"My anger draws me on, has no control,
'Tis but a sandy hook against a tempest."
Here he compares not badly to a sandy hook, a sorry kind of anchor, the
soul that is unsettled and has no steady reason, but surrenders judgment
through flabbiness and feebleness. And not unlike this image are the
lines,
"As some ship moored and fastened to the shore,
If the wind blows, the cables cannot hold it."
By cables he means the judgement which resists what is disgraceful,
though sometimes it gives way under a tremendous storm of passion. For
indeed it is with full sail that the intemperate man is borne on to
pleasure by his desires, and surrenders himself to them, and even plays
the part of pilot to the vessel; whereas the incontinent man is dragged
sidelong into the disgraceful, and is its victim, as it were, while he
desires eagerly to resist and overcome his passion, as Timon bantered
Anaxarchus: "The recklessness and frantic energy of Anaxarchus to rush
anywhere seemed like a dog's courage, but he being aware of it was
miserable, so people said, but his voluptuous nature ever plunged him
into excesses again, nature which even most sophists are afraid of."
For neither is the wise man continent but temperate, nor the fool
incontinent but intemperate; for the one delights in what is good, and
the other is not vexed at what is bad. Incontinence, therefore, is a
mark of a sophistical soul, endued with reason which cannot abide by
what it knows to be right.
Sec. VII. Such, then, are the differences between incontinence and
intemperance, and continence and temperance have their counterpart and
analogous differences; for remorse and trouble and annoyance are
companions of continence, whereas in the soul of the temperate person
there is everywhere such equability and calm and soundness, by which the
unreasoning is adjusted and harmonized to reason, being adorned with
obedience and wonderful mildness, that looking at it you would say with
the poet, "At once the wind was laid, and a wondrous calm ensued, for
the god allayed the fury of the waves,"[232] reason having extinguished
the vehement and furious and frantic motions of the desires, and making
those which nature necessarily requires sympathetic and obedient and
friendly and co-operative in carrying purposes out in action, so that
they do not outrun or come short of reason, or behave disorderly and
disobediently, but that every appetite is tractable, "as sucking foal
runs by the side of its dam."[233] And this confirms the saying of
Xenocrates about true philosophers, that they alone do willingly what
all others do unwillingly at the compulsion of the law, as dogs are
turned away from their pleasures by a blow, or cats by a noise, looking
at nothing but their danger. It is clear then that there is in the soul
a perception of such a generic and specific difference in relation to
the desires, as of something fighting against and opposing them. But
some say that there is no radical distinction difference or variance
between reason and passion, but that there is a shifting of one and the
same reason from one to the other, which escapes our notice owing to the
sharpness and quickness of the change, so that we do not see at a glance
that desire and repentance, anger and fear, giving way to what is
disgraceful through passion, and recovery from the same, are the same
natural property of the soul. For desire and fear and anger and the like
they consider only depraved opinions and judgements, not in one portion
of the soul only but in all its leading principles, inclinations and
yieldings, and assents and impulses, and generally speaking in its
energies soon changed, like the sallies of children, whose fury and
excessive violence is unstable by reason of their weakness. But these
views are, in the first place, contrary to evidence and observation; for
no one observes in himself a change from passion to judgement, and from
judgement back to passion; nor does anyone cease from loving when he
reflects that it would be well to break the affair off and strive with
all his might against it; nor again, does he put on one side reflection
and judgement, when he gives way and is overcome by desire. Moreover,
when he resists passion by reason, he does not escape passion
altogether; nor again, when he is mastered by passion does he fail to
discern his fault through reason: so that neither by passion does he
abolish reason, nor does he by reason get rid of passion, but is tossed
about to and fro alternately between passion and reason. And those who
suppose that the leading principle in the soul is at one time desire,
and at another time reason in opposition to desire, are not unlike
people who would make the hunter and the animal he hunts one and the
same person, but alternately changing from hunter to animal, from animal
to hunter. As their eyesight is plainly deficient, so these are faulty
in regard to their perceptions, seeing that they must perceive in
themselves not a change of one and the same thing, but a difference and
struggle between two opposing elements. "What then," say they, "does not
the deliberative element in a man often hold different views, and is it
not swayed to different opinions as to expediency, and yet it is one and
the same thing?" Certainly, I reply; but the case is not similar. For
the rational part of the soul does not fight against itself, but though
it has only one faculty, it makes use of different reasonings; or rather
the reasoning is one, but employs itself in different subjects as on
different matter. And so there is neither pain in reasonings without
passion, nor are men compelled, as it were, to choose something contrary
to their judgement, unless indeed some passion, as in a balance,
secretly predominates in the scale. For this often happens, reason not
opposing reason, but ambition, or contention, or favour, or jealousy, or
fear opposing reason, that we do but think there is a difference between
two reasons, as in the line, "They were ashamed to refuse, and feared to
accept,"[234] or, "To die in battle is dreadful but glorious; but not to
die, though cowardly, is more pleasant." Moreover, in judgements about
contracts passions come in and cause the greatest delay; and in the
councils of kings those who speak to ingratiate themselves do not favour
either of the two cases, but give themselves up to passion without
regard to what is expedient; and so those that rule in aristocracies do
not allow orators to be pathetic in their pleadings. For reasoning
without passion has a direct tendency to justice, while if passion is
infused, a contest and difference is excited between pleasure and pain
on the one hand, and judgement and justice on the other. For otherwise
how is it that in philosophical speculations people are with little pain
frequently induced by others to change their opinions, and even
Aristotle himself and Democritus and Chrysippus have rejected without
trouble or pain, and even with pleasure, some of the opinions which they
formerly advocated? For no passion stands in the way in the theoretic
and scientific part of the soul, and the unreasoning element is quiet
and gives no trouble therein. And so reason gladly inclines to the
truth, when it is evident, and abandons error; for in it, and not in
passion, lies a willingness to listen to conviction and to change one's
opinions on conviction. But the deliberations and judgements and
arbitrations of most people as to matters of fact being mixed up with
passion, give reason no easy or pleasant access, as she is held fast and
incommoded by the unreasonable, which assails her through pleasure, or
fear, or pain, or desire. And the decision in these cases lies with
sense which has dealings with both passion and reason, for if one gets
the better of the other the other is not destroyed, but only dragged
along by force in spite of its resistance. For he who is dissatisfied
with himself for falling in love calls in reason to his aid to overcome
his passion, for both reason and passion are in his soul, and he
perceives they are contrary one to the other, and violently represses
the inflammatory one of the two. On the other hand, in deliberations and
speculations without passion (such as the contemplative part of the soul
is most conversant with), if they are evenly balanced no decision takes
place, but the matter is left in doubt, which is a sort of stationary
position of the mind in conflicting arguments. But should there be any
inclination to one of the two sides, the most powerful opinion carries
the day, yet without giving pain or creating hostility. And, generally
speaking, when reason seems opposed to reason, there is no perception of
two distinct things, but only of one under different phases, whereas
when the unreasoning has a controversy with reason, since there can be
no victory or defeat without pain, forthwith they tear the soul in
two,[235] and make the difference between them apparent.
Sec. VIII. And not only from their contest, but quite as much from their
agreement, can we see that the source of the passions is something quite
distinct from that of reason. For since[236] one may love either a good
and excellent child or a bad and vicious one, and be unreasonably angry
with one's children or parents, yet in behalf of them show a just anger
against enemies or tyrants; as in the one case there is the perception
of a difference and struggle between passion and reason, so in the other
there is a perception of persuasion and agreement inclining, as it were,
the scale, and giving their help. Moreover a good man marrying a wife
according to the laws is minded to associate and live with her justly
and soberly, but as time goes on, his intercourse with her having
engendered a strong passion for her, he perceives that his love and
affection are increased by reason. Just so, again, young fellows falling
in with kindly teachers at first submit themselves to them out of
necessity and emulation for learning, but end by loving them, and
instead of being their pupils and scholars become and get the title of
their lovers. The same is the case in cities in respect to good
magistrates, and neighbours, and connections by marriage; for beginning
at first to associate with one another from necessity and propriety,
they afterwards go on to love almost insensibly, reason drawing over and
persuading the emotional element. And he who said--
"There are two kinds of shame, the one not bad,
The other a sad burden to a family,"[237]
is it not clear that he felt this emotion in himself often contrary to
reason and detrimental by hesitation and delay to opportunities and
actions?
Sec. IX. In a certain sense yielding to the force of these arguments, they
call shame modesty, pleasure joy, and timidity caution; nor would anyone
blame them for this euphemism, if they only gave those specious names to
the emotions that are consistent with reason, while they gave other
kinds of names to those emotions that resist and do violence to reason.
But whenever, though convicted by their tears and tremblings and changes
of colour, they avoid the terms pain and fear, and speak of bitings and
states of excitement, and gloss over the passions by calling them
inclinations, they seem to contrive evasions and flights from facts by
names sophistical, and not philosophical. And yet again they seem to use
words rightly when they call those joys and wishes and cautions not
apathies but good conditions of the mind. For it is a happy disposition
of the soul when reason does not annihilate passion, but orders and
arranges it in the case of temperate persons. But what is the condition
of worthless and incontinent persons, who, when they judge they ought to
love their father and mother better than some boy or girl they are
enamoured of, yet cannot, and yet at once love their mistress or
flatterer, when they judge they ought to hate them? For if passion and
judgement were the same thing, love and hate would immediately follow
the judging it right to love and hate, whereas the contrary happens,
passion following some judgements, but declining to follow others.
