Chapter II (7)

The Art of Negotiation divided into the Knowledge of Dispersed Occasions (Conduct in Particular Emergencies), and into the Science of Rising in Life. Examples of the former drawn from Solomon. Precepts relating to Self-advancement

WE DIVIDE the doctrine of business into the doctrine of various occasions, and the doctrine of rising in life. The first includes all the possible variety of affairs, and is as the amanuensis to common life; but the other collects and suggests such things only as regard the improvement of a man’s private fortune, and may therefore serve each person as a private register of his affairs.

No one has hitherto treated the doctrine of business suitably to its merit, to the great prejudice of the character both of learning and learned men; for from hence proceeds the mischief, which has fixed it as a reproach upon men of letters, that learning and civil prudence are seldom found together. And if we rightly observe those three kinds of prudence, which we lately said belong to civil life, that of conversation is generally despised by men of learning as a servile thing and an enemy to contemplation; and for the government of states, though learned men acquit themselves well when advanced to the helm, yet this promotion happens to few of them; but for the present subject, the prudence of business, upon which our lives principally turn, there are no books extant about it, except a few civil admonitions, collected into a little volume or two, by no means adequate to the copiousness of the subject. But if books were written upon this subject as upon others, we doubt not that learned men, furnished with tolerable experience, would far excel the unlearned, furnished with much greater experience, and outshoot them in their own bow.

Nor need we apprehend that the matter of this science is too various to fall under precept, for it is much less extensive than the doctrine of government, which yet we find very well cultivated. There seem to have been some professors of this kind of prudence among the Romans in their best days; for Cicero declares it was the custom, a little before his time, among the Senators most famous for knowledge and experience, as Coruncanius, Curius, Lælius, etc., to walk the forum at certain hours, where they offered themselves to be consulted by the people, not so much upon law, but upon business of all kinds; as the marriage of a daughter, the education of a son, the purchasing of an estate, and other occasions of common life. Whence it appears, that there is a certain prudence of advising even in private affairs, and derivable from a universal knowledge of civil business, experience, and general observation of similar cases. So we find the book which Q. Cicero wrote to his brother, De Petitione Consulatus (the only treatise, so far as we know, extant upon any particular business), though it regarded chiefly the giving advice upon that present occasion, yet contains many particular axioms of politics, which were not only of temporary use, but prescribe a certain permanent rule for popular elections. But in this kind, there is nothing any way comparable to the aphorisms of Solomon, of whom the Scripture bears testimony, that “his heart was as the sand of the sea.” For the sand of the sea encompasses the extremities of the whole earth; so his wisdom comprehended all things, both human and divine. And in those aphorisms are found many excellent civil precepts and admonitions, besides things of a more theological nature, flowing from the depth and innermost bosom of wisdom, and running out into a most spacious field of variety. And as we place the doctrine of various occasions among the desiderata of the sciences, we will here dwell upon it a little, and lay down an example thereof, in the way of explaining some of these aphorisms or proverbs of Solomon.