Defence of Criminals 



the region of actions to look for morality in the 

 passions that lie behind action, so now we leave 

 the region of the passions to look for it in the power 

 that lies behind the passions and gives them their 

 place. This is a farther move in the same direc- 

 tion as before, and possibly will bring us to a more 

 satisfactory conclusion. There are still difficulties, 

 however, the chief ones lying in the want of 

 definiteness which necessarily attaches to our 

 dealings with these remoter tracts of human 

 nature ; and in our own defective knowledge of 

 these tracts. 



For these reasons, and as the subject is a complex 

 and difficult one, I would ask the reader to dwell 

 for a few minutes longer on the considerations 

 which show that it is really as impossible to draw 

 a fixed line between moral and immoral passions 

 as it is between moral and immoral actions, and 

 which therefore force us, if we are to find any 

 ground of morality at all, to look for it in some 

 further region of our nature. 



Plato in his allegory of the soul, in the Phaedrus, 

 though he apparently divides the passions which 

 draw the human chariot into two classes, the 

 heavenward and the earthward — figured by the 

 white horse and the black horse respectively — 

 does not recommend that the black horse should 

 be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as 

 well as the white horse) should be kept under 

 due control by the charioteer. By which he 

 seems to intend that there is a power in man 

 which stands above and behind the passions, 



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