Wherefore they acknowledge, the facts compelling them to do so, that
every judgement is not passion, but only that judgement that is
provocative of violent and excessive impulse: admitting that judgement
and passion in us are something different, as what moves is different
from what is moved. Even Chrysippus himself, by his defining in many
places endurance and continence to be habits that follow the lead of
reason, proves that he is compelled by the facts to admit, that that
element in us which follows absolutely is something different from that
which follows when persuaded, but resists when not persuaded.
Sec. X. Now as to those who make all sins and offences equal, it is not now
the occasion to discuss if in other respects they deviate from truth:
but as regards the passions[238] they seem to go clean contrary to
reason and evidence. For according to them every passion is a sin, and
everyone who grieves, or fears, or desires, commits sin. But in good
truth it is evident that there are great differences between passions,
according as one is more or less affected by them. For who would say
that the craven fear of Dolon[239] was not something very different from
the fear of Ajax, "who retreated with his face to the enemy and at a
foot's pace, drawing back slowly knee after knee"?[240] Or who would say
that the grief of Plato at the death of Socrates was identical with the
grief of Alexander at the death of Clitus, when he attempted to lay
violent hands on himself? For grief is beyond measure intensified by
falling out against expectation: and the calamity that comes unlooked
for is more painful than that we may reasonably fear: as if when
expecting to see one's friend basking in prosperity and admiration, one
should hear that he had been put to the torture, as Parmenio heard about
Philotas. And who would say that the anger of Magas against Philemon was
equal to that of Nicocreon against Anaxarchus? Both Magas and Nicocreon
had been insulted, but whereas Nicocreon brayed Anaxarchus to death with
iron pestles and made mincemeat of him, Magas contented himself with
bidding the executioner lay his naked sword on Philemon's neck, and then
let him go.[241] And so Plato called anger the nerves of the mind,
since it can be both intensified by bitterness, and slackened by
mildness. To evade these and similar arguments, they deny that intensity
and excess of passion are according to judgement, wherein is the
propensity to fault, but maintain that they are bites and contractions
and diffusings capable of increase or diminution through the unreasoning
element. And yet it is evident that there are differences as regards
judgements; for some judge poverty to be no evil, while others judge it
to be a great evil, and others again the very greatest evil, insomuch
that they even throw themselves headlong down rocks and into the sea on
account of it. Again as to death, some think it an evil only in
depriving us of good things, whereas others think it so in regard to
eternal punishments and awful torments in the world below. Health again
is valued by some as natural and advantageous, while to others it seems
the greatest blessing of life, in comparison with which they reckon
little either of wealth or children or "royal power that makes one equal
to the gods," and at last come to think even virtue useless and
unprofitable, if health be absent. Thus it is clear that even with
regard to judgements themselves some err more, some less. But I shall
bring no further proof of this now, but this one may assume therefrom,
that they themselves concede that the unreasoning element is something
different from judgement, in that they allow that by it passion becomes
greater and more violent, and while they quarrel about the name and word
they give up the thing itself to those who maintain that the emotional
and unreasoning part of the soul is distinct from the reasoning and
judging element. And in his treatise on Anomaly,[242] Chrysippus, after
telling us that anger is blind, and frequently does not let one see what
is obvious, frequently also obscures what we do get a sight of, goes on
to say, "The encroachment of the passions blots out reason, and makes
things look different to what they should look, violently forcing people
on unreasonable acts." And he quotes as witness Menander, who says,
"Alas! poor me, wherever were my brains in my body at the time when I
chose that line of conduct, and not this?" And Chrysippus proceeds,
"Though every living creature endowed with reason is naturally inclined
to use reason and to be governed by it on every occasion, yet often do
we reject it, being borne away by a more violent impulse;" thus
admitting what results from the difference between passion and reason.
For otherwise it is ridiculous, as Plato says, to argue that a man is
sometimes better than himself, sometimes worse, sometimes master of
himself, sometimes not master of himself.
Sec. XI. For how is it possible that the same person can be both better and
worse than himself, both master of himself and not master, unless
everyone is in some way twofold, having in himself both a better and
worse self? For so he that makes the baser element subject to the better
has self-control and is a superior man, whereas he who allows the nobler
element of the soul to follow and be subservient to the incorrigible and
unreasoning element, is inferior to what he might be, and is called
incontinent, and is in an unnatural condition. For by nature it
appertains to reason, which is divine, to rule and govern the
unreasoning element, which has its origin from the body, which it also
naturally resembles and participates in its passions, being placed in it
and mixed up with it, as is proved by the impulses to bodily delights,
which are always fierce or languid according to the changes of the body.
And so it is that young men are keen and vehement in their desires,
being red hot and raging from their fulness of blood and animal heat,
whereas with old men the liver, which is the seat of desire, is dried up
and weak and feeble, and reason has more power with them than passion
which decays with the body. This principle also no doubt characterizes
the nature of animals as regards the sexual appetite. For it is not of
course from any fitness or unfitness of opinions, that some animals are
so bold and resolute in the presence of danger, while others are
helpless and full of fear and trembling; but this difference of emotion
is produced by the workings of the blood and spirit and body, the
emotional part growing out of the flesh, as from a root, and carrying
along with it its quality and temperament. And that the body of man
sympathizes with and is affected by the emotional impulses is proved by
pallors, and blushings, and tremblings, and palpitations of the heart,
as on the other hand by an all-pervading joy in the hope and expectation
of pleasures. But whenever the mind is by itself and unmoved by passion,
the body is in repose and at rest, having no participation or share in
the working of the intellect, unless it involve the emotional, or the
unreasoning element call it in. So that it is clear that there are two
distinct parts of the soul differing from one another in their
faculties.
Sec. XII. And generally speaking of all existing things, as they themselves
admit and is clear, some are governed by nature, some by habit, some by
an unreasoning soul, some by a soul that has reason and intelligence.
Man too participates in all this, and is subject to all those
differences here mentioned, for he is affected by habit, and nourished
by nature, and uses reason and intelligence. He has also a share of the
unreasoning element, and has the principle of passion innate in him, not
as a mere episode in his life but as a necessity, which ought not
therefore to be entirely rooted out, but requires care and attention.
For the function of reason is no Thracian or Lycurgean one to root up
and destroy all the good elements in passion indiscriminately with the
bad, but, as some genial and mild god, to prune what is wild, and to
correct disproportion, and after that to train and cultivate the useful
part. For as those who are afraid to get drunk do not pour on the ground
their wine, _but mix it with water_, so those who are afraid of the
disturbing element in passion do not eradicate passion altogether but
temper it. Similarly with oxen and horses people try to restrain their
mad bounds and restiveness, not their movements and powers of work, and
so reason makes use of the passions when they have become tame and
docile, not by cutting out the sinews or altogether mutilating the
serviceable part of the soul. For as Pindar says, "The horse to the
chariot, and the ox to the plough, while he that meditates destruction
for the boar must find a staunch hound."[243] But much more useful than
these are the whole tribe of passions when they wait on reason and run
parallel to virtue. Thus moderate anger is useful to courage, and hatred
of evil to uprightness, and righteous indignation against those who are
fortunate beyond their deserts, when they are inflamed in their souls
with folly and insolence and need a check. And no one if they wished
could pluck away or sever[244] natural affection from friendship, or
pity from philanthropy, or sympathy both in joy and grief from genuine
goodwill. And if those err who wish to banish love because of erotic
madness, neither are they right who blame all desire because of love of
money, but they act like people who refuse to run because they might
stumble, or to throw because they might throw wide of the mark, or
object to sing altogether because they might make a false note. For as
in sounds music does not create melody by the banishment of sharps and
flats, and as in bodies the art of the physician procures health not by
the doing away of cold and heat but by their being blended in due
proportions and quantities, so is victory won in the soul by the powers
and motions of the passions being reduced by reason to moderation and
due proportion. For excessive grief or fear or joy in the soul (I speak
not of mere joy grief or fear), resembles a body swollen or inflamed.
