Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/26

4 hardly or never conquered by philosophy, and brought within the compass of obedience; so obstinate and rebellious it is.

And Plato verily was of this opinion (which he professed openly, and held as a firm and undoubted truth), that the soul of this universal world is not simple, uniform, and uncompounded, but mixed (as it were) of a certain power of identity and of diversity. For after one sort it is governed and turned about continually in an uniform manner by means of one and the same order, which is powerful and predominant over all: and after another sort again, it is divided into circles, spheres, and motions, wandering and contrary in manner to the other: whereupon dependeth the beginning of diversity in generation of all things in the earth. Semblably (quoth he) the soul of man, being a part and portion of that universal soul of the world, composed likewise of proportions and numbers answerable to the other, is not simple and of one nature or affection, but one part thereof is more spiritual, intelligible, and reasonable, which ought of right and according to nature have the sovereignty and command in man: the other is brutish, sensual, erroneous, and disorderly of itself, requiring the direction and guidance of another. Now, this is subdivided again into other two parts; whereof the one is always called corporal or vegetative; the other thymocides, as one would say, irascible and concupiscible; which one while doth adhere and stick close to the foresaid gross and corporal portion: and otherwhiles to the more pure and spiritual part, which is the discourse of reason; unto which, according as it doth frame and apply itself, it giveth strength and vigour thereto. Now the difference between the one and the other may be known principally by the fight and resistance that oftentimes is between understanding and reason on the one side, and the concupiscence and wrathful part on the other; which sheweth that these other faculties are often disobedient and repugnant to the best part.

And verily, Aristotle used these principles and grounds especially above all others at the first, as appeareth by his writings: but afterwards, he attributed the irascible part unto the concupiscible, confounding them both together in one, as if ire were a concupiscence or desire of revenge. Howbeit, this he always held to the very end, that the brutish and sensual part, which is subject unto passions, was wholly and ever distinct from the intellectual part, which is the same that reason: not that it is fully deprived of reason, as is that corporal and gross part