easily stays and retains him; but those, on the other side, who are
surprised with the passions of the soul are then most active, then
least at quiet; for the impulses of the mind are the principal causes
of actions, and passions are the violent fits of such impulses.
Wherefore, they suffer not the soul to be at rest; but when a man
has most need of patience, silence, and retirement, then is he drawn
forth into the light, then is he chiefly discovered by his choleric
humors, his eagerness in contending, his dishonest loves, and his
heart-breaking sorrows, which force him to commit many irregular
actions, and speak many words unfitting for the times.
4. As therefore that storm which hinders a ship from entering into
the port is more dangerous than that which suffers it not to sail;
so the tempests of the soul are more difficult, which permit not a
man to restrain himself, nor to settle his disturbed reason, so that,
being without pilot or cables, he is through tumult and deceit hurried
headlong by rash and pernicious courses, till he falls into some
terrible shipwreck, where he casts away his life. So that also for
these reasons it is worse to be sick in the soul than body; for to the
one it happens only to suffer, but to the other both to suffer and do
amiss. And what need is there to reckon up the greater number of our
passions? This very nick of time is a sufficient remembrance. Do you
see this vast and promiscuous multitude, here crowding and thrusting
each other about the tribunal and forum? They are not assembled to
sacrifice to their country Gods, nor to participate together in the
sacred ceremonies. They are not come to offer up to Jupiter Ascraeus
the first of the Lydian fruits, nor to celebrate the solemnities of
Bacchus by the observance of festival nights and common revellings; but
a mighty pestilence, as it were by yearly revolutions irritating Asia,
drives them hither to manage their processes and suits at law; and a
multitude of affairs, as it were of impetuous torrents, fall into one
market-place, where they grow hot and are eagerly prosecuted both by
those that destroy and by those that are destroyed. Of what fevers, of
what agues, are these the effects? What lodgements, what irruptions,
what distemperature of heat, what superfusion of humors produces them?
Should you ask every suit at law as if it were a man, whence it had its
original, whence it proceeded; you would find, that audacious anger
generated one, furious obstinacy another, and unjust covetousness a
third....