And Homer when he says excellently,
"The brave man's colour never changes, nor
Is he much frightened,"[245]
does not take away all fear but only excessive fear, that bravery may
not become recklessness, nor confidence foolhardiness. So also in regard
to pleasure we must do away with excessive desire, and in regard to
vengeance with excessive hatred of evil. For so in the former case one
will not be apathetic but temperate, and in the latter one will not be
savage or cruel but just. But if the passions were entirely removed,
supposing that to be possible, reason would become in many duller and
blunter, like the pilot in the absence of a storm. And no doubt it is
from having noticed this that legislators try to excite in states
ambition and emulation among their townsmen, and stir up and increase
their courage and pugnacity against enemies by the sound of trumpets
and flutes. For it is not only in poems, as Plato says, that he that is
inspired by the Muses, and as it were possessed by them, will laugh to
shame the plodding artist, but also in fighting battles passion and
enthusiasm will be irresistible and invincible, such as Homer makes the
gods inspire men with, as in the line,
"Thus speaking he infused great might in Hector,
The shepherd of the people."[246]
and,
"He is not mad like this without the god,"[247]
as if the god had added passion to reason as an incitement and spur. And
you may see those very persons, whose opinions I am combating,
frequently urging on the young by praises, and frequently checking them
by rebukes, though pleasure follows the one, pain the other. For rebukes
and censure produce repentance and shame, the one bringing grief, the
other fear, and these they mostly make use of for purposes of
correction. And so Diogenes, when Plato was being praised, said, "What
has he to vaunt of, who has been a philosopher so long, and yet never
gave pain to anyone?" For one could not say, to use the words of
Xenocrates, that the mathematics are such handles to philosophy as are
the emotions of young men, such as shame, desire, repentance, pleasure,
pain, ambition, whereon reason and the law laying a suitable grip
succeed in putting the young man on the right road. So that it was no
bad remark of the Lacedaemonian tutor, that he would make the boy
entrusted to his charge pleased with what was good and displeased with
what was bad,[248] for a higher or nobler aim cannot be proposed in the
education fit for a freeborn lad.
[219] See "Meno," p. 72, A.
[220] Omitting [Greek: hetera], which Reiske justly
suspects.
[221] Reading [Greek: proton] with Wyttenbach.
[222] Homer, "Odyssey," xix. 208-212.
[223] As in the story in "Gil Blas" of the person who,
after eating a ragout of rabbit, was told it was a
ragout of cat.--Book X. chapter xii.
[224] As to Amoebeus, see Athenaeus, p. 623. D.
[225] "Iliad," xvi. 167.
[226] Generally speaking [Greek: ethos] is the habit,
[Greek: ethos] the moral character generated by habit.
The former is Aristotle's [Greek: energeia], the latter
his [Greek: hexis].
[227] I have adopted, it will be seen, the suggestion of
Wyttenbach, "[Greek: to logismo] mutandum videtur in
[Greek: ton chalinon]."
[228] Sophocles, "Oedipus Tyrannus," 4, 5. Quoted by our
author again "On Abundance of Friends," Sec. vi.
[229] Reading with "Reiske," [Greek: exagetai pros to
epithymein ta aischra].
[230] In the "Chrysippus" of Euripides, Fragm.
[231] Compare Romans viii. 19.
[232] "Odyssey," xii. 168, 169.
[233] This line is from Simonides, and is quoted again
in "How one may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," Sec.
xiv.
[234] "Iliad," vii. 93.
[235] Reading with Reiske, [Greek: eis duo].
[236] Reading [Greek: etei] with Reiske and Wyttenbach.
[237] Euripides, "Hippolytus" 385, 386.
[238] Reading with Reiske [Greek: pathesi] for [Greek:
pleiosi].
[239] See "Iliad," x. 374, sq.
[240] "Iliad," xi. 547.
[241] "De Anaxarchi supplicio nota res. v. Menage ad
Diog. Laeert. 9, 59. De Magae, reguli Cyrenarum, adversus
Philemonem lenitate v. De Cohibenda Ira, Sec.
ix."--_Reiske._
[242] "Celebres fuere quondam Chrysippi sex libri
[Greek: peri tes kata tas lezeis anomalias], in quibus
auctore Varrone, _propositum habuit ostendere, similes
res dissimilibus verbis et similibus dissimiles esse
notatas vocabulis_. v. Menage ad Diog. Laeert. 7,
192."--_Reiske._
[243] Compare "On Contentedness of Mind," Sec. xiii.
[244] Reading with _Reiske_, [Greek: aporrezeien].
[245] "Iliad," xiii. 284, 285.
[246] "Iliad," xv. 262.
[247] "Iliad," v. 185.
[248] Compare "That Virtue may be Taught," Sec. ii.
HOW ONE MAY BE AWARE OF ONE'S
PROGRESS IN VIRTUE.
Sec. I. What amount of argument, Sossius Senecio, will make a man know that
he is improving in respect to virtue, if his advances in it do not
bring about some diminution in folly, but vice, weighing equally with
all his good intentions, "acts like the lead that makes the net go
down?"[249] For neither in music nor grammatical knowledge could anyone
recognize any improvement, if he remained as unskilful in them as
before, and had not lost some of his old ignorance. Nor in the case of
anyone ill would medical treatment, if it brought no relief or ease, by
the disease somewhat yielding and abating, give any perception of
improvement of health, till the opposite condition was completely
brought about by the body recovering its full strength. But just as in
these cases there is no improvement unless, by the abatement of what
weighs them down till they rise in the opposite scale, they recognize a
change, so in the case of those who profess philosophy no improvement or
sign of improvement can be supposed, unless the soul lay aside and purge
itself of some of its imperfection, and if it continue altogether bad
until it become absolutely good and perfect. For indeed a wise man
cannot in a moment of time change from absolute badness to perfect
goodness, and suddenly abandon for ever all that vice, of which he could
not during a long period of time divest himself of any portion. And yet
you know, of course, that those who maintain these views frequently give
themselves much trouble and bewilderment about the difficulty, that a
wise man does not perceive that he has become wise, but is ignorant and
doubtful that in a long period of time by little and little, by removing
some things and adding others, there will be a secret and quiet
improvement, and as it were passage to virtue. But if the change were so
great and sudden that the worst man in the morning could become the best
man at night, or should the change so happen that he went to bed vicious
and woke up in the morning wise, and, having dismissed from his mind all
yesterday's follies and errors, should say,
"False dreams, away, you had no meaning then!"[250]
who on earth could be ignorant of so great a change happening to
himself, of virtue blazing forth so completely all at once? I myself am
of opinion that anyone, like Caeneus,[251] who, according, to his
prayer, got changed from a woman into a man, would sooner be ignorant of
the transformation, than that a man should become at once, from a
cowardly and senseless person with no powers of self-control, brave and
sensible and perfect master of himself, and should in a moment change
from a brutish life to a divine without being aware of it.
Sec. II. That was an excellent observation, Measure the stone by the
mason's rule, not the rule by the stone.[252] But the Stoics, not
applying dogmas to facts but facts to their own preconceived opinions,
and forcing things to agree that do not by nature, have filled
philosophy with many difficulties, the greatest of which is that all men
but the perfect man are equally vicious, which has produced the enigma
called progress, one little short of extreme folly, since it makes those
who have not at once under its guidance given up all passions and
disorders equally unfortunate as those who have not got rid of a single
vile propensity. However they are their own confuters, for while they
lay down in the schools that Aristides was as unjust as Phalaris, and
Brasidas as great a craven as Dolon, and Plato actually as senseless as
Meletus, in life and its affairs they turn away from and avoid one class
as implacable, while they make use of the others and trust them in most
important matters as most worthy people.
Sec. III. But we who see that in every kind of evil, but especially in a
disordered and unsettled state of mind, there are degrees of more and
less (so that the progress made differs in different cases, badness
abating, as a shadow flees away, under the influence of reason, which
calmly illuminates and cleanses the soul), cannot consider it
unreasonable to think that the change will be perceived, as people who
come up out of some ravine can take note of the progress they make
upwards. Look at the case from the following point of view first. Just
as mariners sailing with full sail over the gaping[253] ocean measure
the course they have made by the time they have taken and the force of
the wind, and compute their progress accordingly, so anyone can compute
his progress in philosophy by his continuous and unceasing course, by
his not making many halts on the road, and then again advancing by leaps
and bounds, but by his quiet and even and steady march forward guided by
reason. For the words of the poet, "If to a little you keep adding a
little, and do so frequently, _it will soon be a lot_,"[254] are not
only true of the increase of money, but are universally applicable, and
especially to increase in virtue, since reason invokes to her aid the
enormous force of habit. On the other hand the inconsistencies and
dulnesses of some philosophers not only check advance, as it were, on
the road, but even break up the journey altogether, since vice always
attacks at its leisure and forces back whatever yields to it.[255] The
mathematicians tell us that planets, after completing their course,
become stationary; but in philosophy there is no such intermission or
stationary position from the cessation of progress, for its nature is
ever to be moving and, as it were, to be weighed in the scales,
sometimes being overweighted by the good preponderating, sometimes by
the bad. If, therefore, imitating the oracle given to the Amphictyones
by the god, "to fight against the people of Cirrha every day and every
night,"[256] you are conscious that night and day you ever maintain a
fierce fight against vice, not often relaxing your vigilance, or long
off your guard, or receiving as heralds to treat of peace[257] the
pleasures, or idleness, or stress of business, you may reasonably go
forward to the future courageously and confidently.
