< Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu
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OF NATURE IN MEN

179

had need be,[1] first to stay and arrest nature in time; like to him that would say over the four and twenty letters when he was angry; then to go less in quantity; as if one should, in forbearing wine, come from drinking healths to a draught at a meal; and lastly, to discontinue altogether. But if a man have the fortitude and resolution to enfranchise himself at once, that is the best:

Optimus ille animi vindex lædentia pectus
Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel.<ref>He is the best assertor of the soul who bursts the bonds that gall his breast, and suffers all at once. P. Ovidii Nasonis Remedia Amoris. 293–294.</ref>

Neither is the ancient rule amiss, to bend nature as a wand to a contrary extreme, whereby to set it right, understanding it, where the contrary extreme is no vice. Let not a man force a habit upon himself with a perpetual continuance, but with some intermission. For both the pause reinforceth the new onset; and if a man that is not perfect be ever in practice, he shall as well practise his errors as his abilities, and induce one habit of both; and there is no means to help this but by seasonable intermissions. But let not a man trust his victory over his nature too far; for nature will lay[2] buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation. Like as it was with Æsop's[3] damsel, turned from a

  1. ↑ Had need be. Had, with following infinitive, means to be under obligation, to be necessitated, to do something; need in this idiom is the Middle English genitive, nede, 'of need, or necessity.'
  2. ↑ So in original, and also in Ed. 1639. I have not thought it right to substitute lie, as has been usually done; because it may be that the form of the word was not settled in Bacon's time; and the correction of obsolete forms tends to conceal the history of the language. Compare Natural History, Century I. 19. S.
  3. ↑ Aesop or Esop. According to tradition, a Greek fabulist of the 6th century, B.C., represented as a dwarf and originally a slave.
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