Plutarch's Morals
as one says. For thus envy, and fear, and anger, and lust affect one.
During the daytime, indeed, vice looks abroad and imitates the behaviour
of others, is shy and conceals its evil desires, and does not altogether
give way to its propensities, but often even resists and fights stoutly
against them; but in sleep it escapes the observation of people and the
law, and, being as far as possible removed from fear or modesty, gives
every passion play, and excites its depravity and licentiousness, for,
to borrow Plato's expression,[217] "it attempts incest with its mother,
and procures for itself unlawful meats, and abstains from no action
whatever," and enjoys lawlessness as far as is practicable in visions
and phantasies, that end in no complete pleasure or satisfaction, but
can only stir up and inflame the passions and morbid emotions.
Sec. III. Where then is the pleasure of vice, if there is nowhere in it
freedom from anxiety and pain, or independence, or tranquillity, or
rest?[218] A healthy and sound constitution does indeed augment the
pleasures of the body, but for the soul there can be no lasting joy or
gratification, unless cheerfulness and fearlessness and courage supply a
calm serenity free from storms; for otherwise, even if hope or delight
smile on the soul, it is soon confused and disturbed by care lifting up
its head again, so that it is but the calm of a sunken rock.
Sec. IV. Pile up gold, heap up silver, build covered walks, fill your house
with slaves and the town with debtors, unless you lay to rest the
passions of the soul, and put a curb on your insatiable desires, and rid
yourself of fear and anxiety, you are but pouring out wine for a man in
a fever, and giving honey to a man who is bilious, and laying out a
sumptuous banquet for people who are suffering from dysentery, and can
neither retain their food nor get any benefit from it, but are made even
worse by it. Have you never observed how sick persons turn against and
spit out and refuse the daintiest and most costly viands, though people
offer them and almost force them down their throats, but on another
occasion, when their condition is different, their respiration good,
their blood in a healthy state, and their natural warmth restored, they
get up, and enjoy and make a good meal of simple bread and cheese and
cress? Such, also, is the effect of reason on the mind. You will be
contented, if you have learned what is good and honourable. You will
live daintily and be a king in poverty, and enjoy a quiet and private
life as much as the public life of general or statesman. By the aid of
philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract
pleasure from all places and things: wealth will make you happy,
because it will enable you to benefit many; and poverty, as you will not
then have many anxieties; and glory, for it will make you honoured; and
obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy.
[213] Happiness comes from within, not from without. The
true seat of happiness is the mind. Compare Milton,
"Paradise Lost," Book i. 254, 255:--
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
[214] Homeric Epigrammata, xiii. 5.
[215] Wyttenbach thinks these lines are by Menander.
Plutarch quotes them again "On Contentedness of Mind," Sec.
xi.
[216] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 705.
[217] Plato, "Republic," ix. p. 571, D. Quoted again,
"How one may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," Sec.
xii.
[218] And so Dr. Young truly says,--
"A man of pleasure is a man of pains."
_Night Thoughts._
ON MORAL VIRTUE.
Sec. I. I propose to discuss what is called and appears to be moral virtue
(which differs mainly from contemplative virtue in that it has emotion
for its matter, and reason for its form), what its nature is, and how it
subsists, and whether that part of the soul which takes it in is
furnished with reason of its own, or participates in something foreign,
and if the latter, whether as things that are mixed with something
better than themselves, or rather as that which is subject to
superintendence and command, and may be said to share in the power of
that which commands. For I think it is clear that virtue can exist and
continue altogether free from matter and mixture. My best course will be
to run briefly over the views of others, not so much to display my
research as because, when their ideas have been set forth, mine will
become more clear and be on a firmer basis.
Sec. II. Menedemus of Eretria took away the number and differences of
virtues, on the ground that virtue was one though it had many names; for
that just as mortal is synonymous with man, so temperance and bravery
and justice were the same thing. And Aristo of Chios also made virtue
one in substance, and called it soundness of mind: its diversities and
varieties only existing in certain relations, as if one called our sight
when it took in white objects white-sight, and when it took in black
objects black-sight, and so on. For virtue, when it considers what it
ought to do and what it ought not to do, is called prudence; and when it
curbs passion, and sets a fit and proper limit to pleasure, it is called
self-control; and when it is associated with our dealings and covenants
with one another, it is called justice; just as a knife is one article,
though at different times it cuts different things in half: and so, too,
fire acts on different matter though it has but one property. And Zeno
of Cittium seems to incline somewhat to the same view, as he defines
prudence in distribution as justice, in choice as self-control, in
endurance as fortitude: and those who defend these views maintain that
by the term prudence Zeno means knowledge. But Chrysippus, thinking each
particular virtue should be arranged under its particular quality,
unwittingly stirred up, to use Plato's language, "a whole swarm of
virtues,"[219] unusual and unknown. For as from brave we get bravery,
and from mild mildness, and from just justice, so from acceptable he got
acceptableness, and from good goodness, and from great greatness, and
from the honourable honourableness, and he made virtues of many other
such clevernesses, affabilities, and versatilities, and filled
philosophy, which did not at all require it, with many strange names.