Sec. IV. Moreover, if there be any intermissions in philosophy, and yet
your later studies are firmer and more continuous than your former ones,
it is no bad indication that your sloth has been expelled by labour and
exercise; for the contrary is a bad sign, when after a short time your
lapses from zeal become many and continuous, as if your zeal were dying
away. For as in the growth of a reed, which shoots up from the ground
finely and beautifully to an even and continuous height, though at first
from its great intervals it is hindered and baffled in its growth, and
afterwards through its weakness is discouraged by any breath of air, and
though strengthened by many and frequent joints, yet a violent wind
gives it commotion and trembling, so those who at first make great
launches out into philosophy, and afterwards find that they are
continually hindered and baffled, and cannot perceive that they make any
progress, finally get tired of it and cry off. "But he who is as it were
winged,"[258] is by his simplicity borne along to his end, and by his
zeal and energy cuts through impediments to his progress, as merely
obstacles on the road. As it is a sign of the growth of violent love,
not so much to rejoice in the presence of the loved one, for everyone
does that, as to be distressed and grieved at his absence,[259] so many
feel a liking for philosophy and seem to take a wonderful interest in
the study, but if they are diverted by other matters and business their
passion evaporates and they take it very easily. "But whoever is
strongly smitten with love for his darling"[260] will show his mildness
and agreeableness in the presence of and joint pursuit of wisdom with
the loved one, but if he is drawn away from him and is not in his
company you will see him in a stew and ill at ease and peevish whether
at work or leisure, and unreasonably forgetful of his friends, and
wholly impelled by his passion for philosophy. For we ought not to
rejoice at discourses only when we hear them, as people like perfumes
only when they smell them, and not to seek or care about them in their
absence, but in the same condition as people who are hungry and thirsty
are in if torn away from food and drink, we ought to follow after true
proficiency in philosophy, whether marriage, or wealth, or friendship,
or military service, strike in and produce a separation. For just as
more is to be got from philosophy, so much the more does what we fail
to obtain trouble us.
Sec. V. Either precisely the same as this or very similar is Hesiod's[261]
very ancient definition of progress in virtue, namely, that the road is
no longer very steep or arduous, but easy and smooth and level, its
roughness being toned down by exercise, and casting the bright light of
philosophy on doubt and error and regrets, such as trouble those who
give themselves to philosophy at the outset, like people who leave a
land they know, and do not yet descry the land they are sailing to. For
by abandoning the common and familiar, before they know and apprehend
what is better, they frequently flounder about in the middle and are
fain to return. As they say the Roman Sextius, giving up for philosophy
all his honours and offices in Rome, being afterwards discontented with
philosophy from the difficulties he met with in it at first, very nearly
threw himself out of window. Similarly they relate of Diogenes of
Sinope,[262] when he began to be a philosopher, that the Athenians were
celebrating a festival, and there were public banquets and shows and
mutual festivities, and drinking and revelling all night, and he, coiled
up in a corner of the market-place intending to sleep, fell into a train
of thought likely seriously to turn him from his purpose and shake his
resolution, for he reflected that he had adopted without any necessity a
toilsome and unusual kind of life, and by his own fault sat there
debarred of all the good things. At that moment, however, they say a
mouse stole up and began to munch some of the crumbs of his barley-cake,
and he plucked up his courage and said to himself, in a railing and
chiding fashion, "What say you, Diogenes? Do your leavings give this
mouse a sumptuous meal, while you, the gentleman, wail and lament
because you are not getting drunk yonder and reclining on soft and
luxurious couches?" Whenever such depressions of mind are not frequent,
and the mind when they take place quickly recovers from them, after
having put them to flight as it were, and when such annoyance and
distraction is easily got rid of, then one may consider one's progress
in virtue as a certainty.
Sec. VI. And since not only the things that in themselves shake and turn
them in the opposite direction are more powerful in the case of weak
philosophers, but also the serious advice of friends, and the playful
and jeering objections of adversaries bend and soften people, and have
ere now shaken some out of philosophy altogether, it will be no slight
indication of one's progress in virtue if one takes all this very
calmly, and is neither disturbed nor aggravated by people who tell us
and mention to us that some of our former comrades are flourishing in
kings' courts, or have married wives with dowries, or are attended by a
crowd of friends when they come down to the forum to solicit some office
or advocateship. He that is not moved or affected by all this is already
plainly one upon whom philosophy has got a right hold; for it is
impossible that we should cease to be envious of what most people
admire, unless the admiration of virtue was strongly implanted in us.
For over-confidence may be generated in some by anger and folly, but to
despise what men admire is not possible without a true and steady
elevation of mind. And so people in such a condition of mind, comparing
it with that of others, pride themselves on it, and say with Solon, "We
would not change virtue for wealth, for while virtue abides, wealth
changes hands, and now one man, now another, has it."[263] And Diogenes
compared his shifting about from Corinth to Athens, and again from
Thebes to Corinth, to the different residences of the King of Persia, as
his spring residence at Susa, his winter residence at Babylon, and his
summer residence in Media. And Agesilaus said of the great king, "How is
he better than me, if he is not more upright?" And Aristotle, writing to
Antipater about Alexander, said, "that he ought not to think highly of
himself because he had many subjects, for anyone who had right notions
about the gods was entitled to think quite as highly of himself." And
Zeno, observing that Theophrastus was admired for the number of his
pupils,[264] said, "His choir is, I admit, larger than mine, but mine
is more harmonious."
Sec. VII. Whenever then, by thus comparing the advantages of virtue with
external things, you get rid of envies and jealousies and those things
which fret and depress the minds of many who are novices in philosophy,
this also is a great indication of your progress in virtue. Another and
no slight indication is a change in the style of your discourses. For
generally speaking all novices in philosophy adopt most such as tend to
their own glorification; some, like birds, in their levity and ambition
soaring to the height and brightness of physical things; others like
young puppies, as Plato[265] says, rejoicing in tearing and biting,
betake themselves to strifes and questions and sophisms; but most
plunging themselves into dialectics immediately store themselves for
sophistry; and some collect sentences[266] and histories and go about
(as Anacharsis said he saw the Greeks used money for no other purpose
but to count it up), merely piling up and comparing them, but making no
practical use of them. Applicable here is that saying of Antiphanes,
which someone applied to Plato's pupils. Antiphanes said playfully that
in a certain city words were frozen directly they were spoken, owing to
the great cold, and were thawed again in the summer, so that one could
then hear what had been said in the winter. So he said of the words
which were spoken by Plato to young men, that most of them only
understood them late in life when they were become old men. And this is
the condition people are in in respect to all philosophy, until the
judgement gets into a sound and healthy state, and begins to adapt
itself to those things which can produce character and greatness of
mind, and to seek discourses whose footsteps turn inwards rather than
outwards, to borrow the language of AEsop.[267] For as Sophocles said he
had first toned down the pompous style of AEschylus, then his harsh and
over-artificial method, and had in the third place changed his manner
of diction, a most important point and one that is most intimately
connected with the character, so those who go in for philosophy, when
they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as
deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make genuine and
modest progress in virtue.
Sec. VIII. Furthermore, take care, in reading the writings of philosophers
or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than
things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by
what is serviceable and solid and useful. And also, in studying poems or
history, let nothing escape you of what is said to the point, which is
likely either to correct the character or to calm the passions. For as
Simonides says the bee hovers among the flowers "making the yellow
honey,"[268] while others value and pluck flowers only for their beauty
and fragrance, so of all that read poems for pleasure and amusement he
alone that finds and gathers what is valuable seems capable of knowledge
from his acquaintance with and friendship for what is noble and
good.[269] For those who study Plato and Xenophon only for their style,
and cull out only what is pure and Attic, and as it were the dew and the
bloom, do they not resemble people who love drugs for their smell and
colour, but care not for them as anodynes or purges, and are not aware
of those properties? Whereas those who have more proficiency can derive
benefit not from discourses only, but from sights and actions, and cull
what is good and useful, as is recorded of AEschylus and other similar
kind of men. As to AEschylus, when he was watching a contest in boxing at
the Isthmus, and the whole theatre cried out upon one of the boxers
being beaten, he nudged with his elbow Ion of Chios, and said, "Do you
observe the power of training? The beaten man holds his peace, while the
spectators cry out." And Brasidas having caught hold of a mouse among
some figs, being bitten by it let it go, and said to himself, "Hercules,
there is no creature so small or weak that it will not fight for its
life!" And Diogenes, seeing a lad drinking water out of the palm of his
hand, threw away the cup which he kept in his wallet. So much does
attention and assiduous practice make people perceptive and receptive of
what contributes to virtue from any source. And this is the case still
more with those who mix discourses with actions, who not only, to use
the language of Thucydides,[270] "exercise themselves in the presence of
danger," but also in regard to pleasures and strifes, and judgements,
and advocateships, and magistrateships make a display of their opinions,
or rather form their opinions by their practice. For we can no more
think those philosophers who are ever learning and busy and
investigating what they have got from philosophy, and then straightway
publish it in the market-place or in the haunt of young men, or at a
royal supper-party, any more than we give the name of physicians to
those who sell drugs and mixtures. Nay rather such a sophist differs
very little at all from the bird described in Homer,[271] offering his
scholars like it whatever he has got, and as it feeds its callow young
from its own mouth, "though it goes ill with itself," so he gets no
advantage or food from what he has got for himself.
