(2) To resume passive good, it receiveth a subdivision of conservative and effective.  For let us take a brief review of that which we have said:  we have spoken first of the good of society, the intention whereof embraceth the form of human nature, whereof we are members and portions, and not our own proper and individual form; we have spoken of active good, and supposed it as a part of private and particular good.  And rightly, for there is impressed upon all things a triple desire or appetite proceeding from love to themselves:  one of preserving and continuing their form; another of advancing and perfecting their form; and a third of multiplying and extending their form upon other things:  whereof the multiplying, or signature of it upon other things, is that which we handled by the name of active good.  So as there remaineth the conserving of it, and perfecting or raising of it, which latter is the highest degree of passive good.  For to preserve in state is the less, to preserve with advancement is the greater.  So in man,

“Igneus est ollis vigor, et caelestis origo.”

His approach or assumption to divine or angelical nature is the perfection of his form; the error or false imitation of which good is that which is the tempest of human life; while man, upon the instinct of an advancement, formal and essential, is carried to seek an advancement local.  For as those which are sick, and find no remedy, do tumble up and down and change place, as if by a remove local they could obtain a remove internal, so is it with men in ambition, when failing of the mean to exalt their nature, they are in a perpetual estuation to exalt their place.  So then passive good is, as was said, either conservative or perfective.

(3) To resume the good of conservation or comfort, which consisteth in the fruition of that which is agreeable to our natures; it seemeth to be most pure and natural of pleasures, but yet the softest and lowest.  And this also receiveth a difference, which hath neither been well judged of, nor well inquired; for the good of fruition or contentment is placed either in the sincereness of the fruition, or in the quickness and vigour of it; the one superinduced by equality, the other by vicissitude; the one having less mixture of evil, the other more impression of good.  Whether of these is the greater good is a question controverted; but whether man’s nature may not be capable of both is a question not inquired.

(4) The former question being debated between Socrates and a sophist, Socrates placing felicity in an equal and constant peace of mind, and the sophist in much desiring and much enjoying, they fell from argument to ill words:  the sophist saying that Socrates’ felicity was the felicity of a block or stone; and Socrates saying that the sophist’s felicity was the felicity of one that had the itch, who did nothing but itch and scratch.  And both these opinions do not want their supports.  For the