educators rather than the educated. But however that may be, we
should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and
learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue; this, however, is part
of another subject.
There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treatment
by which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which
it is meet and right that I should say a word in turn; for it is
more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil. Everything
that is good is fair, and the fair is not without proportion, and
the animal which is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we
perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them,
but of the highest and greatest we take no heed; for there is no
proportion or disproportion more productive of health and
disease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul and body.
This however we do not perceive, nor do we reflect that when a
weak or small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul, or
conversely, when a little soul is encased in a large body, then
the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most important of
all symmetries; but the due proportion of mind and body is the
fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing
eye. Just as a body which has a leg too long, or which is
unsymmetrical in some other respect, is an unpleasant sight, and
also, when doing its share of work, is much distressed and makes
convulsive efforts, and often stumbles through awkwardness, and
is the cause of infinite evil to its own self—in like manner we
should conceive of the double nature which we call the living
being; and when in this compound there is an impassioned soul
more powerful than the body, that soul, I say, convulses and
fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man; and when
eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes
wasting; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or in
public, and strifes and controversies arise, inflames and
dissolves the composite frame of man and introduces rheums; and
the nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most
professors of medicine, who ascribe it to the opposite of the
real cause. And once more, when a body large and too strong for
the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, then
inasmuch as there are two desires natural to man,—one of food for
the sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the
diviner part of us—then, I say, the motions of the stronger,
getting the better and increasing their own power, but making the
soul dull, and stupid, and forgetful, engender ignorance, which
is the greatest of diseases. There is one protection against both