d 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.
And frequen