"I say, therefore that to the [GREEK] hegemonicon in every man, and indeed that which is properly we ourselves, (we rather having those other things of necessary nature than being them), is the soul as comprehending itself, all its concerns and interests, its abilities and capacities, and holding itself, as it were, in its own hand, as it were, redoubled upon itself, having a power of intending or exerting itself more or less, in consideration and deliberation in resisting the lower appetites that oppose it, both of utility, reason, and honesty; in self-recollection and attention, and vigilant circumspection, or standing upon our guard; in purposes and resolutions, in diligence in carrying on steady designs and active endeavours -- this in order, to self-improvement and the self-promoting of its own good, the fixing and conserving itself in the same."
— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)
Metaphor
"I say, therefore that to the [GREEK] hegemonicon in every man, and indeed that which is properly we ourselves, (we rather having those other things of necessary nature than being them), is the soul as comprehending itself, all its concerns and interests, its abilities and capacities, and holding itself, as it were, in its own hand, as it were, redoubled upon itself, having a power of intending or exerting itself more or less, in consideration and deliberation in resisting the lower appetites that oppose it, both of utility, reason, and honesty; in self-recollection and attention, and vigilant circumspection, or standing upon our guard; in purposes and resolutions, in diligence in carrying on steady designs and active endeavours -- this in order, to self-improvement and the self-promoting of its own good, the fixing and conserving itself in the same."
Metaphor in Context
I say, therefore that to the [GREEK] hegemonicon in every man, and indeed that which is properly we ourselves, (we rather having those other things of necessary nature than being them), is the soul as comprehending itself, all its concerns and interests, its abilities and capacities, and holding itself, as it were, in its own hand, as it were, redoubled upon itself, having a power of intending or exerting itself more or less, in consideration and deliberation in resisting the lower appetites that oppose it, both of utility, reason, and honesty; in self-recollection and attention, and vigilant circumspection, or standing upon our guard; in purposes and resolutions, in diligence in carrying on steady designs and active endeavours -- this in order, to self-improvement and the self-promoting of its own good, the fixing and conserving itself in the same. Though by accident and by abuse, it often proves a self-impairing power, the original of sin, vice, and wickedness, whereby men become to themselves the causes of their own evil, blame, punishment, and misery. Wherefore this hegemonicon always determines the passive capability of men's nature one way or other, either for better or for worse. And [it] has a self-forming and self-framing power by which every man is self-made into what he is, and accordingly deserves either praise or punishment.
(Chap. X, p. 178)
Provenance
Reading Jonathan Lamb, The Evolution of Sympathy in the Long Eighteenth Century (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009): 8, 21. Found again in Lamb's "Sympathy with Animals and Salvation of the Soul" The Eighteenth Century 52:1 (Spring 2011): 69-85, 75.
Citation
Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. With a Treatise of Freewill Ed. Sarah Hutton. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).
