nature of the subject.
Keeping the definition in view, let us now enquire what advantage or
disadvantage is likely to ensue from the lover or the non-lover to him
who accepts their advances.

He who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of
course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible.
Now to him who has a mind diseased anything is agreeable which is not
opposed to him, but that which is equal or superior is hateful to him,
and therefore the lover will not brook any superiority or equality
on the part of his beloved; he is always employed in reducing him to
inferiority. And the ignorant is the inferior of the wise, the coward
of the brave, the slow of speech of the speaker, the dull of the
clever. These, and not these only, are the mental defects of the
beloved;--defects which, when implanted by nature, are necessarily
a delight to the lover, and when not implanted, he must contrive to
implant them in him, if he would not be deprived of his fleeting joy.
And therefore he cannot help being jealous, and will debar his beloved
from the advantages of society which would make a man of him, and
especially from that society which would have given him wisdom, and
thereby he cannot fail to do him great harm. That is to say, in his
excessive fear lest he should come to be despised in his eyes he will be
compelled to banish from him divine philosophy; and there is no greater
injury which he can inflict upon him than this. He will contrive that
his beloved shall be wholly ignorant, and in everything shall look
to him; he is to be the delight of the lover's heart, and a curse to
himself. Verily, a lover is a profitable guardian and associate for him
in all that relates to his mind.

Let us next see how his master, whose law of life is pleasure and not
good, will keep and train the body of his servant. Will he not choose a
beloved who is delicate rather than sturdy and strong? One brought up
in shady bowers and not in the bright sun, a stranger to manly exercises
and the sweat of toil, accustomed only to a soft and luxurious diet,
instead of the hues of health having the colours of paint and ornament,
and the rest of a piece?--such a life as any one can imagine and which I
need not detail at length. But I may sum up all that I have to say in a
word, and pass on. Such a person in war, or in any of the great crises
of life, will be the anxiety of his friends and also of his lover, and
c