altogether, in the latter it gives, and is slackened, and becomes easier, as the senses are loosened like parting knots, and the strain which ties soul to body is gone.’ IV. ‘Then how is it’, said Patrocleas, ‘that we do not feel discomfort or pain from being awake?’ ‘How is it’, said Timon, ‘that when the hair is cut, the head feels lightness and relief, yet there was no sense of oppression at all while the hair was long? Or that men released from bonds feel pleasure, yet there is no pain when the chains are on? Or why is there a stir of applause when light is brought suddenly into a banquet, yet its absence did not appear to cause pain or trouble to the eye? There is one cause, my friend, in all these cases; that gradual habituation made the unnatural familiar to the sense, so that it felt absolutely no distress then, but felt pleasure when there was release and a restoration to nature. The strangeness is seen at once when the proper condition comes, the presence of what pained and pressed by contrast with the pleasure. It is exactly so with the soul: during its association with mortal passions, and parts, and organs, that which is unnatural and strange produces no apparent pressure because of that long familiarity; yet when discharged from the activities of the body, it feels ease, and relief, and pleasure. By them it is distressed, and about these it toils, and from these it craves leisure and rest. For all that concerns its own natural activities—observation, reasoning, memory, speculation—it is unwearied and insatiable. Satiety is nothing but a weariness of pleasure, when soul feels with body. To its own pleasures soul never cries “Enough”; but while it is involved in body, it is in the plight of Ulysses.[259] As he clung to the fig-tree, and hugged it, not from love of the tree, but fearing Charybdis down below, so soul clings to body and embraces it, from no goodwill to it or gratitude, but in horror of the uncertainty of death, _For life the gods conceal from mortal men_, says the wise Hesiod.[260] They have not strained soul to body by fleshy bonds, one bond they have contrived and one encompassing device, the uncertainty of what comes after death, and our slowness to believe; since, “if the soul were persuaded”, as Heraclitus[261] says, “of all the things which await men when they have died, no force would keep it back.”’ Footnote 251: Where it is ascribed to Themistius. It was reclaimed for Plutarch by Wyttenbach in the Preface to his edition of the _De Sera Numinum Vindicta_—Leiden 1772. Footnote 252: In the Dialogue (_Ne suaviter quidem_, c. 26) in which the Epicureans are attacked, the ‘hope of eternal existence’ or ‘desire to be’, is spoken of as the ‘oldest and greatest of loves’. Footnote 253: θάνατος—ἀναθεῖν εἰς θεόν. Footnote 254: γένεσις—γῆ, νεῦσις. Cp. p. 210, l. 6. Footnote 255: γενέθλιον—γένεσις ἄθλων. Footnote 256: