I7 8 BACON 



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 in- 

 justice in Plato, though it proceeded from a just contempt of 

 the rhetoricians of his time, to place rhetoric among the volup- 

 tuary arts, and resemble it to cookery, which corrupted whole- 

 some meats, and, by variety of sauces, made unwholesome ones 

 more palatable. For speech is, doubtless, more employed to 

 adorn virtue than to color 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 some- 

 thing of this kind was usually objected to Cleon ; c who, as he al- 

 ways 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 ele- 

 gantly observed, though the expression is now grown trite, that 

 if virtue could be beheld, she would have great admirers.^ But 

 rhetoric, by plainly painting virtue and goodness, renders them, 

 as it were, conspicuous ; for as they cannot be seen by the cor- 

 poreal 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,? 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 insinuation 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 



" Video meliora, proboque; 



Deteriora sequor,"/ 



that reason would perfectly be led captive, did not the persua- 

 sion of eloquence win over the imagination from the side of the 

 passions, and promote an alliance betwixt it and reason against 

 the affections. For we must observe that the affections them- 

 selves always aim at an apparent good, and in this respect have 



