"For neither do they shed and spill the wine upon the floure who are afraide to be drunke, but delay the same with water: nor those who feare the violence of a passion, do take it quite away, but rather temper and qualifie the same: like as folke use to breake horses and oxen from their flinging out with their heeles, their stiffenes and curstnes of the head, and stubburnes in receiving the bridle or the yoke, but do not restraine them of other motions of going about their worke and doing their deede. And even so, verily, reason maketh good use of these passions, when they be well tamed, and, as it were, brought to hand: without overweakening or rooting out cleane that parte of the soule which is made for to second reason and do it good service.... Whereas let passions be rid cleane away (if that were possible to be done), our reason will be found in many things more dull and idle: like as the pilot and master of a ship hath little to do if the winde be laid and no gale at all stirring ... as if to _the discourse of reason_ the gods had adjoined passion as a pricke to incite, and a chariot to set it forward." Again, in describing the "Meanes," he says-- "Now to begin with Fortitude, they say it is the meane between Cowardise and rash Audacitie; of which twaine the one is a defect, the other an excesse of the yrefull passion: Liberalitie, betweene Nigardise and Prodigalitie: Clemencie and Mildnesse, betweene senselesse Indolence and Crueltie: Justice, the meane of giving more or lesse than due: Temperance, a mediocritie betweene the blockish stupiditie of the minde, moved with _no touch of pleasure_, and all unbrideled loosenes, whereby it is abandoned to all sensualitie."-- _The Philosophie of Plutarch_, fol. 1603. It really does appear to me that there could not be a happier or more appropriate designation, for a philosophy made up in this way of "meanes" and adjustments, so as to steer between the _plus_ and _minus_, than a system of _checks_--not fixed, or rigid rules, as they are sometimes interpreted to be, but nice allowances of excess or defect, to be discovered, weighed, and determined by individual reason, in the audit of each man's conscience, according to the strength or weakness of the passions he may have to regulate. I therefore oppose the substitution of _ethics_-- 1. Because we have the _prima facie_ evidence of the text itself, that _checks_ was Shakspeare's word. 2. Because we have internal evidence, in the significance and excellence of the phrase, that it was Shakspeare's word.