Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/44

22 saying, they be certain pricks or stings, contractions, diffusions or dilatations, which in proportion and according to reason, may be greater or less. Certes, what variety there is in judgment it is plain and evident. For some there be that deem poverty not to be ill: others hold that it is very ill: and there are, again, who account it the worst thing in the world; insomuch as to avoid it they could be content to throw themselves headlong from high rocks into the sea. Also you shall have those who reckon death to be evil, in that only it depriveth us of the fruition of many good things; others there be who think and say as much, but it is in regard of the eternal torments and horrible punishments that be under the ground in hell. As for bodily health, some love it no otherwise than a thing agreeable to nature and profitable withal; others take it to be the sovereign good in the world, as without which they make no reckoning of riches, of children,

Nay, they let not in the end to think and say, that virtue itself serveth in no stead, and availeth nought, unless it be accompanied with good health: whereby it appeareth, that as touching judgment some err more, some less.

But my meaning is not now to dispute against this evasion of theirs. Thus much only I purpose to take for mine advantage out of their own confession, in that themselves do grant, that the brutish and sensual part, according to which they say that passions be greater and more violent, is different from judgment: and howsoever they may seem to contest and cavil about words and names, they grant the substance and the thing itself in question, joining with those who maintain that the reasonless part of the soul which entertaineth passions is altogether different from that which is able to discourse, reason, and judge. And verily Chrysippus, in those books which he entituled Of Anomology, after he had written and taught that anger is blind, and many times will not permit a man to see those things which be plain and apparent, and as often casteth a dark mist over that which he hath already perfectly learned and known; proceedeth forward a little further: For (quoth he) the passions which arise drive out and chase forth all discourse of reason, and such things as were judged and determined otherwise against them, urging it still by force unto contrary actions. Then he useth the