And therefore, as Plato said elegantly, "That virtue, if she
could be seen, would move great love and affection;" so seeing that
she cannot be showed to the sense by corporal shape, the next degree
is to show her to the imagination in lively representation; for to
show her to reason only in subtlety of argument was a thing ever
derided in Chrysippus and many of the Stoics, who thought to thrust
virtue upon men by sharp disputations and conclusions, which have no
sympathy with the will of man.
(4) Again, if the affections in themselves were pliant and obedient
to reason, it were true there should be no great use of persuasions
and insinuations to the will, more than of naked proposition and
proofs; but in regard of the continual mutinies and seditious of the
affections -
"Video meliora, proboque,
Deteriora sequor,"
reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions
did not practise and win the imagination from the affections' part,
and contract a confederacy between the reason and imagination
against the affections; for the affections themselves carry ever an
appetite to good, as reason doth.
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