He will not consent to have this so _powerful_ engine of popular influence, which the æsthetic art seems, to his eye, to offer, left out, in his scheme of scientific instrumentalities: he will not pass it by scornfully, as some other philosophers have done, treating it merely as a voluptuary art. He will have of it, something which shall differ, not in degree only, but in kind, from the art of the confectioner.
He begins by stating frankly his reasons for making so much of it in this grave treatise, which is what it professes to be, a treatise on Learning and its Advancement. 'For although,' he says, 'in true value, it is inferior to _wisdom_, as it is said by God to Moses, when he disabled himself for want of this faculty, "Aaron shall be thy _speaker_, and thou shalt be to him as God;" _yet with people_ it is the more _mighty_, and it is just that which is mighty with the people--which he tells us in another place--is wanting. "For this people who knoweth not _the law_ are cursed."' But here he continues, 'for so Solomon saith, "Sapiens corde appellabitur prudens, sed dulcis eloquio majora reperiet;" signifying that profoundness of wisdom will help a man to a name or admiration,'--(it is something more than that which he is proposing as _his_ end)--'but that it is eloquence--which prevails in _active life_;' so that the very movement which brought philosophy down to earth, and put her upon reforming the practical life of men, was the movement which led her to assume, not instinctively, only, but by theory, and on principle, this new and beautiful apparel, this deep disguise of pleasure. She comes into the court with her case, and claims that this Art, which has been treated hitherto as if it had some independent rights and laws of its own, is properly a subordinate of hers; a chattel gone astray, and setting up for itself as an art voluptuary.
Works on rhetorics are not wanting, the author reports. Antiquity has laboured much in this field. Notwithstanding, he says, there is something to be done here too, and the Elizabethan æsthetics must be begun also in the _prima philosophia_. 'Notwithstanding,' he continues, 'to stir the earth a little about the _roots_ of this science, as we have done of the rest; the duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply _reason to imagination for the better moving of_ THE WILL; for we see reason is disturbed in the administration of the will by three means; by sophism, which pertains to logic; by imagination or impression, which pertains to rhetoric; and by passion or affection, which pertains to morality.' So in this negotiation within ourselves, men are _undermined_ by inconsequences, _solicited and importuned_ by impressions and observations, and _transported_ by _passions_. Neither is the nature of man so unfortunately built, as that these _powers and arts_ should have force to _disturb_ reason and not to _establish_ and _advance_ it. For the end of logic is to teach a form of logic to secure reason, not to entrap it. The end of morality is to procure the affections to obey reason, and not to invade it. The _end_ of rhetoric is to _fill the imagination_ to second reason, and not to _oppress_ it. For these abuses of arts come in but _ex obliquo_ for caution.