Sec. IX. We must therefore see to it that our discourse be serviceable to
ourselves, and that it may not appear to others to be vain-glorious or
ambitious, and we must show that we are as willing to listen as to
teach, and especially must we lay aside all disputatiousness and love of
strife in controversy, and cease bandying fierce words with one another
as if we were contending with one another at boxing, and leave off
rejoicing more in smiting and knocking down one another than in learning
and teaching. For in such cases moderation and mildness, and to commence
arguing without quarrelsomeness and to finish without getting into a
rage, and neither to be insolent if you come off best in the argument,
nor dejected if you come off worst, is a sufficient sign of progress in
virtue. Aristippus was an excellent example of this, when overcome in
argument by the sophistry of a man, who had plenty of assurance, but
was generally speaking mad or half-witted. Observing that he was in
great joy and very puffed up at his victory, he said, "I who have been
vanquished in the argument shall have a better night's rest than my
victor." We can also test ourselves in regard to public speaking, if we
are not timid and do not shrink from speaking when a large audience has
unexpectedly been got together, nor dejected when we have only a small
one to harangue to, and if we do not, when we have to speak to the
people or before some magistrate, miss the opportunity through want of
proper preparation; for these things are recorded both of Demosthenes
and Alcibiades. As for Alcibiades, though he possessed a most excellent
understanding, yet from want of confidence in speaking he often broke
down, and in trying to recall a word or thought that slipped his memory
had to stop short.[272] And Homer did not deny that his first line was
unmetrical,[273] though he had sufficient confidence to follow it up by
so many other lines, so great was his genius. Much more then ought those
who aim at virtue and what is noble to lose no opportunity of public
speaking, paying very little attention to either uproar or applause at
their speeches.
Sec. X. And not only ought each to see to his discourses but also to his
actions whether he regards utility more than show, and truth more than
display. For if a genuine love for youth or maiden seeks no witnesses,
but is content to enjoy its delights privately, far more does it become
the philosopher and lover of the beautiful, who is conversant with
virtue through his actions, to pride himself on his silence, and not to
need people to praise or listen to him. As that man who called his maid
in the house, and cried out to her, "See, Dionysia, I am angry no
longer,"[274] so he that does anything agreeable and polite, and then
goes and spreads it about the town, plainly shows that he looks for
public applause and has a strong propensity to vain-glory, and as yet
has no acquaintance with virtue as a reality but only as a dream,
restlessly roving about amid phantoms and shadows, and making a display
of whatever he does as painters display a picture. It is therefore a
sign of progress in virtue not merely to have given to a friend or done
a good turn to an acquaintance without mentioning it to other people,
but also to have given an honest vote among many unjust ones, and to
have withstood the dishonourable request of some rich man or of some man
in office, and to have been above taking bribes, and, by Zeus, to have
been thirsty all night and not to have drunk, or, like Agesilaus,[275]
to have resisted, though strongly tempted, the kiss of a handsome youth
or maiden, and to have kept the fact to oneself and been silent about
it. For one's being satisfied with one's own good opinion[276] and not
despising it, but rejoicing in it and acquiescing in it as competent to
see and decide on what is honourable, proves that reason is rooted and
grounded within one, and that, to borrow the language of Democritus, one
is accustomed to draw one's delights from oneself. And just as farmers
behold with greater pleasure those ears of corn which bend and bow down
to the ground, while they look upon those that from their lightness
stand straight upright as empty pretenders, so also among those young
men who wish to be philosophers those that are most empty and without
any solidity show the greatest amount of assurance in their appearance
and walk, and a face full of haughtiness and contempt that looks down on
everybody, but when they begin to grow full and get some fruit from
study they lay aside their proud and vain[277] bearing. And just as in
vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are
full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves
becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard
and threadbare cloak,[278] and transfer their training to the mind, and
are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in
their intercourse with everybody else; and they do not as before
eagerly snatch at the name and reputation of philosopher, nor do they
write themselves down as such, but even if he were addressed by that
title by anyone else, an ingenuous young man would say, smiling and
blushing, "I am not a god: why do you liken me to the immortals?"[279]
For as AEschylus says,
"I never can mistake the burning eye
Of the young woman that has once known man,"[280]
so to the young man who has tasted of true progress in philosophy the
following lines of Sappho are applicable, "My tongue cleaves to the roof
of my month, and a fire courses all over my lean body," and his eye will
be gentle and mild, and you would desire to hear him speak. For as those
who are initiated come together at first with confusion and noise and
jostle one another, but when the mysteries are being performed and
exhibited, they give their attention with awe and silence, so also at
the commencement of philosophy you will see round its doors much
confusion and assurance and prating, some rudely and violently jostling
their way to reputation, but he who once enters in, and sees the great
light, as when shrines are open to view, assumes another air and is
silent and awe-struck, and in humility and decorum follows reason as if
she were a god. And the playful remark of Menedemus seems to suit these
very well. He said that the majority of those who went to school at
Athens became first wise, and then philosophers, after that orators, and
as time went on became ordinary kind of people, the more they had to do
with learning, so much the more laying aside their pride and high
estimate of themselves.
Sec. XI. Of people that need the help of the physician some, if their tooth
ache or even finger smart, run at once to the doctor, others if they are
feverish send for one and implore his assistance at their own home,
others who are melancholy or crazy or delirious will not sometimes even
see the doctor if he comes to their house, but drive him away, or avoid
him, ignorant through their grievous disease that they are diseased at
all. Similarly of those who have done what is wrong some are
incorrigible, being hostile and indignant and furious at those who
reprove and admonish them, while others are meeker and bear and allow
reproof. Now, when one has done what is wrong, to offer oneself for
reproof, to expose the case and reveal one's wrongdoing, and not to
rejoice if it lies hid, or be satisfied if it is not known, but to make
confession of it and ask for interference and admonishment, is no small
indication of progress in virtue. And so Diogenes said that one who
wished to do what was right ought to seek either a good friend or
red-hot enemy, that either by rebuke or mild entreaty he might flee from
vice. But as long as anyone, making a display of dirt or stains on his
clothes, or a torn shoe, prides himself to outsiders on his freedom from
arrogance, and, by Zeus, thinks himself doing something very smart if he
jeers at himself as a dwarf or hunchback, but wraps up and conceals as
if they were ulcers the inner vileness of his soul and the deformities
of his life, as his envy, his malignity, his littleness, his love of
pleasure, and will not let anyone touch or look at them from fear of
disgrace, such a one has made little progress in virtue, yea rather
none. But he that joins issue with his vices, and shows that he himself
is even more pained and grieved about them than anyone else, or, what is
next best, is able and willing to listen patiently to the reproof of
another and to correct his life accordingly, he seems truly to be
disgusted at his depravity and resolute to divest himself of it. We
ought certainly to be ashamed of and shun every appearance of vice, but
he who is more put about by his vice itself than by the bad reputation
that ensues upon it, will not mind either hearing it spoken against or
even speaking against it himself if it make him a better man. That was a
witty remark of Diogenes to a young man, who when seen in a tavern
retired into the kitchen: "The more," said he, "you retire, the more are
you in the tavern."[281] Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice,
the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people
really poor who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false
display. But he who is really making progress in virtue imitates
Hippocrates, who confessed publicly and put into black and white that he
had made a mistake about the sutures of the skull,[282] for he will
think it monstrous, if that great man declared his mistake, that others
might not fall into the same error, and yet he himself for his own
deliverance from vice cannot bear to be shown he is in the wrong, and to
confess his stupidity and ignorance. Moreover the sayings of Bion and
Pyrrho will test not so much one's progress as a greater and more
perfect habit of virtue. Bion maintained that his friends might think
they had made progress, when they could listen as patiently to abuse as
to such language as the following, "Stranger, you look not like a bad or
foolish person,"[283] "Health and joy go with you, may the gods give you
happiness!"[284] While as to Pyrrho they say, when he was at sea and in
peril from a storm, that he pointed out a little pig that was quietly
enjoying some grain that had been scattered about, and said to his
companions that the man who did not wish to be disturbed by the changes
and chances of life should attain a similar composedness of mind through
reason and philosophy.
