Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 4
Plato · en
Having dwelt at considerable length on the distempers of the body,
the Platonic Timæus next examines those of the soul, which proceed
from the condition of the body.[102] The generic expression for
all distemper of the soul is, irrationality--unreason--absence of
reason or intelligence. Of this there are two sorts--madness and
ignorance. Intense pleasures and pains are the gravest cause of
madness.[103] A man under either of these two influences--either
grasping at the former, or running away from the latter, out of
season--can neither see nor hear any thing rightly. He is at that
moment mad and incapable of using his reason. When the flow of
sperm round his marrow is overcharged and violent, so as to
produce desires with intense throes of uneasiness beforehand and
intense pleasure when satisfaction arrives,--his soul is really
distempered and irrational, through the ascendancy of his body.
Yet such a man is erroneously looked upon in general not as
distempered, but as wicked voluntarily, of his own accord.
The truth is, that sexual intemperance is a disorder of the soul
arising from an abundant flow of one kind of liquid in the body,
combined with thin bones or deficiency in the solids. And nearly
all those intemperate habits which are urged as matters of
reproach against a man--as if he were bad willingly,--are urged
only from the assumption of an erroneous hypothesis. No man is bad
willingly, but only from some evil habit of body and from wrong or
perverting treatment in youth; which is hostile to his nature, and
comes upon him against his own will.[104]
[Footnote 102: Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. [Greek: Kai\ ta\ me\n peri\
to\ sô=ma nosê/mata tau/tê| xumbai/nei gigno/mena, ta\ de\
peri\ psuchê\n dia\ sô/matos e(/xin tê=|de.]]
[Footnote 103: Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. [Greek: no/son me\n dê\
psuchê=s a)/noian xugchôrête/on. Du/o d' a)noi/as ge/nê, to\
me\n mani/an, to\ de\ a)mathi/an.]]
[Footnote 104: Plato, Timæus, p. 86 C-D.]
[Side-note: Badness of mind arises from body.]