ce at such times it is overheated, they (the gods) implanted
in us the lungs, which are so fashioned that being soft and bloodless,
and having cavities within, they act like a buffer, and when the heart
boils with inward passion by yielding to its throbbing save it from
injury." He compares the seat of the desires to the _women's quarters_,
the seat of the passions to the _men's quarters_, in a house. The
spleen, again, is the _napkin_ of the internal organs, by whose
excretions it is saturated from time to time, and swells to a great size
with inward impurity. "After this," he continues, "they shrouded the
whole with flesh, throwing it forward, like a cushion, as a barrier
against injuries from without." The blood he terms the _pasture_ of the
flesh. "To assist the process of nutrition," he goes on, "they divided
the body into ducts, cutting trenches like those in a garden, so that,
the body being a system of narrow conduits, the current of the veins
might flow as from a perennial fountain-head. And when the end is at
hand," he says, "the soul is cast loose from her moorings like a ship,
and free to wander whither she will."

6
These, and a hundred similar fancies, follow one another in quick
succession. But those which I have pointed out are sufficient to
demonstrate how great is the natural power of figurative language, and
how largely metaphors conduce to sublimity, and to illustrate the
important part which they play in all impassioned and descriptive
passages.

[Footnote 5: _Memorab._ i. 4, 5.]

[Footnote 6: _Timaeus_, 69, D; 74, A; 65, C; 72, G; 74, B, D; 80, E;
77, G; 78, E; 85, E.]

7
That the use of figurative language, as of all other beauties of style,
has a constant tendency towards excess, is an obvious truth which I need
not dwell upon. It is chiefly on this account that even Plato comes in
for a large share of disparagement, because he is often carried away by
a sort of frenzy of language into an intemperate use of violent
metaphors and inflated allegory. "It is not easy to remark" (he says in
one place) "that a city ought to be blended like a bowl, in which the
mad wine boils when it is poured out, but being disciplined by another
and a sober god in that fair society produces a good and temperate
drink."[7] Really, it is said, to speak of water as a "sober god," and
of the process of mixing as a "discipline," is to talk like a poet, and
no very _sober_ one either.

[Footnote 7: _