Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
And certain fish are caught by means of dancing; for during the dance
they lift up their heads above water, being much pleased and delighted
with the sight, and twisting their backs this way and that way, in
imitation of the dancers. Therefore I see nothing peculiar in those
pleasures, that they should be accounted proper to the mind, and all
others to belong to the body, so far as to end there. But music,
rhythm, dancing, song, passing through the sense, fix a pleasure and
titilation in the sportive part of the soul; and therefore none of
these pleasures is enjoyed in secret, nor wants darkness nor walls
about it, according to the women’s phrase; but circuses and theatres
are built for them. And to frequent shows and music-meetings with
company is both more delightful and more genteel; because we take a
great many witnesses, not of a loose and intemperate, but of a pleasant
and genteel, manner of passing away our time.
3. Upon this discourse of Callistratus, my father Lamprias, seeing the
musicians grow bolder, said: That is not the reason, sir, and, in my
opinion, the ancients were much out when they named Bacchus the son of
Forgetfulness. They ought to have called him his father; for it seems
he hath made you forget that some of those faults which are committed
about pleasures proceed from a loose intemperate inclination, and
others from heedlessness or ignorance. Where the ill effect is very
plain, there intemperate inclination captivates reason, and forces men
to sin; but where the just reward of intemperance is not directly and
presently inflicted, there ignorance of the danger and heedlessness
make men easily wrought on and secure. Therefore those that are
vicious, either in eating, drinking, or venery, which diseases, wasting
of estates, and evil reports usually attend, we call intemperate. For
instance, Theodectes, who having sore eyes, when his mistress came to
see him, said,
All hail, delightful light;
or Anaxarchus the Abderite,
A wretch who knew what mischiefs wait on sin,
Yet love of pleasure forced him back again;
Once almost free, he sank again to vice,
That terror and disturber of the wise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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