270 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



vice. This faculty is always ready, for every man speaks 

 more virtuously than he either thinks or acts. And it is 

 excellently observed by Thucydides, that something of this 

 kind was usually objected to Cleon; 4 who, as he always 

 defended the worst side of a cause, was ever inveighing 

 against eloquence and the grace of speech, well knowing 

 that no man could speak gracefully upon a base subject, 

 though every man easily might upon an honorable one: for 

 Plato elegantly observed, though the expression is now 

 grown trite, that if virtue could be beheld, she would have 

 great admirers. 6 But rhetoric, by plainly painting virtue 

 and goodness, renders them, as it were, conspicuous; for as 

 they cannot be seen by corporeal eye, the next degree 

 is to have them set before us as lively as possible by the 

 ornament of words and the strength of imagination. The 

 Stoics, therefore, were deservedly ridiculed by Cicero for 

 endeavoring to inculcate virtue upon the mind by short 

 and subtile sentences, and conclusions, 6 which have little 

 or no relation to the imagination and the will. 



Again, if the affections were orderly and obedient to 

 reason, there would be no great use of persuasion and in 

 sinuation to gain access to the mind; it would then be 

 sufficient that things themselves were nakedly and simply 

 proposed and proved; but, on the contrary, the affections 

 revolt so often, and raise such disturbances and seditions 



&quot;Yideo meliora, prbooque; 



Deteriora sequor&quot; 7 



that reason would perfectly be led captive, did not the per 

 suasion of eloquence win over the imagination from the side 

 of the passions, and promote an alliance between it and 

 reason against the affections. For we must observe that 

 the affections themselves always aim at an apparent good, 

 and in this respect have something common with reason. 

 But here lies the difference, that the affections principally 



4 B. iii. 42. 5 Phedias. 



6 Orator, ii. 38; Tusc. Disp. ii. 18, 42. 7 Ovid, Metam. vii. 20. 



