For as the ancient politiques in popular estates were
wont to compare the people to the sea, and the orators to the winds;
because as the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if the winds
did not move and trouble it; so the people would be peaceable and
tractable if the seditious orators did not set them in working and
agitation: so it may be fitly said, that the mind in the nature
thereof would be temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds,
did not put it into tumult and perturbation. And here again I find
strange, as before, that Aristotle should have written divers
volumes of Ethics, and never handled the affections which is the
principal subject thereof; and yet in his Rhetorics, where they are
considered but collaterally and in a second degree (as they may be
moved by speech), he findeth place for them, and handleth them well
for the quantity; but where their true place is he pretermitteth
them. For it is not his disputations about pleasure and pain that
can satisfy this inquiry, no more than he that should generally
handle the nature of light can be said to handle the nature of
colours; for pleasure and pain are to the particular affections as
light is to particular colours.
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