_Notwithstanding_, if before they had come to _the popular and received notions of 'vice'_ and _'virtue,' 'pleasure'_ and _'pain,'_ and the rest, they had stayed a little longer upon the inquiry concerning THE ROOTS of GOOD and EVIL, and the strings to those roots, they had given, in my opinion, _a great light to that which followed_, and especially _if they had consulted with nature_, they had made their doctrines less prolix and more profound, which being by them in part omitted, and in part handled with much confusion, we will endeavour to resume and open in a more clear manner. Here then, is the preparation of the Platform or Exemplar of Good, the scientific platform of virtue and felicity; going behind the popular notion of vice and virtue, pain and pleasure, and the like, he strikes at once to the nature of good, as it is 'formed in everything,' for the foundation of this specific science. He lays the beams of it, in the axioms and definitions of his '_prima philosophia_' 'which do not fall within the compass of the special parts of science, but are more common and of a higher stage, for the distributions and partitions of knowledge are _not_ like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like _branches of a tree that meet in a stem_ which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance before it comes to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs,' and it is not the narrow and specific observation on which the popular notions are framed, but the scientific, which is needed for the New Ethics,--the new knowledge, which here too, is POWER. He must detect and recognise here also, he must track even into the nature of man, those universal 'footsteps' which are but 'the same footsteps of nature treading or printing in different substances.' 'There is formed in _everything_ a double nature of good, the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, and the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body whereof the latter is in _degree_ the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form.... This double nature of good, and the comparison thereof, is much more engraven upon MAN, _if he degenerate not_, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought _to be much more precious_ than the conservation of _life and being_;' and, by way of illustration, he mentions first the case of Pompey the Great, 'who being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency by his friends, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, "_Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam_."' But, he adds, 'it may be _truly_ affirmed, that there was never any philosophy, religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and highly _exalt_ the good which is _communicative_, and _depress_ the good which is private and particular, as the _holy faith_, well