Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. Now whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event,-- A thought which quarter'd hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward,--I do not know Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do;" Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do't. Let us compare with these extracts the thought of Hooker, noting especially the words which I have italicized, and remembering that we are already familiar with his usage of "discourse of reason." In Bk. I of the Polity, we read of "that inferior natural desire which we call Appetite: "The object of Appetite is whatsoever sensible good may be wished for; the object of Will is that good which Reason doth lead us to seek. Affections as joy, and grief, and fear, and anger, with such like, being as it were the sundry fashions and forms of Appetite, can neither rise at the conceit of a thing indifferent, nor yet choose but rise at the sight of certain things. Wherefore it is not altogether in our power, whether we will be stirred with affections or no; whereas actions which issue from the disposition of the Will are in the power thereof to be performed or stayed, (170) . . . Sensible goodness is most apparent, near and present, which causeth the Appetite to be therewith strongly provoked (172) . . . The rule of natural agents which work after a sort of their own accord, as the beasts do, is the judgment of common sense or fancy concerning the sensible goodness of those objects wherewith they are moved (177) ......