ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 327 



Next to this doctrine of characters follows the doctrine 

 of affections and perturbations, which, we observed above, 

 are the diseases of the mind. For as the ancient politicians 

 said of democracies, that &quot;the people were like the sea, and 

 the orators like the wind&quot;; so it may be truly said, that 

 the nature of the mind would be unruffled and uniform, if 

 the affections, like the winds, did not disturb it. And here, 

 again, we cannot but remember that Aristotle, who wrote so 

 many books of ethics, should never treat of the affections, 

 which are a principal branch thereof; and yet has given 

 them a place in his Rhetorics, where they come to be but 

 secondarily considered: 13 for his discourses of pleasure and 

 pain by no means answer the ends of such a treatise, no 

 more than a discourse of light and splendor would give the 

 doctrine of particular colors: for pleasure and pain are to 

 particular affections, as light is to colors. The Stoics, so 

 far as may be conjectured from what we have left of them, 

 cultivated this subject better, yet they rather dwelt upon 

 subtile definitions than gave any full and copious treatise 

 upon it. We also find a few short elegant pieces upon some 

 of the affections; as upon anger, false modesty, and two or 

 three more; but to say the truth, the poets and historians 

 are the principal teachers of this science; for they com 

 monly paint to the life in what particular manner the affec 

 tions are to be raised and inflamed, and how to be soothed 

 and laid; how they are to be checked and restrained from 

 breaking into action ; how they discover themselves, though 

 suppressed and smothered ; what operations they have ; what 

 turns they take; how they mutually intermix; and how they 

 oppose each other, etc. Among which, the latter is of ex 

 tensive use in moral and civil affairs; I mean, how far one 

 passion may regulate another, and how they employ each 

 other s assistance to conquer some one, after the manner of 

 hunters and fowlers, who take beast with beast, and bird 

 with bird; which man, perhaps, without such assistance, 



13 See b. ii. and cf. Eth. Nic. ii. 4, 1. 