Sec. III. Now all these agree in supposing virtue to be a disposition and
faculty of the governing part of the soul set in motion by reason, or
rather to be reason itself conformable and firm and immutable. They
think further that the emotional and unreasoning part of the soul is not
by any natural difference distinct from the reasoning part, but that
that same part of the soul, which they call intellect and the leading
principle of action, being altogether diverted and changed by the
passions, and by the alterations which habit or disposition have brought
about, becomes either vice or virtue, without having in itself any
unreasoning element, but that it is called unreasoning when, by the
strong and overpowering force of appetite, it launches out into excesses
contrary to the direction of reason. For passion, according to them, is
only vicious and intemperate reason, getting its strength and power from
bad and faulty judgement. But all of those philosophers seem to have
been ignorant that we are all in reality two-fold and composite, though
they did not recognize it, and only saw the more evident mixture of soul
and body. And yet that there is in the soul itself something composite
and two-fold and dissimilar (the unreasoning part of it, as if another
body, being by necessity and nature mixed up with and united to reason),
seems not to have escaped the notice even of Pythagoras, as we infer
from his zeal for music, which he introduced to calm and soothe the
soul, as knowing that it was not altogether amenable to precept and
instruction, or redeemable from vice only by reason, but that it needed
some other persuasion and moulding and softening influence to co-operate
with reason, unless it were to be altogether intractable and refractory
to philosophy. And Plato saw very plainly and confidently and decidedly
that the soul of this universe is not simple or uncomposite or uniform,
but is made up of forces that work uniformly and differently, in the one
case it is ever marshalled in the same order and moves about in one
fixed orbit, in the other case it is divided into motions and orbits
contrary to each other and changing about, and thus generates
differences in things. So, too, the soul of man, being a part or portion
of the soul of the universe, and compounded upon similar principles and
proportions, is not simple or entirely uniform, but has one part
intelligent and reasoning, which is intended by nature to rule and
dominate in man, and another part unreasoning, and subject to passion
and caprice, and disorderly, and in need of direction. And this last
again is divided into two parts, one of which, being most closely
connected with the body, is called desire, and the other, sometimes
taking part with the body, sometimes with reason, lending its influence
against the body, is called anger. And the difference between reason and
sense on the one hand, and anger and desire on the other, is shown by
their antipathy to one another, so that they are often at variance with
one another as to what is best.[220] These were at first[221] the views
of Aristotle, as is clear from his writings, though afterwards he joined
anger to desire, as if anger were nothing but a desire and passion for
revenge. However, he always considered the emotional and unreasoning
part of the soul as distinct from the reasoning, not that it is
altogether unreasoning as the perceptive, or nutritive, or vegetative
portions of the soul, for these are always deaf and disobedient to
reason, and in a certain sense are off-shoots from the flesh, and
altogether attached to the body; but the emotional, though it is
destitute of any reason of its own, yet is naturally inclined to listen
to reason and sense, and turn and submit and mould itself accordingly,
unless it be entirely corrupted by brute pleasure and a life of
indulgence.
Sec. IV. As for those who wonder that what is unreasoning should obey
reason, they do not seem to me to recognize the power of reason, how
great it is, and how far-reaching its dominion is--a power not gained by
harsh and repelling methods, but by attractive ones, as mild persuasion
which always accomplishes more than compulsion or violence. For even the
spirit and nerves and bones, and other parts of the body, though devoid
of reason, yet at any instigation of reason, when she shakes as it were
the reins, are all on the alert and compliant and obedient, the feet to
run, and the hands to throw or lift, at her bidding. Right excellently
has the poet set forth in the following lines the sympathy and
accordance between the unreasoning and reason:--
"Thus were her beauteous cheeks diffused with tears,
Weeping her husband really present then.
But though Odysseus pitied her in heart,
His eyes like horn or steel impassive stood
Within their lids, and craft his tears repressed."[222]
So completely under the control of judgement did he keep his spirit and
blood and tears. The same is shown by the subsidence of our passions,
which are laid to rest in the presence of handsome women or boys, whom
reason and the law forbid us to touch; a case which most frequently
happens to lovers, when they hear that they have unwittingly fallen in
love with a sister or daughter. For at once passion is laid at the voice
of reason, and the body exhibits its members as subservient to decorum.