Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
evil, agreeable and disagreeable; as we find it to be with our senses,
each of which is peculiarly adapted to its own sensible, though they
all very strangely intercommune one with another. Now the intellect is
the proper sense of the mind; and therefore that it should have no
congenial speculation, movement, or affection of its own, the attaining
to which should be matter of complacency to it, is the most irrational
thing in the world, if I have not, by Jove, unwittingly done the men
wrong, and been myself imposed upon by some that may perhaps have
calumniated them.
15. Then I said to him: If we may be your judges, you have not; yea,
we must acquit you of having offered them the least indignity; and
therefore pray despatch the rest of your discourse with assurance. How!
said he, and shall not Aristodemus then succeed me, if you are tired
out yourself? Aristodemus said: With all my heart, when you are as much
tired as he is; but since you are yet in your vigor, pray make use of
yourself, my noble friend, and don’t think to pretend weariness. Theon
then replied: What is yet behind, I must confess, is very easy; it
being but to go over the several pleasures contained in that part of
life that consists in action. Now themselves somewhere say that there
is far more satisfaction in doing than in receiving good; and good may
be done many times, it is true, by words, but the most and greatest
part of good consists in action, as the very name of beneficence tells
us and they themselves also attest. For you may remember, continued he,
we heard this gentleman tell us but now what words Epicurus uttered,
and what letters he sent to his friends, applauding and magnifying
Metrodorus,—how bravely and like a spark he quitted the city and went
down to the port to relieve Mithrus the Syrian,—and this, though
Metrodorus did not then do any thing at all. What and how great then
may we presume the pleasures of Plato to have been, when Dion by the
measures he gave him deposed the tyrant Dionysius and set Sicily at
liberty? And what the pleasures of Aristotle, when he rebuilt his
native city Stagira, then levelled with the ground, and brought back
its exiled inhabitants? And what the pleasures of Theophrastus and of
Phidias, when they cut off the tyrants of their respective countries?
For what need a man recount to you, who so well know it, how many
particular persons they relieved, not by sending them a little wheat
or a measure of meal (as Epicurus did to some of his friends), but by
procuring restoration to the banished, liberty to the imprisoned, and
restitution of wives and children to those that had been bereft of
them? But a man could not, if he would, pass by the sottish stupidity
of the man who, though he tramples under foot and vilifies the great
and generous actions of Themistocles and Miltiades, yet writes these
very words to his friends about himself: “You have given a very gallant
and noble testimony of your care of me in the provision of corn you
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