tion. But now, sir, after such a large pot as you have seen me
take, I boldly affirm, that all passions which have been fixed in the
soul a long time raise ill humors in the body, which by continuance
growing strong enough to be, as it were, a new nature, being excited
by any intervening accident, force men, though unwilling, to their
accustomed passions. Consider the timorous, they are afraid even of
those things that preserve them. Consider the pettish, they are
angry with their best and dearest friends. Consider the amorous and
lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For
custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that
is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything
that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those that have raised
in themselves an envious and bewitching habit, if according to the
peculiarity of their passion they are carried on to suitable effects;
for when they are once moved, they do that which the nature of the
thing, not which their will, leads them to. For as a sphere must
necessarily move spherically, and a cylinder cylindrically, according to
the difference of their figures; thus his disposition makes an envious
man move enviously to all things; and it is likely they should chiefly
hurt their most familiar acquaintance and best beloved. And that fine
fellow Eutelidas you mentioned, and the rest that are said to overlook
themselves, may be easily and upon good rational grounds accounted for;
for, according to Hippocrates, a good habit of body, when at height, is
easily perverted, and bodies come to their full maturity do not stand
at a stay there, but fall and waste down to the contrary extreme. And
therefore when they are in very good plight, and see themselves look
much better than they expected, they gaze and wonder; but then their
body being nigh to change, and their habit declining into a worse
condition, they overlook themselves. And this is done when the effluvia
are stopped and reflected by the water rather than by any other
reflecting body; for this exhales upon them whilst they look upon it,
so that the very same particles which would hurt others must hurt
themselves. And this perchance often happens to young children, and the
cause of their diseases is falsely attributed to those that look upon
them.

When I had done, Caius, Florus's son-in-law, said: Then it seems you
make no more reckoning or account of