ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 269 



But in our manner to open and stir the earth a little 

 about the roots of this science, certainly rhetoric is subser 

 vient to the imagination, as logic is to the understanding. 

 And if the thing be well considered, the office and use 

 of this art is but to apply and recommend the dictates of 

 reason to the imagination, in order to excite the affections 

 and will. For the administration of reason is disturbed 

 three ways; viz., 1, either by the insnaring of sophistry, 

 which belongs to logic; 2, the delusion of words, which 

 belongs to rhetoric; or 3, by the violence of the affections, 

 which belongs to ethics. For as in transacting business 

 with others, men are commonly overreached, or drawn 

 from their own purposes either by cunning, importunity, 

 or vehemence ; so in the inward business we transact with 

 ourselves, we are either, 1, undermined by the fallacy of 

 arguments; 2, disquieted and solicited by the assiduity 

 of impressions and observations; or 3, shaken and carried 

 away by the violence of the passions. Nor is the state of 

 human nature so unequal, that these arts and faculties 

 should have power to disturb the reason, and none to con 

 firm and strengthen it; for they do this in a much greater 

 degree. The end of logic is to teach the form of arguments 

 for defending, and not for insnaring, the understanding. 

 The end of ethics is so to compose the affections, that they 

 may co-operate with reason, and not insult it. And lastly, 

 the end of rhetoric is to fill the imagination with such 

 observations and images as may assist reason, and not 

 overthrow it. For the abuses of an art come in obliquely 

 only, and not for practice, but caution. It was therefore 

 great injustice in Plato, though it proceeded from a just 

 contempt of the rhetoricians of his time, to place rhetoric 

 among the voluptuary arts, 3 and resemble it to cookery, 

 which corrupted wholesome meats, and, by variety of sauces, 

 made unwholesome ones more palatable. For speech is, 

 doubtless, more employed to adorn virtue than to color 



3 As it was in Bacon to place painting and music in the same category. 



