Plutarch's Morals
And frequently in the case of dainty food, people very much attracted by
it, if they find out at the time or learn afterwards that they have
eaten what is unclean or unlawful, not only suffer distress and grief
in their imagination, but even their very body is upset by the notion,
and violent retchings and vomitings follow.[223] I fear I should seem to
be introducing merely novel and enticing arguments, if I were to
enumerate stringed instruments and lyres, and harps and flutes, and
other harmonious musical instruments, which, although inanimate, yet
speak to man's passions, rejoicing with him, and mourning with him, and
chiming in with him, and rioting with him,--in a word, falling in with
the vein and emotions and characters of those that play on them. And
they say that Zeno on one occasion, going into the theatre when
Amoebeus[224] was playing on the harp, said to the pupils, "Let us go
and learn what music can be produced by guts and nerves and wood and
bones, when they preserve proportion and time and order." But passing
these things over, I would gladly learn from them, if, when they see
dogs and horses and birds domesticated, and by habit and training
uttering sounds that can be understood, and making obedient movements
and gestures, and acting quietly and usefully to us, and when they
notice that Achilles in Homer cheers on horses as well as men to the
fight,[225] they still wonder and doubt, whether the passionate and
emotional and painful and pleasurable elements in us are by nature
obedient to the voice of reason, and influenced and affected by it,
seeing that those elements are not apart from us or detached from us, or
formed from outside, or hammered into us by force, but are innate in us,
and ever associate with us, and are nourished within us, and abound in
us through habit. Accordingly moral character is well called by the
Greeks [Greek: ethos], for it is, to speak generally, a quality of the
unreasoning element in man, and is called [Greek: ethos] because the
unreasoning element moulded by reason receives this quality and
difference by habit, which is called [Greek: ethos].[226] Not that
reason wishes to expel passion altogether (that is neither possible,
nor advisable), but only to keep it within bounds and order, and to
engender the moral virtues, which are not apathetic, but hold the due
proportion and mean in regard to passion. And this she does by reducing
the power of passion to a good habit. For there are said to be three
things existing in the soul, power, passion, and habit. Power is the
principle or matter of passion, as power to be angry, ashamed, or
confident: and passion is the actual setting in motion of that power,
being itself anger, confidence, or shame; and habit is the strong
formation of power in the unreasoning element engendered by use, being
vice if the passions are badly tutored by reason, virtue if they are
well tutored.
Sec. V. But since they do not regard every virtue as a mean, nor call it
moral, we must discuss this difference by approaching the matter more
from first principles. Some things in the world exist absolutely, as the
earth, the sky, the stars, and the sea; others have relation to us, as
good and evil, as what is desirable or to be avoided, as pleasant and
painful: and since reason has an eye to both of these classes, when it
considers the former it is scientific and contemplative, when it
considers the latter it is deliberative and practical. And prudence is
the virtue in the latter case, as knowledge in the former. And there is
this difference between prudence and knowledge, prudence consists in
applying the contemplative to the practical and emotional so as to make
reason paramount. On which account it often needs the help of fortune;
whereas knowledge needs neither the help of fortune nor deliberation to
gain its ends: for it considers only things which are always the same.
And as the geometrician does not deliberate about the triangle, as to
whether its interior angles are together equal to two right angles, for
he knows it as a fact--and deliberation only takes place in the case of
things which differ at different times, not in the case of things which
are certain and unchangeable--so the contemplative mind having its scope
in first principles, and things that are fixed, and that ever have one
nature which does not admit of change, has no need for deliberation. But
prudence, which has to enter into matters full of obscurity and
confusion, frequently has to take its chance, and to deliberate about
things which are uncertain, and, in carrying the deliberation into
practice, has to co-operate with the unreasoning element, which comes to
its help, and is involved in its decisions, for they need an impetus.
Now this impetus is given to passion by the moral character, an impetus
requiring reason to regulate it, that it may render moderate and not
excessive help, and at the seasonable time. For the emotional and
unreasoning elements are subject to motions sometimes too quick and
vehement, at other times too remiss and slow. And so everything we do
may be a success from one point of view, but a failure from many points
of view; as to hit the mark one thing only is requisite, but one may
miss it in various ways, as one may shoot beyond or too short. This then
is the function of practical reason following nature, to prevent our
passions going either too far or too short. For where from weakness and
want of strength, or from fear and hesitation, the impetus gives in and
abandons what is good, there reason is by to stir it up and rekindle it;
and where on the other hand it goes ahead too fast and in disorder,
there it represses and checks its zeal. And thus setting bounds to the
emotional motions, it engenders in the unreasoning part of the soul
moral virtues, which are the mean between excess and deficiency. Not
that we can say that all virtue exists in the mean, but knowledge and
prudence being in no need of the unreasoning element, and being situated
in the pure and unemotional part of the soul, is a complete perfection
and power of reason, whereby we get the most divine and happy fruit of
understanding. But that virtue which is necessary because of the body,
and needs the help of the passions as an instrument towards the
practical, not destroying or doing away with but ordering and regulating
the unreasoning part of the soul, is perfection as regards its power and
quality, but in quantity it is a mean correcting both excess and
deficiency.
