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For raising and appeasing anger in another, it is done chiefly by choosing of times when men are frowardest and worst disposed, to incense them. Again, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you can find out to aggravate the contempt. And the two remedies are by the con60 traries. The former to take good times, when first to relate to a man an angry business; for the first impression is much. And the other is, to sever, as much as may be, the construction of the injury from the point of contempt; imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what 65 you will.

LVIII

Of Vicissitude of Things

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SALOMON saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination that All knowledge was but remembrance, so Salomon giveth his sentence, that All novelty is but oblivion. Whereby you may see that the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as 5 below. There is an abstruse astrologer that saith: If it were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go further asunder; the other, that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one moment. Certain it is that the Matter is in a perpetual flux, and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion are two; deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not merely 15 dispeople or destroy. Phaeton's car went but a day; and the three years' drought, in the time of Elias, was but particular, and left people alive. As for the great burnings by lightnings, which are often in the West Indies, they are but narrow. But in the other two destructions,

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by deluge and earthquake, it is further to be noted, that the remnant of people which hap to be reserved, are commonly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account of the time past; so that the oblivion is all 25 one, as if none had been left. If you consider well of the people of the West Indies, it is very probable that they are a newer or a younger people than the people of the old world. And it is much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by 30 earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon, concerning the island of Atlantis, that it was swallowed by an earthquake), but rather, that it was desolated by a particular deluge. For earthquakes are seldom in those parts. But, on the other side, they have such pouring 35 rivers, as the rivers of Asia and Africk and Europe are but brooks to them. Their Andes likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with us. Whereby it seems, that the remnants of generations of men were in such a particular deluge saved. As for the observation that 40 Machiavel hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much

extinguish the memory of things; traducing Gregory the Great, that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities—I do not find that those zeals do any great effects, nor last long; as it appeared in the succes45 sion of Sabinian, who did revive the former antiquities.

The vicissitudes or mutations, in the superior globe, are no fit matter for this present argument. It may be, Plato's great year, if the world should last so long, would have some effect, not in renewing the state of like indi50 viduals (for that is the fume of those that conceive the

celestial bodies have more accurate influences upon these things below, than indeed they have), but in gross. Comets, out of question, have likewise power and effect over the gross and mass of things; but they are rather 55 gazed upon, and waited upon in their journey, than wisely

observed in their effects, especially in their respective effects; that is, what kind of comet, for magnitude, colour, version of the beams, placing in the region of heaven or lasting, produceth what kind of effects.

There is a toy, which I have heard, and I would not 60 have it given over, but waited upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low Countries (I know not in what part), that every five and thirty years the same kind and suit of years and weathers comes about again; as, great frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers 65 with little heat, and the like; and they call it the prime. It is a thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I have found some concurrence.

But to leave these points of nature, and to come to

men.

The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions. For these orbs rule in men's minds most. The true religion is built upon the rock; the rest are tossed upon the waves of time. To speak therefore of the causes of new sects, and to give some counsel concerning them-as far as the weakness of human judgment can give stay to so great revolutions.

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When the religion formerly received is rent by discords, and when the holiness of the professors of religion is decayed and full of scandal, and withal the times be stupid, 80 ignorant, and barbarous, you may doubt the springing up of a new sect; if then also there should arise any extravagant and strange spirit to make himself author thereof. All which points held when Mahomet published his law. If a new sect have not two properties, fear it not; for it will not spread. The one is the supplanting, or the opposing of authority established; for nothing is more popular than that. The other is the giving licence to pleasures and a voluptuous life. For as for speculative heresies (such as were in ancient times the Arians, and 90

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now the Arminians), though they work mightily upon men's wits, they do not produce any great alteration in states, except it be by the help of civil occasions. There be three manner of plantations of new sects. By the 95 power of signs and miracles; by the eloquence and wisdom of speech and persuasion; and by the sword. For martyrdoms, I reckon them amongst miracles, because they seem to exceed the strength of human nature; and I may do the like of superlative and admirable holiness 100 of life. Surely there is no better way to stop the rising of new sects and schisms than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather to take off the principal authors, by winning and advancing them, 105 than to enrage them by violence and bitterness.

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The changes and vicissitudes in wars are many, but chiefly in three things; in the seats or stages of the war, in the weapons, and in the manner of the conduct. Wars, in ancient time, seemed more to move from East to West; 110 for the Persians, Assyrians, Arabians, Tartars (which were the invaders), were all eastern people. It is true the Gauls were western; but we read but of two incursions of theirs, the one to Gallo-Græcia, the other to Rome. But East and West have no certain points of heaven; and no more have the wars, either from the East or West, any certainty of observation. But North and South are fixed; and it hath seldom or never been seen that the far Southern people have invaded the Northern, but contrariwise. Whereby it is manifest that the Northern track of 120 the world is in nature the more martial region: be it in respect of the stars of that hemisphere; or of the great continents that are upon the north (whereas the South part, for aught that is known, is almost all sea); or (which is most apparent) of the cold of the Northern parts, which 125 is that which, without aid of discipline, doth make the bodies hardest, and the courage warmest.