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not made to it, to breathe or take in. And some impostors and counterfeits likewise have been able to wreath and cast their bodies into strange forms and motions: yea and others to bring themselves into trances and astonishments. All which examples do demonstrate how variously, and to how high points and degrees, the body of man may be (as it were) moulded and wrought. And if any man conceive that it is some secret propriety of nature that hath been in those persons which have attained to these points, and that it is not open for every man to do the like, though he had been put to it; for which cause such things come but very rarely to pass; it is true, no doubt but some persons are apter than other; but so as the more aptness causes perfection, but the less aptness doth not disable; so that for example, the more apt child that is taken to be made a funambulo, will prove more excellent in his feats; but the less apt will be gregarius funambulo also. And there is small question but that these abilities would have been more common, and others of like sort not attempted would likewise have been brought upon the stage, but for two reasons. The one because of men's diffidence in prejudging them as impossibilities; for it holdeth in those things, which the poet saith, Possunt quia posse videntur; for no man shall know how much may be done, except he believe much may be done. The other reason is, because they be but practices base and inglorious, and of no great use; and therefore sequestred from reward of value; and on the other side, painful; so as the recompence balanceth not with the travel and suffering. And as to the will of man, it is that which is most maniable and obedient; as that which admitteth most medicines to cure and alter it. The most sovereign of all is Religion, which is able to change and transform it in the deepest and most inward inclinations and motions. And next to that is Opinion and Apprehension; whether it be infused by tradition and institution, or wrought in by disputation and persuasion. And the third is example, which transformeth' the will of man into the similitude of that which is much obversant and familiar towards it. And the fourth is, when one affection is healed and corrected by another; as when cowardice is remedied by

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So Resusc. MS. 629. has "which bound with the will of man"—and in the next clause "observant instead of "obversant." I suspect "transformeth" to be a conjectural emendation, and not the right one. The Resusc. has most instead of much.

shame and dishonour, or sluggishness and backwardness by indignation and emulation; and so of the like. And lastly, when all these means, or any of them, have new framed or formed human will, then doth custom and habit corroborate and confirm all the rest. Therefore it is no marvel though this faculty of the mind of will and election, which inclineth affection and appetite, being but the inceptions and rudiments of will, may be so well governed and managed, because it admitteth access to so divers remedies to be applied to it and to work upon it. The effects whereof are so many and so known as require no enumeration; but generally they do issue, as medicines do, into two kinds of cures; whereof the one is a just or true cure, and the other is called palliation. For either the labour and intention is to reform the affections really and truly, restraining them if they be too violent, and raising them if they be too soft and weak, or else it is to cover them; or if occasion be, to pretend and represent them: of the former sort whereof the examples are plentiful in the schools of philosophers, and in all other institutions of moral virtue; and of the other sort the examples are more plentiful in the courts of princes, and in all politic traffic, where it is ordinary to find not only profound dissimulations and suffocating the affections that no note or mark appear of them outwardly, but also lively simulations and affectations, carrying the tokens of passions which are not, as risus jussus and lachrymæ coactæ, and the like.

OF HELP OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

THE intellectual powers have fewer means to work upon them than the will or body of man; but the one that prevaileth, that is exercise, worketh more forcibly in them than in the rest. The ancient habit of the philosophers; Si quis quærat in utramque partem de omni scibili.

The exercise of scholars making verses ex tempore; Stans pede in uno.

The exercise of lawyers in memory narrative.

The exercise of sophists, and Jo. ad oppositum, with manifest effect.

Artificial memory greatly holpen by exercise.

The exercise of buffons, to draw all things to conceits ridiculous.

The means that help the understanding and faculties thereof

are:

Not example, as in the will, by conversation; and here the conceit of imitation, already disgested, with the confutation obiter, si videbitur, of Tully's opinion, advising a man to take some one to imitate. Similitude of faces analysed.

Arts, Logic, Rhetoric. The Ancients, Aristotle, Plato, Theaetetus, Gorgias, Litigiosus vel Sophista, qu. Protagoras, Aristotle, Schola sua. Topics, Elenchs, Rhetorics, Organon, Cicero, Hermogenes. The Neoterics, Ramus, Agricola, Nil sacri, Lullius Typocosmia; studying Cooper's Dictionary; Mattheus Collection of proper words for Metaphors; Agrippa de Vanitate, &c.

Qu. if not here of imitation.

Collections preparative. Aristotle's similitude of a shoemaker's shop, full of shoes of all sorts; Demosthenes Exordia Concionum. Tully's precept of Theses of all sorts preparative. The relying upon exercise, with the difference of using and tempering the instrument; and the similitude of prescribing against the laws of nature and of estate.

FIVE POINTS.

1. That exercises are to be framed to the life; that is to say, to work ability in that kind, whereof a man in the course of actions shall have most use.

2. The indirect and oblique exercises which do per partes and per consequentiam inable those faculties, which perhaps direct exercise at first would but distort. And those have chiefly place where the faculty is weak not per se but per accidens. As if want of memory grow through lightness of wit and want of stayed attention, then the mathematics or the law helpeth; because they are things wherein if the mind once roam it cannot recover.

3. Of the advantages of exercise; as to dance with heavy shoes, to march with heavy armour and carriage; and the contrary advantage (in natures very dull and unapt) of working alacrity by framing an exercise with some delight and affection;

veluti pueris dant crustula blandi Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.

1 A blank is left in the MS. for this word.

4. Of the cautions of exercise; as to beware lest by evil doing, as all beginners do weakly, a man grow and be inveterate in an ill habit; and so take not the advantage of custom in perfection, but in confirming ill.

Slubbering on the lute.

5. The marshalling and sequel of sciences and practices: Logic and Rhetoric should be used to be read after Poesy, History, and Philosophy. First exercise to do things well and clean; after, promptly and readily.

I.

The exercises in the universities and schools are of memory and invention; either to speak by heart that which is set down verbatim, or to speak ex tempore; whereas there is little use in action of either of both: but most things which we utter are neither verbally premeditate, nor merely extemporal. Therefore exercise would be framed to take a little breathing; and to consider of heads; and then to form and fit the speech ex tempore. This would be done in two manners, both with writing and tables, and without: for in most actions it is permitted and passable to use the note; whereunto if a man be not accustomed, it will put him out.

There is no use of a Narrative Memory in academies, viz. with circumstances of times, persons, and places, and with names; and it is one art to discourse, and another to relate and describe; and herein use and action is most conversant. Also to sum up and contract is a thing in action of very general use.

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