Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/127

Rh body and wrought a cure, is cast up again together with the malady; so reason also should be sent out after the passion which it hath cured, but it ought to remain still in the mind for to keep and preserve the judgment. For why? reason is not to be compared with medicines and purgative drugs, but rather to wholesome and nourishing meats, engendering mildly in the minds of them unto whom it is made familiar, a good complexion and fast habit together with some perfect health: whereas admonitions and corrections applied or ministered unto passions when they swell and rage, and be in the height of their heat and inflammation, hardly and with much ado work any effect at all, and if they do, it is with much pain. Neither differ they in operation from those strong odours which well may raise out of a fit those who are fallen and be subject to the epilepsy or falling sickness; but they cure not the disease, nor secure the patient for falling again: True it is that all other passions of the mind, if they be taken in hand at the very point and instant when they are in their highest fury, do yield in some sort, and they admit reason coming from without into the mind for to lelp and succour, but anger not only, as Melanthius saith,

but also tumeth her clean out of house and home, shutteth and locketh her out of doors for altogether; nay, it fareth for all the world like to those who set the house on fire over their own heads, and burn themselves and it together: it filleth all within all of trouble, smoke, and confused noises, in such sort that it hath neither eye to see, nor ear to listen unto those that would and might assist and give aid: and therefore sooner will a ship abandoned of her master in the midst of the sea, and there hulling dangerously in a storm and tempest, receive a pilot from some other ship without, than a man tossed with the waves of fury and anger, admit the reason and remonstrance of a stranger; unless his own reason at home were beforehand well prepared: But like as they who look for no other but to have their city besieged, gather together and lay up safe their own store and provision, and all things that might serve their turn, not knowing nor expecting any aid or relief abroad during the siege; even so ought we to have our remedies ready and provided long before, and the same gathered out of all parts of philosophy and conveyed into the mind for to withstand the rage of choler: as being assured of this, that when need and