore those are of the right kind which may be concluded as Demosthenes concludes his counsel, Quae si feceritis, non oratorem dumtaxat in praesentia laudabitis, sed vosmetipsos etiam non ita multo post statu rerum vestraram meliore.
(3) Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil promised himself, and indeed obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning in the expressing of the observations of husbandry, as of the heroical acts of AEneas:
"Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum Quam sit, et angustis his addere rebus honorem."
And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest, not to write at leisure that which men may read at leisure, but really to instruct and suborn action and active life, these Georgics of the mind, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity. Wherefore the main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the exemplar or platform of good, and the regiment or culture of the mind: the one describing the nature of good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the will of man thereunto.
(4) The doctrine touching the platform or nature of good considereth it either simple or compared; either the kinds of good, or the degrees of good; in the latter whereof those infinite disputatious which were touching the supreme degree thereof, which they term felicity, beatitude, or the highest good, the doctrines concerning which were as the heathen divinity, are by the Christian faith discharged. And as Aristotle saith, "That young men may be happy, but not otherwise but by hope;" so we must all acknowledge our minority, and embrace the felicity which is by hope of the future world.
(5) Freed therefore and delivered from this doctrine of the philosopher's heaven, whereby they feigned a higher elevation of man's nature than was (for we see in what height of style Seneca writeth, Vere magnum, habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei), we may with more sobriety and truth receive the rest of their inquiries and labours.