art of his life deranged, because his
pleasures and pains are so very great; his soul is rendered foolish and
disordered by his body; yet he is regarded not as one diseased, but as
one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake. The truth is that
the intemperance of love is a disease of the soul due chiefly to the
moisture and fluidity which is produced in one of the elements by the
loose consistency of the bones. And in general, all that which is termed
the incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the
idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for
reproach. For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by
reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which
are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will. And in
the case of pain too in like manner the soul suffers much evil from the
body. For where the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious
humours wander about in the body, and find no exit or escape, but are
pent up within and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the
soul, and are blended with them, they produce all sorts of diseases,
more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity; and being carried to
the three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they
create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of rashness and
cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when to
this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added and
evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort
of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us
who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our
control. In such cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants,
the educators rather than the educated. But however that may be,
we should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and
learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue; this, however, is part of
another subject.

There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treatment by
which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which it is meet
and right that I should say a word in turn; for it is more our duty to
speak of the good than of the evil. Everything that is good is fair, and
the fair is not without proportion, and the animal which is to be
fair must have due proportion. Now we perceive lesser symmetries or
proportions and reason about them, bu