t of the highest and greatest
we take no heed; for there is no proportion or disproportion more
productive of health and disease, and virtue and vice, than that between
soul and body. This however we do not perceive, nor do we reflect that
when a weak or small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul,
or conversely, when a little soul is encased in a large body, then
the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most important of all
symmetries; but the due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and
loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye. Just as a body
which has a leg too long, or which is unsymmetrical in some other
respect, is an unpleasant sight, and also, when doing its share of work,
is much distressed and makes convulsive efforts, and often stumbles
through awkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own
self--in like manner we should conceive of the double nature which we
call the living being; and when in this compound there is an impassioned
soul more powerful than the body, that soul, I say, convulses and fills
with disorders the whole inner nature of man; and when eager in the
pursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes wasting; or again,
when teaching or disputing in private or in public, and strifes and
controversies arise, inflames and dissolves the composite frame of
man and introduces rheums; and the nature of this phenomenon is not
understood by most professors of medicine, who ascribe it to the
opposite of the real cause. And once more, when a body large and too
strong for the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, then
inasmuch as there are two desires natural to man,--one of food for the
sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the diviner part
of us--then, I say, the motions of the stronger, getting the better and
increasing their own power, but making the soul dull, and stupid, and
forgetful, engender ignorance, which is the greatest of diseases. There
is one protection against both kinds of disproportion:--that we should
not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body, and
thus they will be on their guard against each other, and be healthy and
well balanced. And therefore the mathematician or any one else whose
thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectual pursuit, must allow his
body also to have due exercise, and practise gymnastic; and he who
is careful to fashion the body, should in turn impart to the soul its
pr