Sec. XII. Look also at the opinion of Zeno, who thought that everybody
might gauge his progress in virtue by his dreams, if he saw himself in
his dreams pleasing himself with nothing disgraceful, and neither doing
nor wishing to do anything dreadful or unjust, but that, as in the clear
depths of a calm and tranquil sea, his fancy and passions were plainly
shown to be under the control of reason. And this had not escaped the
notice of Plato,[285] it seems, who had earlier expressed in form and
outline the part that fancy and unreason played in sleep in the soul
that was by nature tyrannical, "for it attempts incest," he says, "with
its mother, and procures for itself unlawful meats, and gives itself up
to the most abandoned desires, such as in daytime the law through shame
and fear debars people from." As then beasts of burden that have been
well-trained do not, even if their driver let go the reins, attempt to
turn aside and leave the proper road, but go forward orderly as usual,
pursuing their way without stumbling, so those whose unreason has become
obedient and mild and tempered by reason, will not easily wish, either
in dreams or in illnesses, to deal insolently or lawlessly through their
desires, but will keep to their usual habits, which acquire their power
and force by attention. For if the body can by training make itself and
its members so subject to control, that the eyes in sorrow can refrain
from tears, and the heart from palpitating in fear, and the passions can
be calm in the presence of beautiful youths and maidens, is it not far
more likely that the training of the passions and emotions of the soul
will allay, tame down, and mould their propensities even in dreams? A
story is told about the philosopher Stilpo,[286] that he thought he saw
in a dream Poseidon angry with him because he had not sacrificed an ox
to him, as was usual among the Megarians:[287] and that he, not a bit
frightened, said, "What are you talking about, Poseidon? Do you come
here as a peevish boy, because I have not with borrowed money filled the
town with the smell of sacrifice, and have only sacrificed to you out of
what I had at home on a modest scale?" Then he thought that Poseidon
smiled at him, and held out his right hand, and said that for his sake
he would give the Megarians a large shoal of anchovies. Those, then,
that have such pleasant, clear, and painless dreams, and no frightful,
or harsh, or malignant, or untoward apparition, may be said to have
reflections of their progress in virtue; whereas agitation and panics
and ignoble flights, and boyish delights, and lamentations in the case
of sad and strange dreams, are like the waves that break on the coast,
the soul not having yet got its proper composure, but being still in
course of being moulded by opinions and laws, from which it escapes in
dreams as far as possible, so that it is once again set free and open
to the passions. Do you investigate all these points too, as to whether
they are signs of progress in virtue, or of some habit which has already
a settled constancy and strength through reason.
Sec. XIII. Now since entire freedom from the passions is a great and divine
thing, and progress in virtue seems, as we say, to consist in a certain
remissness and mildness of the passions, we must observe the passions
both in themselves and in reference to one another to gauge the
difference: in themselves as to whether desire, and fear, and rage are
less strong in us now than formerly, through our quickly extinguishing
their violence and heat by reason; and in reference to one another as to
whether we are animated now by modesty more than by fear, and by
emulation more than by envy, and by love of glory rather than by love of
riches, and generally speaking whether--to use the language of
musicians--it is in the Dorian more than in the Lydian measures that we
err either by excess or deficiency,[288] whether we are plainer in our
manner of living or more luxurious, whether we are slower in action or
quicker, whether we admire men and their discourses more than we should
or despise them. For as it is a good sign in diseases if they turn aside
from vital parts of the body, so in the case of people who are making
progress in virtue, when vice seems to shift to milder passions, it is a
sign it will soon die out. When Phrynis added to the seven chords two
chords more, the Ephors asked him which he preferred to let them cut
off, the upper or lower ones;[289] so we must cut off both above and
below, if we mean to attain, to the mean and to due proportion: for
progress in virtue first diminishes the excess and sharpness of the
passions,
"That sharpness for which madmen are so vehement,"
as Sophocles says.
Sec. XIV. I have already said that it is a very great indication of
progress in virtue to transfer our judgement to action, and not to let
our words remain merely words, but to make deeds of them. A
manifestation of this is in the first place emulation as regards what we
praise, and a zeal to do what we admire, and an unwillingness either to
do or allow what we censure. To illustrate my meaning by an example, it
is probable that all Athenians praised the daring and bravery of
Miltiades; but Themistocles alone said that the trophy of Miltiades
would not let him sleep, but woke him up of a night, and not only
praised and admired him, but manifestly emulated and imitated his
glorious actions. Small, therefore, can we think the progress we have
made, as long as our admiration for those who have done noble things is
barren, and does not of itself incite us to imitate them. For as there
is no strong love without jealousy, so there is no ardent and energetic
praise of virtue, which does not prick and goad one on, and make one not
envious but emulous of what is noble, and desirous to do something
similar. For not only at the discourses of a philosopher ought we, as
Alcibiades said,[290] to be moved in heart and shed tears, but the true
proficient in virtue, comparing his own deeds and actions with those of
the good and perfect man, and grieved at the same time at the knowledge
of his own deficiency, yet rejoicing in hope and desire, and full of
impulses that will not let him rest, is, as Simonides says,
"Like sucking foal running by side of dam,"[291]
being desirous all but to coalesce with the good man. For it is a
special sign of true progress in virtue to love and admire the
disposition of those whose deeds we emulate, and to resemble them with a
goodwill that ever assigns due honour and praise to them. But whoever
is steeped in contentiousness and envy against his betters, let him know
that he may be pricked on by a jealous desire for glory or power, but
that he neither honours nor admires virtue.
Sec. XV. Whenever, then, we begin so much to love good men that we deem
happy, "not only," as Plato[292] says, "the temperate man himself, but
also the man who hears the words that flow from his wise lips," and
even admire and are pleased with his figure and walk and look and smile,
and desire to adapt ourselves to his model and to stick closely to him,
then may we think that we are making genuine progress. Still more will
this be the case, if we admire the good not only in prosperity, but like
lovers who admire even the lispings and paleness of those in their
flower,[293] as the tears and dejection of Panthea in her grief and
affliction won the affections of Araspes,[294] so we fear neither the
exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of
Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but think virtue worthy our
love even under such trials, and join her, ever chanting that line of
Euripides,
"Unto the noble everything is good."[295]
For the enthusiasm that can go so far as not to be discouraged at the
sure prospect of trouble, but admires and emulates what is good even so,
could never be turned away from what is noble by anybody. Such men ever,
whether they have some business to transact, or have taken upon them
some office, or are in some critical conjuncture, put before their eyes
the example of noble men, and consider what Plato would have done on the
occasion, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus
would have dealt; that so, adjusting and re-modelling themselves, as it
were, at their mirrors, they may correct any ignoble expression, and
repress any ignoble passion. For as those that have learnt the names of
the Idaean Dactyli[296] make use of them to banish their fear by quietly
repeating them over, so the bearing in mind and remembering good men,
which soon suggests itself forcibly to those who have made some progress
in virtue in all their emotions and difficulties, keeps them upright and
not liable to fall. Let this also then be a sign to you of progress in
virtue.
Sec. XVI. In addition to this, not to be too much disturbed, nor to blush,
nor to try and conceal oneself, or make any change in one's dress, on
the sudden appearance of a man of distinction and virtue, but to feel
confident and go and meet such a one, is the confirmation of a good
conscience. It is reported that Alexander, seeing a messenger running up
to him full of joy and holding out his right hand, said, "My good
friend, what are you going to tell me? Has Homer come to life again?"
For he thought that his own exploits required nothing but posthumous
fame.[297] And a young man improving in character instinctively loves
nothing better than to take pride and pleasure in the company of good
and noble men, and to display his house, his table, his wife, his
amusements, his serious pursuits, his spoken or written discourses;
insomuch that he is grieved when he remembers that his father or
guardian died without seeing him in that condition in life, and would
pray for nothing from the gods so much, as that they could come to life
again, and be spectators of his life and actions; as, on the contrary,
those that have neglected their affairs, and come to ruin, cannot look
upon their relatives even in dreams without fear and trembling.
Sec. XVII. Add, if you please, to what I have already said, as no small
indication of progress in virtue, the thinking no wrong-doing small, but
being on your guard and heed against all. For as people who despair of
ever being rich make no account of small expenses, thinking they will
never make much by adding little to little,[298] but when hope is nearer
fruition, then with wealth increases the love of it,[299] so in things
that have respect to virtue, not he that generally assents to such
sayings as "Why trouble about hereafter?" "If things are bad now, they
will some day be better,"[300] but the man who pays heed to everything,
and is vexed and concerned if vice gets pardon, when it lapses into even
the most trifling wrongdoing, plainly shows that he has already
attained to some degree of purity, and deigns not to contract defilement
from anything whatever. For the idea that we have nothing of any
importance to bring disgrace upon, makes people inclined to what is
little and careless.[301] To those who are building a stone wall or
coping it matters not if they lay on any chance wood or common stone, or
some tombstone that has fallen down, as bad workmen do, heaping and
piling up pell-mell every kind of material; but those who have made some
progress in virtue, whose life "has been wrought on a golden base,"[302]
like the foundation of some holy or royal building, undertake nothing
carelessly, but lay and adjust everything by the line and level of
reason, thinking the remark of Polycletus superlatively good, that that
work is most excellent, where the model stands the test of the
nail.[303]
[249] See Erasmus, Adagia, "Eadem pensari trutina."
[250] Euripides, "Iphigenia in Tauris," 569.
[251] See Ovid, "Metamorphoses," xii. 189, sq.
[252] See Erasmus, "Adagia," p. 1103.
[253] Compare Shakspere, "Tempest," A. i. Sc. i. 63,
"And gape at widest to glut him."
[254] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 361, 362. Quoted again
by our author, "On Education," Sec. 13.
[255] "In via ad virtutem qui non progreditur, is non
stat et manet, sed regreditur."--_Wyttenbach._
[256] Adopting the reading of Hercher. See Pausanias, x.
37, where the oracle is somewhat different.
[257] For the town which parleys surrenders.
[258] From Homer, "Iliad," xix. 386.
[259] Compare Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, i. 11. [Greek: kai
arche de tou erotos gignetai aute pasin, otan me monon
parontos chairosin, alla kai apontos memnemenoi erosin.]
