ittle vile snivel, with
a certain kind of convulsion: according to Hippocrates his opinion. How
excellent useful are these lively fancies and representations of things,
thus penetrating and passing through the objects, to make their true
nature known and apparent! This must thou use all thy life long, and
upon all occasions: and then especially, when matters are apprehended
as of great worth and respect, thy art and care must be to uncover
them, and to behold their vileness, and to take away from them all those
serious circumstances and expressions, under which they made so grave
a show. For outward pomp and appearance is a great juggler; and then
especially art thou most in danger to be beguiled by it, when (to
a man's thinking) thou most seemest to be employed about matters of
moment.

XII. See what Crates pronounceth concerning Xenocrates himself.

XIII. Those things which the common sort of people do admire, are most
of them such things as are very general, and may be comprehended under
things merely natural, or naturally affected and qualified: as stones,
wood, figs, vines, olives. Those that be admired by them that are more
moderate and restrained, are comprehended under things animated: as
flocks and herds. Those that are yet more gentle and curious, their
admiration is commonly confined to reasonable creatures only; not in
general as they are reasonable, but as they are capable of art, or of
some craft and subtile invention: or perchance barely to reasonable
creatures; as they that delight in the possession of many slaves. But
he that honours a reasonable soul in general, as it is reasonable and
naturally sociable, doth little regard anything else: and above all
things is careful to preserve his own, in the continual habit and
exercise both of reason and sociableness: and thereby doth co-operate
with him, of whose nature he doth also participate; God.

XIV. Some things hasten to be, and others to be no more. And even
whatsoever now is, some part thereof hath already perished. Perpetual
fluxes and alterations renew the world, as the perpetual course of time
doth make the age of the world (of itself infinite) to appear always
fresh and new. In such a flux and course of all things, what of these
things that hasten so fast away should any man regard, since among all
there is not any that a man may fasten and fix upon? as if a man would
settle his affection upon some ordinary sparrow living by him, who is no
soone