Page 24 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

“none/But such as are good men can give good things,/And that which is not good, is not delicious/To a well-govern’d and wise appetite” (703-5). She knows his magic cocktail will not restore honesty and truth.
What sophistry he has that cannot persuade, her authority has that makes him hesitate. Her strict notion of the sober laws of temperance and the ‘Sun-clad power of Chastity’ (782) 3⁄4 its high mysteries 3⁄4 are somehow true to him. She dismissed him as a sophist, one whose ‘wit’ and ‘gay Rhetoric,’ incapable of persuading even himself, shatters his high false structures into heaps (798-9). She reproaches him for having neither ear nor soul to apprehend her doctrine of virginity (783-5), nor charm to deceive her reason with false precepts shrouded in reason’s garb (758-9).
“She fables not, I feel that I do fear
Her words set off by some superior power;
And though not mortal, yet a cold shudd’ring dew Dips me all o’er, as when the wrath of Jove Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus
To some Saturn’s crew. I must dissemble...”
(800-5)
drink. Therefore, by the law of opposites, that which bids us (appetite) and that which forbids us (reason) must be two distinct parts of the soul. Spirit too is distinct from appetite as exemplified in the story of Leontius and the Corpses. Plato. Republic. Book IV. 434d-441d. Plato. Republic. Trans. By G.M.A. Grube. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1992.
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