[260] The line is a Fragment of Sophocles.
[261] See Hesiod, "Works and Days," 289-292.
[262] The well-known Cynic philosopher.
[263] Bergk. fr. 15. Compare Homer, "Iliad," vi. 339.
[Greek: nike d' epameibetai andras].
[264] We are told by Diogenes Laeertius, v. 37, that
Theophrastus had 2000 hearers sometimes at once.
[265] "Republic," vii. p. 539, B.
[266] Sentences borrowed from some author or other,
such, as we still possess from the hands of Hermogenes
and Aphthonius; compare the collection of bon-mots of
Greek courtesans in Athenaeus.
[267] A reference to AEsop's Fable, [Greek: Leon kai
Halopez]. Cf. Horace, "Epistles," i. i. 73-75.
[268] This passage is alluded to also in "On Love to
one's Offspring." Sec. ii.
[269] Madvig's text.
[270] Thucydides, i. 18.
[271] Homer, "Iliad," ix. 323, 324. Quoted also in "On
Love to One's Offspring," Sec. ii.
[272] The remark about Demosthenes has somehow slipped
out, as Wyttenbach has suggested.
[273] Does this refer to [Greek: Peleiadeo] before
[Greek: Hachileos] in "Iliad," i. 1?
[274] An allusion to some passage in a Play that has not
come down to us.
[275] Compare our Author, _De Audiendis Poetis_, Sec. xi.
[Greek: hosper ho Agesilaos ouk hypemeinen hypo tou
kalou philethenai prosiontos].
[276] Reading with Madvig and Hercher, [Greek: to gar
auton], sq.
[277] Literally _cork-like_, so vain, empty. So Horace,
"levior cortice," "Odes," iii. 9, 22.
[278] Marks of a philosopher among the ancients. Compare
our Author, "How one may discern a flatterer from a
friend," Sec. vii.
[279] "Odyssey," xvi. 187.
[280] AEschylus, "Toxotides," Fragm. 224. Quoted again by
our author, "On Love," Sec. xxi.
[281] "Turpe habitum fuisse in caupona conspici, et hoc
exemplo apparet, et alia sunt indicia. Isocrates Orat.
Areopagitica laudans antiquorum Atheniensium mores, p.
257: [Greek: en kapeleio de phagein e piein oudeis han
oiketes epieikes etolmese]: quem locum citans Athenaeus
alia etiam adfert xiii. p. 566, F."--_Wyttenbach._
[282] Wyttenbach compares Quintilian, "Institut. Orat."
iii. 6, p. 255: "Nam et Hippocrates clarus arte medicinae
videtur honestissime fecisse, qui quosdam errores suos,
ne posteri errarent, confessus est."
[283] Homer, "Odyssey," vi. 187.
[284] Homer, "Odyssey," xxiv. 402.
[285] Plato, "Republic," ix. p. 571, D.
[286] A somewhat similar story about Stilpo is told in
Athenaeus, x. p. 423, D.
[287] So Haupt and Herscher very ingeniously for [Greek:
hiereusin].
[288] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach as to the
reading. The Dorian measure was grave and severe, the
Lydian soft and effeminate.
[289] See our author, "Apophthegmata Laconica," p. 220
C.
[290] Plato, "Symposium," p. 25, E.
[291] This line is quoted again by our author, "On Moral
Virtue," Sec. vii.
[292] Plato, "Laws," iv. p. 711, E.
[293] See those splendid lines of Lucretius, iv.
1155-1169.
[294] "Res valde celebrata ex Institutione Cyri
Xenophontea, v. 1, 2; vi. 1, 17."--_Wyttenbach._
[295] This line is very like a Fragment in the "Danae"
of Euripides. Dind. (328).
[296] On these see Pausanias, v. 7.
[297] Such as Homer could have brought. Compare Horace,
"Odes," iv. ix. 25-28; and Cicero, "pro Archia," x.
"Magnus ille Alexander--cum in Sigeo ad Achillis tumulum
adstitisset, O fortunate, inquit, adolescens, qui tuae
virtutis Homerum praeconem inveneris."
[298] Contrary to Hesiod's saw, "Works and Days," 361,
362.
[299] So Juvenal, xiv. 138-140.
[300] Like Horace's "Non si male nunc, et olim Sic
erit." "Odes," ii. x. 16, 17.
[301] _Noblesse oblige_ in fact.
[302] Pindar, Frag. 206.
[303] Like Horace's _factus ad unguem_, because the
sculptor tries its polish and the niceness of the joints
by drawing his nail over the surface. Casaub. Pers. i.
64; Horace, "Sat." i. v. 32, 33; A. P. 294; Erasmus,
"Adagia," p. 507.
WHETHER VICE IS SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE
UNHAPPINESS.[304]
Sec. I. ... He who gets a dowry with his wife sells himself for it, as
Euripides says,[305] but his gains are few and uncertain; but he who
does not go all on fire through many a funeral pile, but through a regal
pyre, full of panting and fear and sweat got from travelling over the
sea as a merchant, has the wealth of Tantalus, but cannot enjoy it owing
to his want of leisure. For that Sicyonian horse-breeder was wise, who
gave Agamemnon as a present a swift mare, "that he should not follow him
to wind-swept Ilium, but delight himself at home,"[306] in the quiet
enjoyment of his abundant riches and painless leisure. But nowadays
courtiers, and people who think they have a turn for affairs, thrust
themselves forward of their own accord uninvited into courts and
toilsome escorts and bivouacs, that they may get a horse, or brooch, or
some such piece of good luck. "But his wife is left behind in Phylace,
and tears her cheeks in her sorrow, and his house is only half complete
without him,"[307] while he is dragged about, and wanders about, and
wastes his time in idle hopes, and has to put up with much insult. And
even if he gets any of those things he desires, giddy and dizzy at
Fortune's rope-dance, he seeks retirement, and deems those happy who
live obscure and in security, while they again look up admiringly at him
who soars so high above their heads.[308]
Sec. II. Vice has universally an ill effect on everybody, being in itself a
sufficient producer of infelicity, needing no instruments nor ministers.
For tyrants, anxious to make those whom they punish wretched, keep
executioners and torturers, and contrive branding-irons and other
instruments of torture to inspire fear[309] in the brute soul, whereas
vice attacks the soul without any such apparatus, and crushes and
dejects it, and fills a man with sorrow, and lamentation, and
melancholy, and remorse. Here is a proof of what I say. Many are silent
under mutilation, and endure scourging or torture at the hand of despots
or tyrants without uttering a word, whenever their soul, abating the
pain by reason, forcibly as it were checks and represses them: but you
can never quiet anger or smother grief, or persuade a timid person not
to run away, or one suffering from remorse not to cry out, nor tear his
hair, nor smite his thigh. Thus vice is stronger than fire and sword.
Sec. III. You know of course that cities, when they desire to publicly
contract for the building of temples or colossuses, listen to the
estimates of the contractors who compete for the job, and bring their
plans and charges, and finally select the contractor who will do the
work at least expense, and best, and quickest. Let us suppose then that
we publicly contract to make the life of man miserable, and take the
estimates of Fortune and Vice for this object. Fortune shall come
forward, provided with all sorts of instruments and costly apparatus to
make life miserable and wretched. She shall come with robberies and
wars, and the blood-guiltiness of tyrants, and storms at sea, and
lightning drawn down from the sky, she shall compound hemlock, she shall
bring swords, she shall levy an army of informers, she shall cause
fevers to break out, she shall rattle fetters and build prisons. It is
true that most of these things are owing to Vice rather than Fortune,
but let us suppose them all to come from Fortune. And let Vice stand by
naked, without any external things against man, and let her ask Fortune
how she will make man unhappy and dejected. Fortune, dost thou threaten
poverty? Metrocles laughs at thee, who sleeps during winter among the
sheep, in summer in the vestibules of temples, and challenges the king
of the Persians,[310] who winters at Babylon, and summers in Media, to
vie with him in happiness. Dost thou bring slavery, and bondage, and
sale? Diogenes despises thee, who cried out, as he was being sold by
some robbers, "Who will buy a master?" Dost thou mix a cup of poison?
Didst not thou offer such a one to Socrates? And cheerfully, and mildly,
without fear, without changing colour or countenance, he calmly drank it
up: and when he was dead, all who survived deemed him happy, as sure to
have a divine lot in Hades. And as to thy fire, did not Decius, the
general of the Romans, anticipate it for himself, having piled up a
funeral pyre between the two armies, and sacrificed himself to Cronos,
dedicating himself for the supremacy of his country? And the chaste and
loving wives of the Indians strive and contend with one another for the
fire, and she that wins the day and gets burnt with the body of her
husband, is pronounced happy by the rest, and her praises sung. And of
the wise men in that part of the world no one is esteemed or pronounced
happy, who does not in his lifetime, in good health and in full
possession of all his faculties, separate soul from body by fire, and
emerge pure from flesh, having purged away his mortal part. Or wilt thou
reduce a man from a splendid property, and house, and table, and
sumptuous living, to a threadbare coat and wallet, and begging of daily
bread? Such was the beginning of happiness to Diogenes, of freedom and
glory to Crates. Or wilt thou nail a man on a cross, or impale him on a
stake? What cares Theodorus whether he rots above ground or below? Such
was the happy mode of burial amongst the Scythians,[311] and among the
Hyrcanians dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour according to the laws
the dead bodies of those who have made a happy end.
