vehement.

Pity and commiseration fits them better than love, of which they are no way worthy. For howsoever we abuse love with casting it away upon trifles, yet it is the preciousness of love, appointed only to attend deserts and to join no pieces together that are not of this kind. But it is well that nature hath cast the extremity of this disease upon mothers, it becomes them not so ill to be fond as men; besides, these little ones being their charges, affection makes them more careful, and so it is for those first years never the worse for the child, whatsoever it is for the mother.

Justice being for example, and no more destroying a commonwealth than the husbandman the trees with executing the water-boughs, which he doth as well in respect of their unprofitableness as also to show malefactors in a glass their own state while they behold the guilty undergoing the severity of the law. But yet the creatures bound to profit others with their own destruction should be picked-out monsters whose natures might be seen incorrigible, and those of whom mercy may conjecture amendment, to be spared. Thus in the ambiguity of things which doubt will not have resolved, mercy may have a hand. Thus commiseration and a charitable eye to the distressed, all which, though they [lean] more to affection than to the strictness of justice, yet must we so far tolerate them. For so God looks upon us, and so should we upon our brethren, being all born lame, which fault of ours if it were punished with death, none should live. Yet I go not with Montaigne who in his Essay of Cruelty bribes wit to take part with commiseration so extremely and so womanish as not to endure the death of birds and beasts. Alas, this gentleness of nature is a plain weakness; we may safely see the deaths of these, yea of men, without motion. It belongs to us to look into the cause of their deaths, not into the manner only, but fetching it from

the desert we shall see plainly it is not the judge nor the executioner that commits this abhorrent spectacle but themselves; themselves do execution upon themselves. Might there be that unspeakable blessing given to the imprisoned soul that she might here view things in sincere truth, how would vice and sin fly light when unmasked light might discover their deformities. How profoundly should we be able to censure things, how would we scorn laws and compulsion, when the most ragged understanding should fly far above them.

Lastly, all the enemies of wealth and poverty should be banished, for we should not know want, and so should want them, and the laborious life of study should end, whose travails aim at no other end but an ability to know everything in his proper kind. This is not, because affection is, who daily overcomes reason not by strength but flattery, and sometimes makes the weapons of reason treacherously turn head upon reason with corrupting his taste and making him fortify pleasure with arguments. I would be glad to look upon my brother with the same eye that I behold a stranger, and may the stranger's worth excel his, I would prefer him. He is deceived that thinks virtue respects blood and alliances. She is not so bodily, having commerce with us whiles we have bodies, not because we having bodies should love our bodies, but because we should with the ordering and subjecting them win her. It is affection that hath skill of colors and hath set up the estimation of white and red. I verily believe virtue was never painter nor armorist. All those choices and allowances that come from tall and fat or slender and well-bodied are all affection's choice; the mind sees the mind and gives the body leave to look how it will, for she loves the abilities and graces of the mind whose never fading beauties makes their their embracements blessed. Here is the choice of all things made sure;

thus friends are to be entertained, whose perfection may be better discoursed of than it is possible to find it actually. The reason? because affection bears so great sway, our causes of combination being commonly more beholding to affection than reason, which makes us so often complain of the unstableness of friends and friendship's inconstancy. No other are those leagues which look into the fortune rather than the virtue of friends, that cunningly make love the broker to supply their wants; how can these hold, since the hold of their hold, blind Dame Fortune, is brittle and flitting. But amongst all I find nobody hath so just cause to complain of this as justice, which being the very soul and life of government, is oft time compelled to help the lightest scale with her finger, whiles partiality's burden makes the other heavy. I can pity the distress of no virtue so much as this, since no virtue carries with her a greater majesty, and in that majesty knowledge, the life of life, the joy of man, and his surest evidence of participating with the divine nature. Surely were it not for the orderly working of this virtue, we should make the world in a worse state than the Chaos, where was a confusion, but it was innocent though deformed. But now it would be turned into a guilty deformity, the picture of which, though not fully, are those sick states that are continually letting blood, where the sweet wisdom of laws are turned into those doubtful arbitrators-blows, and where justice executes not with her sword, but fights for her right. But I have destinated a whole essay to Justice, wherefore I will speak no more of her now.

Of all our delicacies or imperfectives of any kind, there is no author but affection, whose enticements brings on equally both excess and obstinacy. Witness the many idle lines of lovers who have made many foul

papers for the sakes of their fair mistress, whose luxurious conceits they have made love answer for and called them love. Talis amor teneat, nec sit mihi cura mederi.1.

I wish them no physic, but myself the sight, for I like no play like to a passionate lover, yet have I heard it hath killed some; but I will neither believe it nor yet be thus in love. In a word, all these rabble of disturbers that provokes passion and procures the full possession of men, of what kind soever, are the children of affection, or if not her children, her self. For Proteuslike, occasion altereth her shape, and she sometimes looks like anger, sometimes like love, other times like some other of those blind choosers whose effects, though so different as called by different names, yet all are affections, with whom I will have as little to do as I can, and when I do use her, it shall be no more than so much as shall make my body content to go of my soul's errand.

OF HUMAN CONTENTMENT

BEHOLD the gods of the world, the soul of action, the motion of the inhabitants of the earth, the point, the conclusion whereunto all thoughts are reflected. This is the master of all trades, arts, sciences, and professions. For this the husbandman finds a sweetness in labor, the artisan in following his trade, the artist in the inquisition of knowledge, soldiers in pursuing danger, politicians in the working of the mind, in plotting and fetching in strange conclusions to uphold practices. This is the garland that makes every one love victory, this is the reconciling object of the dissenting constitution and courses of men. For they all agree that con

1 May such a passion hold him and may I have no mind to cure it.-VIRGIL, Eclogues, VIII, 89.

tentment is the place where they desire to end their journeys. But that the world should have still the right use and not be desolated with man's neglect of inquiring and uttering her secrets, this contentment is fashioned like our loves. What I call fair another thinks illfavored; another out of deformities picks beauties. Thus contentment, which, according to the minds of men, is drawn out of a numberless number of courses which mystery of natures doth make all agree. That contentment is to be sought, and to dissever them in the manner of their search, joined with the other of making all forms lovely in some eyes, upholds the world; for by this last the world is peopled, by the first her people made industrious and the great volume of the world in no corner left unnoted, but stirs and flourisheth as the chief and masterpiece of nature. Thus do we propound a cause and reason for our life and make every day beget us occasion either of following or learning to follow our quest. When we do not go forward ourselves we behold others, which like a map lays out the course of our travel. But when, according to the excellency or grossness of our choice, the determined contentment approacheth, we fly from, not the enjoying, but the opinion we had. Another contentment is set up; that obtained, another; so doth our human lives run after contentment but never overtake her. We cannot, for contentment is divine, our bodies earthly. Our mind we feel overtakes her, for the propounded contentment pleaseth her; she embraceth it and is already in possession. But when it comes, so short doth it fall of her expectation, as she erects another: a plain argument of her divinity and a true sign that real contentment is not of this world nor to be grasped within our earthly arms.