against and opposing them. But
some say that there is no radical distinction difference or variance
between reason and passion, but that there is a shifting of one and the
same reason from one to the other, which escapes our notice owing to the
sharpness and quickness of the change, so that we do not see at a glance
that desire and repentance, anger and fear, giving way to what is
disgraceful through passion, and recovery from the same, are the same
natural property of the soul. For desire and fear and anger and the like
they consider only depraved opinions and judgements, not in one portion
of the soul only but in all its leading principles, inclinations and
yieldings, and assents and impulses, and generally speaking in its
energies soon changed, like the sallies of children, whose fury and
excessive violence is unstable by reason of their weakness. But these
views are, in the first place, contrary to evidence and observation; for
no one observes in himself a change from passion to judgement, and from
judgement back to passion; nor does anyone cease from loving when he
reflects that it would be well to break the affair off and strive with
all his might against it; nor again, does he put on one side reflection
and judgement, when he gives way and is overcome by desire. Moreover,
when he resists passion by reason, he does not escape passion
altogether; nor again, when he is mastered by passion does he fail to
discern his fault through reason: so that neither by passion does he
abolish reason, nor does he by reason get rid of passion, but is tossed
about to and fro alternately between passion and reason. And those who
suppose that the leading principle in the soul is at one time desire,
and at another time reason in opposition to desire, are not unlike
people who would make the hunter and the animal he hunts one and the
same person, but alternately changing from hunter to animal, from animal
to hunter. As their eyesight is plainly deficient, so these are faulty
in regard to their perceptions, seeing that they must perceive in
themselves not a change of one and the same thing, but a difference and
struggle between two opposing elements. "What then," say they, "does not
the deliberative element in a man often hold different views, and is it
not swayed to different opinions as to expediency, and yet it is one and
the same thing?" Certainly, I reply; but the case is not similar. For
the rational part of the soul does not fight