Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/103

 DEMETRIUS. Ingenious men have long observed a resemblance be- tween the arts and the bodily senses. And they were first led to do so, I think, by noticing the way in which, both in the arts and with our senses, we examine oppo- sites. Judgment once obtained, the use to which we put it differs in the two cases. Our senses are not meant to pick out black rather than white, to prefer sweet to bit- ter, or soft and yielding to hard and resisting objects; all they have to do is to receive impressions as they occur, and report to the understanding the impressions as re- ceived. The arts, on the other hand, which reason insti- tutes expressly to choose and obtain some suitable, and to refuse and get rid of some unsuitable object, have their proper concern in the consideration of the former ; though, in a casual and contingent way, they must also, for the very rejection of them, pay attention to the lat- ter. Medicine, to produce health, has to examine dis- ease, and music, to create harmony, must investigate dis- cord ; and the supreme arts, of temperance, of justice, and of wisdom, as they are acts of judgment and selec- tion, exercised not on good and just and expedient only, but also on wicked, unjust, and inexpedient objects, do not give their commendations to the mere innocence (861