289 AfiVAJfcfiMENt Of LtAmi^a. [boo«: Vlt 



"Thft Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies."^ 

 Salhist notes it of the temper of kings, that it is Irequent 

 with them to desire contradictories : — " Plerumqne regise 

 voluntates, ut vehementes sunt ; sic mobiles, ssepeque ipsse 

 sibi adversse."' Tacitus observes, that "honours and digni- 

 ties commonly change the temper of mankind for the worse." 

 " Solus Yespasianus mutatus in melius.' '^ Pindar remarks 

 that " a sudden flush of good fortune generally enervates and 

 slackens the mind." 



" Sunt qui magnam felicitatem concoqiiere non possunt."* 

 The psalmist intimates, that it is easier to hold a mean in 

 the height, than in the increase of fortune : — " If riches 

 lly to thee, set not thy heart upon them."™ It is true, 

 Aristotle, in his Rhetorics, cursorily mentions some such 

 observations ; and so do others up and down in their 

 writings : but they were never yet incorporated into moral 

 philosophy, whereto they principally belong, as much as 

 treatises of the difference of the soil and glebe belong to 

 agriculture, or discourses of the different complexions or 

 habits of the body to medicine. The thing must, therefore, 

 be now procured, unless we w^ould imitate the rashness of 

 empirics, who employ the same remedies in all diseases and 

 constitutions. 



Next to this doctrine of characters follows the doctrine of 

 affections and perturbations, which, we observed above, are 

 the diseases of the mind. For as the ancient politicians said 

 of democracies, that " the people were like the sea, and the 

 orators like the wind ;" so it may be truly said, that the 

 nature of the mind would be unruffled and uniform, if the 

 affections, like the winds, did not disturb it. And here, 

 again, we cannot but remember that Aristotle, who wrote so 

 many books of ethics, should never treat of the affections, 

 which are a principal branch thereof; and yet has given 

 them a place in his Rhetorics, wliere they come to be but 

 secondarily considered :^ for his discourses of pleasure and 

 pain by no means answer the ends of such a treatise, no 

 more than a discourse of light and splendour would give the 

 doctrine of particular colours : for pleasure and pain are to 



^ Epist. Tit. i. 12. • Jugurtha, i. 50. ^ Hist. i. 53, towards the end 



' Or, KaraTTc^ai niyiv 6X€ov ovk t^vvaaOr]. — Olymp. i. 55. 



fc Tsr.lni Ijti. 11. « See b. ii. and ci. Eth. Nic. ii. 4, 1. 



