XX. (1) We proceed now to that knowledge which considereth of the appetite and will of man: whereof Solomon saith, _Ante omnia_, _fili_, _custodi cor tuum_: _nam inde procedunt actiones vitæ_. 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, _Quæ si feceritis_, _non oratorem dumtaxat in præsentia laudabitis_, _sed vosmetipsos etiam non ita multo post statu rerum vestraram meliore_.