[7] Thus me have seen the diversity between incontinence and intemperance.
And as for continence and temperance, their differences are analogous,
and bear proportion to those of the other, but in contrary respects. For
remorse, grief, and indignation do always accompany continence; whereas in
the mind of a temperate person there is all over such an evenness,
calmness, and firmness, that, seeing with what wonderful easiness and
tranquillity the irrational faculties go along with reason and submit
to its directions, one cannot but call to mind that of the poet:
Swift the command ran through the raging deep;
Th' obedient waves compose themselves to sleep;
—Udyse. XII. 168.
reason having quite deadened and repressed the vehement raging and furious
motions of the passions and affections. But those whose assistance Nature
necessarily requires are by reason rendered so agreeable and consenting,
so submissive, friendly, and co-operative in the execution of all good
designs and purposes, that they neither outrun it, nor recede from it,
nor behave themselves disorderly, nor ever show the least disobedience;
but every appetite willingly and cheerfully pursues its dictates,
As sucking foal runs by his mother mare.
Which very much confirms what was said by Xenocrates of those who are true
philosophers, namely, that they alone do that voluntarily which all others
do against their wills for fear of the laws; being diverted and restrained
from the pursuit of their pleasures, as a dog is frightened by a whipping
or a cat scared by a noise, having regard to nothing else in the matter but
their own danger.
It is manifest then from what has been discoursed, that the soul does
perceive within itself something that is firm and immovable, totally distinct
from its passions and appetites, these being what it does always oppose and is
ever contending with. But some there are, nevertheless, who affirm that reason
and passion do not materially differ from one another, and that there is not
in the soul any faction, sedition, or dissension of two several and contending
faculties, but only a shifting, conversion, or alteration of the same reason
or rational faculty from one side to the other, backward and forward, which,
by reason of the suddenness and swiftness of the change, is not perceptible
by us; and therefore, that me do not consider that the same faculty of the
soul is by nature so adapted as to be capable of both concupiscence and
repentance, of anger and of fear, of being drawn to the commission of any
lewdness or evil by the allurements of pleasure, and afterwards of being
again retrieved from it. And as for lust, anger, fear, and such like passions,
they will have them to be nothing but perverse opinions and false judgments,
not arising or formed in any inferior part of the soul, peculiarly belonging
to them, but being the advances and returns, or the motions forward and backward,
the good likenings and more vehement efforts, and (in a word) such operations
and energies of the whole rational and directive faculty as are ready to be
turned this way or that with the greatest ease imaginable; like the sudden
motions and irruptions in children, the violence and impetuosity whereof, by
reason of their imbecility and weakness, are very fleeting and inconstant.
But these opinions are against common sense and experience; for no man
ever felt such a sudden change in himself, as that whenever he chose any
thing he immediately judged it fit to be chosen, or that, on the other
hand, whenever he judged any thing fit to be chosen he immediately made
choice of it. Neither does the lover who is convinced by reason that his
amour is fit to be broken off, and that he ought to strive against his
passion, therefore immediately cease to love; nor on the other side doth
he desist reasoning, and cease from being able to give a right judgment of
things, even then, when, being softened and overcome by luxury, he delivers
himself up a captive to his lusts. But as, while by the assistance of reason
he makes opposition to the efforts of his passions, they yet continue
to solicit, and at last overcome him; so likewise, when he is overcome and
forced to submit to them, by the light of reason does he plainly discern and
know that he has done amiss; so that neither by the passions is reason effaced
and destroyed, nor yet by reason is he rescued and delivered from them; but,
being tossed to and fro between the one and the other, he is a kind of neuter,
and participates in common of them both. And those, methinks, who imagine that
one while the directive and rational part of the soul is changed into
concupiscence and lust, and that by and by reason opposes itself against
them, and they are changed into that, are not much unlike them who make the
sportsman and his game not to be two, but one body, which, by a nimble and
dexterous mutation of itself, one while appears in the shape of the huntsman,
and at another turn puts on the form of a wild beast. For as these in a
plain evident matter seem to be stark blind, so they in the other case belie
even their own senses, seeing they must needs feel in themselves not merely
a change or mutation of one and the same thing, but a downright struggle and
quarrel between two several and distinct faculties.
