X. (1) The knowledge that concerneth man’s body is divided as the good of man’s body is divided, unto which it referreth.  The good of man’s body is of four kinds—­health, beauty, strength, and pleasure:  so the knowledges are medicine, or art of cure; art of decoration, which is called cosmetic; art of activity, which is called athletic; and art voluptuary, which Tacitus truly calleth eruditus luxus.  This subject of man’s body is, of all other things in nature, most susceptible of remedy; but then that remedy is most susceptible of error; for the same subtlety of the subject doth cause large possibility and easy failing, and therefore the inquiry ought to be the more exact.

(2) To speak, therefore, of medicine, and to resume that we have said, ascending a little higher:  the ancient opinion that man was microcosmus—­an abstract or model of the world—­hath been fantastically strained by Paracelsus and the alchemists, as if there were to be found in man’s body certain correspondences and parallels, which should have respect to all varieties of things, as stars, planets, minerals, which are extant in the great world.  But thus much is evidently true, that of all substances which nature hath produced, man’s body is the most extremely compounded.  For we see herbs and plants are nourished by earth and water; beasts for the most part by herbs and fruits; man by the flesh of beasts, birds, fishes, herbs, grains, fruits, water, and the manifold alterations, dressings, and preparations of these several bodies before they come to be his food and aliment.  Add hereunto that beasts have a more simple order of life, and less change of affections to work upon their bodies, whereas man in his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite variations:  and it cannot be denied but that the body of man of all other things is of the most compounded mass.  The soul, on the other side, is the simplest of substances, as is well expressed: 

“Purumque reliquit
AEthereum sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem.”

So that it is no marvel though the soul so placed enjoy no rest, if that principle be true, that Motus rerum est rapidus extra locum, placidus in loco.  But to the purpose.  This variable composition of man’s body hath made it as an instrument easy to distemper; and, therefore, the poets did well to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man’s body and to reduce it to harmony.  So, then, the subject being so variable hath made the art by consequent more conjectural; and the art being conjectural hath made so much the more place to be left for imposture.  For almost all other arts and sciences are judged by acts or masterpieces, as I may term them, and not by the successes and events.  The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue of the cause; this master in this ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the fortune of the voyage; but the physician,