3H OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



conversant in adorning that which is good than in colour- 

 ing 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 Thucydides 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 be seen, would move great love and affection ' ; 

 so seeing that she cannot be shewed to the Sense by 

 corporal shape, the next degree is to shew her to the 

 Imagination in lively representation : for to shew her to 

 Reason only in subtlety 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 con- 

 clusions, which have no sympathy with the will of man. 



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 Affection's 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 

 remote appear as present, then upon the revolt of the 

 imagination reason prevaileth. 



We conclude therefore, that Rhetoric can be no more 

 charged with the colouring of the worse part, than Logic 

 with Sophistry, or Morality with Vice. For we know the 



