THE SECOND BOOK 157 



quence and good speech ; knowing that no man can 

 speak fair of courses sordid and base. And therefore 

 as Plato said elegantly, That virtue, if she could be 

 seen, would move great love and affection ; so seeing 

 that she cannot be showed to the sense by corporal 

 shape, the next degree is to show her to the imagination 

 in lively representation : for to show her to reason only 

 in subtility of argument was a thing ever derided in 

 Chrysippus and many of the Stoics, who thought to 

 thrust virtue upon men by sharp disputations and con 

 clusions, which have no sympathy with the will of man. 



4. Again, if the affections in themselves were pliant 

 and obedient to reason, it were true there should be no 

 great use of persuasions and insinuations to the will, 

 more than of naked proposition and proofs ; but in 

 regard of the continual mutinies and seditions of the 

 affections, 



Video meliora, proboque, 

 Deteriora sequor, 



reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence 

 of persuasions did not practise and win the imagination 

 from the affections part, and contract a confederacy 

 between the reason and imagination against the affec 

 tions ; for the affections themselves carry over an appe 

 tite to good, as reason doth. The difference is, that the 

 affection beholdeth merely the present ; reason be- 

 holdeth the future and sum of time. And therefore the 

 present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly 

 vanquished ; but after that force of eloquence and 

 persuasion hath made things future and remote appear 

 as present, then upon the revolt of the imagination 

 reason prevaileth. 



5. We conclude therefore that rhetoric can be no 

 more charged with the colouring of the worse part, 

 than logic with sophistry, or morality with vice. For 

 we know the doctrines of contraries are the same, 

 though the use be opposite. It appeareth also that logic 

 differeth from rhetoric, not only as the fist from the 

 palm, the one close, the other at large ; but much more 



