Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/35

Rh Another:

Alas, alas, to see how gods above Have sent to men on earth this misery. To know their good, and that which they should love. Yet wanting grace, to do the contrary!

And a third:

Now plucks, now hales, of deadly ire a fire: But surely, hold my reason can no more: Than anchor flouke stay ship from being split, When grounded 'tis on sands near to the shore.

He nameth not unproperly and without good grace the fluke of an anchor resting lightly upon the loose sand, to signify the feeble hold that reason hath which is not resolute and firmly seated, but through the weakness and delicacy of the soul, rejecteth and forsaketh judgment: And not much unlike hereunto is this comparison also that another maketh in a contrary sense:

Much like a ship which fastened is to land With cordage strong, whereof we may be bold. The winds do blow, and yet she doth withstand And check them all, her cables take such hold.

He termeth the judgment of reason, when it resisteth a dishonest act, by the name of cable and cordage; which notwithstanding afterwards may be broken by the violence of some passion (as it were) with the continual gales of a blustering wind. For to say a very truth, the intemperate person is by his lusts and desires carried with full sail to his pleasures; he giveth himself thereto, and thither directeth his whole course: but the incontinent person tendeth thither also: howbeit (as a man would say) crookedly and not directly, as one desirous and endeavouring to withdraw himself, and to repel the passion that draweth and moveth him to it, yet in the end he also slideth and falleth into some foul and dishonest act: Like as Timon, by way of biting scoff, traduced and reproved Anaxarchus in this wise:

Here shews itself the dogged force of Anaxarchus fell. So stubborn and so permanent, when once he took a pitch: And yet as wise as he would seem, a wretch (I heard folk tell) He judged was: for that to vice and pleasures overmich By nature prone he was: a thing that sages most do shun, Which brought him back out of the way, and made him dote anon.

For neither is a wise sage properly called continent, but temperate; nor a fool incontinent, but intemperate: because the one taketh pleasure and delight in good and honest things; and