Plutarch's Morals
To know the good, yet not the good pursue."[231]
And again--
"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