, it is ambition or desire, by which men, generally under a
false pretense of piety, excite discords and seditions. For he who
desires to assist other people, either by advice or by deed, in order
that they may together enjoy the highest good, will strive, above all
things, to win their love, and not to draw them into admiration, so
that a doctrine may be named after him, nor absolutely to give any
occasion for envy. In common conversation, too, he will avoid referring
to the vices of men, and will take care only sparingly to speak of human
impotence, while he will talk largely of human virtue or power, and of
the way by which it may be made perfect, so that men being moved not by
fear or aversion, but solely by the emotion of joy, may endeavor as much
as they can to live under the rule of reason.

XXVI

Excepting man, we know no individual thing in Nature in whose mind we
can take pleasure, nor any thing which we can unite with ourselves by
friendship or any kind of intercourse, and therefore regard to our own
profit does not demand that we should preserve anything which exists in
Nature excepting men, but teaches us to preserve it or destroy it in
accordance with its varied uses, or to adapt it to our own service in
any way whatever.

XXVII

The profit which we derive from objects without us, over and above the
experience and knowledge which we obtain because we observe them and
change them from their existing forms into others, is chiefly the
preservation of the body, and for this reason those objects are the most
profitable to us which can feed and nourish the body, so that all its
parts are able properly to perform their functions. For the more capable
the body is of being affected in many ways, and affecting external
bodies in many ways, the more capable of thinking is the mind. But there
seem to be very few things in Nature of this kind, and it is
consequently necessary for the requisite nourishment of the body to use
many different kinds of food; for the human body is composed of a great
number of parts of different nature, which need constant and varied food
in order that the whole of the body may be equally adapted for all those
things which can follow from its nature, and consequently that the mind
also may be equally adapted to conceive many things.

XXVIII

The strength of one man would scarcely suffice to obtain these things if
men did not mutually assist one another. As money has presented us