Sec. VI. But since the word mean has a variety of meanings--for there is
one kind of mean compounded of two simple extremes, as grey is the mean
between white and black; and there is another kind of mean, where that
which contains and is contained is the mean between the containing and
contained, as eight is the mean between twelve and four; and there is a
third kind of mean which has part in neither extreme, as the indifferent
is the mean between good and bad,--virtue cannot be a mean in any of
these ways. For neither is it a mixture of vices, nor containing that
which is defective is it contained by that which is excessive, nor is it
again altogether free from, emotional storms of passion, wherein are
excess and deficiency. But it is, and is commonly so called, a mean like
that in music and harmony. For as in music there is a middle note
between the highest and lowest in the scale, which being perfectly in
tune avoids the sharpness of the one and the flatness of the other; so
virtue, being a motion and power in the unreasoning part of the soul,
takes away the remissness and strain, and generally speaking the excess
and defect of the appetite, by reducing each of the passions to a state
of mean and rectitude. For example, they tell us that bravery is the
mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, whereof the former is a
defect, the latter an excess of anger: and that liberality is the mean
between stinginess and prodigality: and that meekness is the mean
between insensibility and savageness: and so of temperance and justice,
that the latter, being concerned with contracts, is to assign neither
too much nor too little to litigants, and that the former ever reduces
the passions to the proper mean between apathy (or insensibility) and
gross intemperance. This last illustration serves excellently to show us
the radical difference between the unreasoning and reasoning parts of
the soul, and to prove to us that passion and reason are wide as the
poles asunder. For the difference would not be discernible between
temperance and continence, nor between intemperance and incontinence, in
pleasure and desires, if the appetite and judgement were in the same
portion of the soul. Now temperance is a state, wherein reason holds the
reins, and manages the passions as a quiet and well-broken-in animal,
finding them obedient and submissive to the reins and masters over their
desires.[227] Continence on the other hand is not driven by reason
without some trouble, not being docile but jibbing and kicking, like an
animal compelled by bit and bridle and whip and backing, being in itself
full of struggles and commotion. Plato explains this by his simile of
the chariot-horses of the soul, the worse one of which ever kicking
against the other and disturbing the charioteer, he is obliged ever to
hold them in with all his might, and to tighten the reins, lest, to
borrow the language of Simonides, "he should drop from his hands the
purple reins." And so they do not consider continence to be an absolute
virtue, but something less than a virtue; for no mean arises from the
concord of the worse with the better, nor is the excess of the passion
curtailed, nor does the appetite obey or act in unison with reason, but
it both gives and suffers trouble, and is constrained by force, and is
as it were an enemy in a town given up to faction.
"The town is full of incense, and at once
Resounds with triumph-songs and bitter wailing."[228]
Such is the state of soul of the continent person owing to his
conflicting condition. On the same grounds they consider incontinence to
be something less than vice, but intemperance to be a complete vice. For
it, having both its appetite and reason depraved, is by the one
carried away to desire disgraceful things,[229] by the other, through
bad judgement consenting to desire, loses even the perception of
wrongdoing. But incontinence keeps its judgement sound through reason,
but is carried away against its judgement by passion which is too strong
for reason, whence it differs from intemperance. For in the one case
reason is mastered by passion, in the other it does not even make a
fight against it, in the one case it opposes its desires even when it
follows them, in the other it is their advocate and even leader, in the
one case it gladly participates in what is wrong, in the other
sorrowfully, in the one case it willingly rushes into what is
disgraceful, in the other it abandons the honourable unwillingly. And as
there is a difference in their deeds, so no less manifest is the
difference in their language. For these are the expressions of the
intemperate. "What grace or pleasure in life is there without golden
Aphrodite? May I die, when I care no longer for these things!" And
another says, "To eat, to drink, to enjoy the gifts of Aphrodite is
everything, for all other things I look upon as supplementary," as if
from the bottom of his soul he gave himself up to pleasures, and was
completely subverted by them. And not less so he who said, "Let me be
ruined, it is best for me," had his judgement diseased through his
passion. But the sayings of incontinence are quite different, as
"My nature forces me against my judgement,"[230]
and
"Alas! it is poor mortals' plague and bane,