The Second Book 147 



3. And therefore it was great injustice in Plato, though 

 springing out of a just hatred to the rhetoricians of his 

 time, to esteem of rhetoric but as a voluptuary art, resem- 

 bling it to cookery, that did mar wholesome meats, and help 

 unwholesome by variety of sauces to the pleasure of the taste. ^ 

 For we see that speech is much more conversant in adorning 

 that which is good, than in colouring that which is evil; 

 for there is no man but speaketh more honestly than he 

 can do or think: and it was excellently noted by Thucy- 

 dides in Cleon, that because he used to hold on the bad side 

 in causes of estate, therefore he was ever inveighing against 

 eloquence 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 he 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 subtilty 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 conclusions, 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 affections; for the 

 affections themselves carry ever an appetite to good, as 

 reason doth. The difference is, that the affection beholdeth 

 merely the present; reason beholdeth 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 



» Plat. Gorg. 462, seq. • Thucyd. iii. 42. 



• Plat. Phadr. 250. * Ovid. Metam. vii. 20. 