Sec. IV. Who then are made unhappy by these things? Those who have no
manliness or reason, the enervated and untrained, who retain the
opinions they had as children. Fortune therefore does not produce
perfect infelicity, unless Vice co-operate. For as a thread saws through
a bone that has been soaked in ashes and vinegar, and as people bend and
fashion ivory only when it has been made soft and supple by beer, and
cannot under any other circumstances, so Fortune, lighting upon what is
in itself faulty and soft through Vice, hollows it out and wounds it.
And as the Parthian juice, though hurtful to no one else nor injurious
to those who touch it or carry it about, yet if it be communicated to a
wounded man straightway kills him through his previous susceptibility to
receive its essence, so he who will be upset in soul by Fortune must
have some secret internal ulcer or sore to make external things so
piteous and lamentable.
Sec. V. Does then Vice need Fortune to bring about infelicity? By no means.
She lashes not up the rough and stormy sea, she girds not lonely
mountain passes with robbers lying in wait by the way, she makes not
clouds of hail to burst on the fruitful plains, she suborns not Meletus
or Anytus or Callixenus as accusers, she takes not away wealth, excludes
not people from the praetorship to make them wretched; but she scares the
rich, the well-to-do, and great heirs; by land and sea she insinuates
herself and sticks to people, infusing lust, inflaming with anger,
afflicting them with superstitious fears, tearing them in pieces with
envy.
[304] The beginning of this short Treatise is lost. Nor
is the first paragraph at all clear. We have to guess
somewhat at the meaning.
[305] In a fragment of the "Phaethon." Compare also "On
Education," Sec. 19.
[306] "Iliad," xxiii. 297, 298.
[307] "Iliad," ii. 700, 701.
[308] 'Tis ever so. Compare Horace, "Sat." i. i. 1-14.
[309] Adopting Reiske's reading.
[310] Proverbial for extreme good fortune. Cf. Horace,
"Odes," iii. ix. 4, "Persarum vigui rege beatior."
[311] See Herodotus, iv. 72.
WHETHER THE DISORDERS OF MIND OR
BODY ARE WORSE.
Sec. I. Homer, looking at the mortality of all living creatures, and
comparing them with one another in their lives and habits, gave vent to
his thoughts in the words,
"Of all the things that on the earth do breathe,
Or creep, man is by far the wretchedest;"[312]
assigning to man an unhappy pre-eminence in extreme misfortune. But let
us, assuming that man is, as thus publicly declared, supreme in
infelicity and the most wretched of all living creatures, compare him
with himself, in the estimate of his misery dividing body and soul, not
idly but in a very necessary way, that we may learn whether our life is
more wretched owing to Fortune or through our own fault. For disease is
engendered in the body by nature, but vice and depravity in the soul is
first its own doing, then its settled condition. And it is no slight aid
to tranquillity of mind if what is bad be capable of cure, and lighter
and less violent.
Sec. II. The fox in AEsop[313] disputing with the leopard as to their
respective claims to variety, the latter showed its body and appearance
all bright and spotted, while the tawny skin of the former was dirty and
not pleasant to look at. Then the fox said, "Look inside me, sir judge,
and you will see that I am more full of variety than my opponent,"
referring to his trickiness and versatility in shifts. Let us similarly
say to ourselves, Many diseases and disorders, good sir, thy body
naturally produces of itself, many also it receives from without; but if
thou lookest at thyself within thou wilt find, to borrow the language of
Democritus, a varied and susceptible storehouse and treasury of what is
bad, not flowing in from without, but having as it were innate and
native springs, which vice, being exceedingly rich and abundant in
passion, produces. And if diseases are detected in the body by the pulse
and by pallors and flushes,[314] and are indicated by heats and sudden
pains, while the diseases of the mind, bad as they are, escape the
notice of most people, the latter are worse because they deprive the
sufferer of the perception of them. For reason if it be sound perceives
the diseases of the body, but he that is diseased in his mind cannot
judge of his sufferings, for he suffers in the very seat of judgement.
We ought to account therefore the first and greatest of the diseases of
the mind that ignorance,[315] whereby vice is incurable for most people,
dwelling with them and living and dying with them. For the beginning of
getting rid of disease is the perception of it, which leads the sufferer
to the necessary relief, but he who through not believing he is ill
knows not what he requires refuses the remedy even when it is close at
hand. For amongst the diseases of the body those are the worst which are
accompanied by stupor, as lethargies, headaches, epilepsies, apoplexies,
and those fevers which raise inflammation to the pitch of madness, and
disturb the brain as in the case of a musical instrument,
"And move the mind's strings hitherto untouched."[316]
Sec. III. And so doctors wish a man not to be ill, or if he is ill to be
ignorant of it, as is the case with all diseases of the soul. For
neither those who are out of their minds, nor the licentious, nor the
unjust think themselves faulty--some even think themselves perfect. For
no one ever yet called a fever health, or consumption a good condition
of body, or gout swift-footedness, or paleness a good colour; but many
call anger manliness, and love friendship, and envy competition, and
cowardice prudence. Then again those that are ill in body send for
doctors, for they are conscious of what they need to counteract their
ailments; but those who are ill in mind avoid philosophers, for they
think themselves excellent in the very matters in which they come short.
And it is on this account that we maintain that ophthalmia is a lesser
evil than madness, and gout than frenzy. For the person ill in body is
aware of it and calls loudly for the doctor, and when he comes allows
him to anoint his eye, to open a vein, or to plaster up his head; but
you hear mad Agave in her frenzy not knowing her dearest ones, but
crying out, "We bring from the mountain to the halls a young stag
recently torn limb from limb, a fortunate capture."[317] Again he who is
ill in body straightway gives up and goes to bed and remains there
quietly till he is well, and if he toss and tumble about a little when
the fit is on him, any of the people who are by saying to him,
"Gently,
Stay in the bed, poor wretch, and take your ease,"[318]
restrain him and check him. But those who suffer from a diseased brain
are then most active and least at rest, for impulses bring about action,
and the passions are vehement impulses. And so they do not let the mind
rest, but when the man most requires quiet and silence and retirement,
then is he dragged into the open air, and becomes the victim of anger,
contentiousness, lust, and grief, and is compelled to do and say many
lawless things unsuitable to the occasion.
Sec. IV. As therefore the storm which prevents one's putting into harbour
is more dangerous than the storm which will not let one sail, so those
storms of the soul are more formidable which do not allow a man to take
in sail, or to calm his reason when it is disturbed, but without a pilot
and without ballast, in perplexity and uncertainty through contrary and
confusing courses, he rushes headlong and falls into woeful shipwreck,
and shatters his life. So that from these points of view it is worse to
be diseased in mind than body, for the latter only suffer, but the
former do ill as well as suffer ill. But why need I speak of our various
passions? The very times bring them to our mind. Do you see yon great
and promiscuous crowd jostling against one another and surging round the
rostrum and forum? They have not assembled here to sacrifice to their
country's gods, nor to share in one another's rites; they are not
bringing to Ascraean Zeus the firstfruits of Lydian produce,[319] nor are
they celebrating in honour of Dionysus the Bacchic orgies on festival
nights with common revellings; but a mighty plague stirring up Asia in
annual cycles drives them here for litigation and suits at law at stated
times: and the mass of business, like the confluence of mighty rivers,
has inundated one forum, and festers and teems with ruiners and ruined.
What fevers, what agues, do not these things cause? What obstructions,
what irruptions of blood into the air-vessels, what distemperature of
heat, what overflow of humours, do not result? If you examine every suit
at law, as if it were a person, as to where it originated, where it came
from, you will find that one was produced by obstinate temper, another
by frantic love of strife, a third by some sordid desire.[320]
[312] Homer, "Iliad," xvii. 446, 447.
[313] See the Fable [Greek: Alopex kai Pardalis]. No.
42, Ed. Halme.
[314] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: ochriasesi kai
erythemasi].
[315] Forte [Greek: agnoian]."--_Wyttenbach._ The
ordinary reading is [Greek: anoian]. "E coelo descendit
[Greek: gnothi seauton]," says Juvenal truly, xi. 27.
[316] Compare the image in Shakspere, "Hamlet," A. iii.
Sc. I. 165, 166.
"Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."
[317] Euripides, "Bacchae," 1170-1172. Agave's treatment
of her son Pentheus was a stock philosophical
comparison. See for example Horace, ii. "Sat." iii. 303,
304, and context.
[318] Euripides, "Orestes," 258.
[319] "_Aurum_ puta. Pactolus enim aurum fert. Videtur
dictio e Pindaro desumta esse."--_Reiske._
[320] "Libellus hic fine carere videtur. Quare autem
opusculum hoc Plutarcho indignum atque suppositum visum
Xylandro fuerit, non intelligo."--_Reiske._