Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/31

Rh actions have of a certain instinct and motion to set them forward, which this moral habitude doth make in each passion, and the same instinct requireth likewise the assistance of reason to limit it that it may be moderate, to the end that it neither exceed the mean, nor come short and be defective: for that it cannot be chosen but this brutish and passible part hath motions in it; some over-vehement, quick and sudden, others as slow again, and more slack than is meet. Which is the reason that our actions cannot be good but after one manner: whereas, they may be evil after divers sorts: like as a man cannot hit the mark but one way: marry, he may miss sundry ways, either by overshooting or coming short.

The part and duty, then, of that active faculty of reason according to nature, is to cut off and take away all those excessive or defective passions, and to reduce them unto a mediocrity. For whereas the said instinct or motion, either by infirmity, effeminate delicacy, fear, or slothfulness, doth fail and come short of duty and the end required, there active reason is present, ready to rouse, excite, and stir up the same. Again, on the other side, when it runneth on end beyond all measure, after a dissolute and disorderly manner, there reason is pressed to abridge that which is too much, and to repress and stay the same: thus ruling and restraining these pathetical motions, it breedeth in man these moral virtues whereof we speak, imprinting them in that reasonless part of the mind: and no other they are than a mean between excess and defect.

Neither must we think that all virtues do consist in a mediocrity: for sapience or wisdom, which stand in no need at all of the brutish and unreasonable part, and consist only in the pure and sincere intelligence and discourse of understanding, and not subject to all passions, is the very height and excellency of reason, perfect and absolute of itself: a full and accomplished power (I say) wherein is engendered that most divine, heavenly, and happy knowledge. But moral virtue, which savoureth somewhat of the earth, by reason of the necessities of our body, and in which regard it standeth in need of the instrumental ministry of the pathetical part, for to work and perform her operations, being in no wise the corruption or abolition of the sensual and unreasonable part of the soul, but rather the order, moderation and embellishment thereof, is the extremity and height of excellence, in respect of the faculty and quality: but considering the quantity is rather a mediocrity, taking away the excess on the one side and the defect on the other.