Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
reside in any creature not capable to reason, to judge, remember, and
consider. Therefore, if you will deprive the creatures of expectation,
memory, design, preparation, hope, fear, desire, and grief, you must at
the same time deny them the use either of eyes or ears, and indeed of
all sense and imagination; which it is better for them to be without,
since they cannot make use of them, than to labor under grief and pain,
with no means present of averting them.
There is an oration of Strato the philosopher, demonstrating that
without sense there can be no understanding. For many times letters
cursorily glanced upon by the eye, and speeches little regarded by the
ear, escape our knowledge, our minds being intent on other matters.
Afterwards by recollection the same things return into our mind, for us
to run through and pursue them in our thoughts as we please. Whence we
say proverbially, “The mind sees, the mind hears; all other things are
deaf and blind,” in regard there can be no sense in the eyes and ears,
if understanding be wanting. Therefore King Cleomenes, after great
commendations given to a copy of verses recited at a banquet where he
was present, being asked whether it were not an admirable piece, bid
them that heard it give their judgment, for that his mind was in the
Peloponnesus. Therefore of necessity, whatever creatures are capable of
sense must also be capable of understanding, if we can no otherwise be
sensible than by the force of understanding.
But suppose we should grant that sense has no need of the understanding
for the performance of the duty incumbent upon it; nevertheless, when
that same sense which has shown an animal the difference between what
is grateful and what is averse to Nature has departed, where is that
faculty which retains this difference in the memory,—dreading things
that are abominable, and longing after things that are useful, and if
they are wanting, seeking means to compass them,—which provides animals
receptacles and places of refuge, that they may look out after their
prey, and avoid the snares and gins of the hunters? And yet those very
authors inculcate these things in their introductions, even to the
teasing our ears: defining purpose to be an indication that something
is to be brought to completion; design to be an impulse before an
impulse; preparation to be an action before an action; memory to be
the comprehension of some certain past impression, which at first was
apprehended by sense. In all which things there is nothing which may
not rightly be said to partake of reason, and yet all these things
are common to all creatures; as indeed are certainly all cogitations;
which, while they lie concealed in the brain, we call thoughts, but
when they come to be in motion, we name conceptions. In the mean time
they acknowledge all passions and perturbations of the mind to be
false judgments and erroneous opinions; so that it is a wonder to me,
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