; and his mind, by giving it pre-eminence over his body.
He understands things, not by their form, but qualities; and his
comparisons intend not to excuse but to provoke him higher. He is not
subject to casualties, for fortune hath nothing to do with the mind,
except those drowned in the body; but he hath divided his soul from the
case of his soul, whose weakness he assists no otherwise than
commiseratively--not that it is his, but that it is. He is thus, and
will be thus; and lives subject neither to time nor his frailties, the
servant of virtue, and by virtue the friend of the highest.

A NOBLE SPIRIT

Hath surveyed and fortified his disposition, and converts all occurrents
into experience, between which experience and his reason there is
marriage; the issue are his actions. He circuits his intents, and seeth
the end before he shoot. Men are the instruments of his art, and there
is no man without his use. Occasion incites him, none enticeth him; and
he moves by affection, not for affection. He loves glory, scorns shame,
and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one
consideration. He calls not the variety of the world chances, for his
meditation hath travelled over them, and his eye, mounted upon his
understanding, seeth them as things underneath. He covers not his body
with delicacies, nor excuseth these delicacies by his body, but teacheth
it, since it is not able to defend its own imbecility, to show or
suffer. He licenseth not his weakness to wear fate, but knowing reason
to be no idle gift of nature, he is the steersman of his own destiny.
Truth is the goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like
her. He knows the condition of the world, that he must act one thing
like another, and then another. To these he carries his desires, and not
his desires him, and sticks not fast by the way (for that contentment is
repentance), but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of
all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction,
he hasteth thither and ends there, as his true and natural element. He
doth not contemn Fortune, but not confess her. He is no gamester of the
world (which only complain and praise her), but being only sensible of
the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement of
scum. Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their
steps in a regular motion. When he is more particular, he is the wise
man's