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But this doctrine is, in the first place, contrary to the clear evidence of our perceptions. For no one ever perceives in himself a change from desiring to judging, nor again a change from judging to desiring; nor does the lover cease loving when he reasons that he must restrain his love and fight against it, and then give up again the process of reasoning and judging when he is softened by desire and yields to love; but both while by reason he still continues to oppose passion, he continues in the passion, and again, when mastered by passion, he plainly sees his error by the light of reason: and neither through passion has he done away with reason, nor through reason is he rid of passion, but being borne back and forth from one to the other he lies between them and participates in both. For those who assume now that desire becomes the controlling faculty, now that it is reason which arrays itself against desire, are in the same position as those who assume the hunter and the beast to be not two, Cf. Emerson, Brahma: If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. but one and the same body which, by a change, is now the beast, and now becomes the hunter. For just as those persons overlook something quite plain, so these testify against the evidence of perception, which tells us that we have in these cases, not a changing of some one thing, but two things struggling and fighting against one another.