But is not, say they, the deliberative power or faculty of a man often
divided in itself, and distracted among several opinions contrary to one
another, about that which is expedient; and yet is but one, simple, uniform
thing? All this we grant to be true; but it does not reach the case we are
speaking of. For that part of the soul where reason and judgment are seated
is not at variance with itself, but by one and the same faculty is conversant
about different reasonings; or rather, there is but one simple power of
reasoning, which employs itself on several arguments, as so many different
subject-matters. And therefore it is, that no disturbance or uneasiness accompanies
those reasonings or deliberations, where the passions do not at all interpose.
Nor are me at any time forced, as it were, to choose any thing contrary to the
dictates of our own reason, but when, as in a balance, some lurking hidden
passions lay something in the scale against reason to weigh it down. And
this often falls out to be the case, where it is not reasoning that is
opposed to reasoning, but either ambition, or emulation, or favor, or jealousy,
or fear, making a show as if there were a variance or contest between
two differing reasons, according to that of Homer,
Shame in denial, in acceptance fear;
—Il. VII. 98.
and of another poet,
Hard fate to fall, but yet a glorious fate;
'Tis cowardly to live, but yet 'tis sweet.
And in determining of controversies about contracts between man and man,
it is by the interposition of the passions that so many disputes and delays
are created. So likewise in the consultations and counsels of kings, they
who design to make their court incline not to one side of the question or
debate rather than the other, but only accommodate themselves to their own
passions, without any regard to the interest of the public. Which is the reason
that in aristocratical governments the magistrates mill not suffer orators in
their pleadings, by declaiming and haranguing, to raise the passions and move
the affections. For reason, not being disturbed or diverted by passion, tends
directly to that which is honorable and just; but if the passions are once raised,
there immediately follows a mighty controversy and struggle between pleasure
and grief on the one hand, and reason and judgment on the other. For otherwise
how comes it to pass, that in philosophical disputes and disquisitions we so
often and with so little trouble are by others drawn off from our on opinions
and wrought upon to change them? -and that Aristotle himself, Democritus, and
Chrysippus have without any concern or regret of mind, nay even with great
satisfaction to themselves, retracted some of those points which they formerly
so much approved of, and were wont so stiffly to maintain? For no passions
residing in the contemplative and scientifical part of the soul make any tumult
or disturbance therein, and the irrational and brutal faculties remain quiet
and calm, without busying themselves to intermeddle in matters of that kind.
By which means it falls out, that reason no sooner comes within view of truth,
but rejecting that which is false it readily embraces it; forasmuch as there
is in the former what is not to be found in the other, namely, a willingness
to assent and disagree as there is occasion; whereas in all deliberations had,
judgments made, and resolutions taken about such things as are to be reduced
into practice, and are mixed and interwoven with the passions and affections,
reason meets with much opposition, and is put under great difficulties, by
being stopped and interrupted in its course by the brutal faculties of the
mind, throwing in its way either pleasure or fear or grief or lust, or some
such like temptation or discouragement. And then the decision of these disputes
belongs to sense, which is equally affected with both the one and the other;
and whichsoever of them gets the mastery, the other is not thereby destroyed,
but (though struggling and resisting all the while) is forced only to comply
and go along with the conqueror. As an amorous person, for example, finding
himself engaged in an amour he cannot approve of, has immediately recourse to
his reason, to oppose the force of that against his passion, as having them
both together actually subsisting in his soul, plainly discerning them to be
several and distinct, and feeling a sensible conflict between the two, while
he endeavors (as it were) with his hand to repress and keep down the part which
is inflamed and rages so violently within him. But, on the contrary, in those
deliberations and disquisitions where the passions have nothing to do, such I
mean as belong properly to the contemplative part of the soul, if the reasons
are equally balanced, not inclining more to one side than another, then is
there no determinate judgment formed, but there remains a doubting, as if
there mere a rest or suspense of the understanding between two contrary opinions.
But if there happen to be any inclination or determination towards one side,
that prevailing must needs get the better of the other, but without any regret
or obstinate opposition from it against the opinion which is received.
In short, whenever the contest seems to be of reason against reason, in
that case we have no manner of sense of two distinct powers, but of one
simple, uniform faculty only, under different apprehensions or
imaginations; but when the dispute is between the irrational part and reason,
where nature has so ordered it that neither the victory nor the defeat can be
had without anxiety and regret, there immediately the two contending powers
divide the soul in the quarrel, and thereby make the difference and distinction
between them to be most plain and evident.