were
possible to be done), our reason will be found in many things more dull
and idle: like as the pilot and master of a ship hath little to do if
the winde be laid and no gale at all stirring ... as if to _the
discourse of reason_ the gods had adjoined passion as a pricke to
incite, and a chariot to set it forward."

Again, in describing the "Meanes," he says--

"Now to begin with Fortitude, they say it is the meane between
Cowardise and rash Audacitie; of which twaine the one is a defect, the
other an excesse of the yrefull passion: Liberalitie, betweene
Nigardise and Prodigalitie: Clemencie and Mildnesse, betweene
senselesse Indolence and Crueltie: Justice, the meane of giving more or
lesse than due: Temperance, a mediocritie betweene the blockish
stupiditie of the minde, moved with _no touch of pleasure_, and all
unbrideled loosenes, whereby it is abandoned to all sensualitie."--
_The Philosophie of Plutarch_, fol. 1603.

It really does appear to me that there could not be a happier or more
appropriate designation, for a philosophy made up in this way of "meanes"
and adjustments, so as to steer between the _plus_ and _minus_, than a
system of _checks_--not fixed, or rigid rules, as they are sometimes
interpreted to be, but nice allowances of excess or defect, to be
discovered, weighed, and determined by individual reason, in the audit of
each man's conscience, according to the strength or weakness of the
passions he may have to regulate.

I therefore oppose the substitution of _ethics_--

1. Because we have the _prima facie_ evidence of the text itself, that
_checks_ was Shakspeare's word.

2. Because we have internal evidence, in the significance and excellence of
the phrase, that it was Shakspeare's word.

_Ethics_ was the patent title by which Aristotle's moral philosophy was
universally known; therefore any ignoramus, who never dipped beyond the
title, might, _and would_, have used it. But no person, except one well
read in the philosophy itself, would think of giving it such a designation
as _checks_; which word, nevertheless, is most happily characteristic of
it.

3. Because, as before stated, Aristotle's _checks_, being the restrictive
and regulating portion of Aristotle's _Ethics_, is necessarily a more
diametrical antithesis to Ovid (and his _laxities_).

4. Because I look upon the use of this phrase as one of those nice and
scarcely percept