but there is present to every
man reason, which presides over and gives laws to all; which, by
improving itself, and making continual advances, becomes perfect
virtue. It behooves a man, then, to take care that reason shall have
the command over that part which is bound to practise obedience. In
what manner? you will say. Why, as a master has over his slave, a
general over his army, a father over his son. If that part of the soul
which I have called soft behaves disgracefully, if it gives itself up
to lamentations and womanish tears, then let it be restrained, and
committed to the care of friends and relations, for we often see those
persons brought to order by shame whom no reasons can influence.
Therefore, we should confine those feelings, like our servants, in safe
custody, and almost with chains. But those who have more resolution,
and yet are not utterly immovable, we should encourage with our
exhortations, as we would good soldiers, to recollect themselves, and
maintain their honor. That wisest man of all Greece, in the Niptrae,
does not lament too much over his wounds, or, rather, he is moderate in
his grief:

Move slow, my friends; your hasty speed refrain,
Lest by your motion you increase my pain.

Pacuvius is better in this than Sophocles, for in the one Ulysses
bemoans his wounds too vehemently; for the very people who carried him
after he was wounded, though his grief was moderate, yet, considering
the dignity of the man, did not scruple to say,

And thou, Ulysses, long to war inured,
Thy wounds, though great, too feebly hast endured.

The wise poet understood that custom was no contemptible instructor how
to bear pain. But the same hero complains with more decency, though in
great pain:

Assist, support me, never leave me so;
Unbind my wounds, oh! execrable woe!

He begins to give way, but instantly checks himself:

Away! begone! but cover first the sore;
For your rude hands but make my pains the more.

Do you observe how he constrains himself? not that his bodily pains
were less, but because he checks the anguish of his mind. Therefore, in
the conclusion of the Niptrae, he blames others, even when he himself is
dying:

Complaints of fortune may become the man,
None but a woman will thus weeping stand.

And so that soft place in his soul obeys his reason, just as an abashed
soldier does his stern commander.

XXII. The man, then, in whom absolute wisdom