they were ill. Yes, I know, he said. And when persons are suffering from acute pain, you must have heard them say that there is nothing pleasanter than to get rid of their pain? I have. And there are many other cases of suffering in which the mere rest and cessation of pain, and not any positive enjoyment, is extolled by them as the greatest pleasure? Yes, he said; at the time they are pleased and well content to be at rest. Again, when pleasure ceases, that sort of rest or cessation will be painful? Doubtless, he said. Then the intermediate state of rest will be pleasure and will also be pain? So it would seem. But can that which is neither become both? I should say not. And both pleasure and pain are motions of the soul, are they not? Yes. But that which is neither was just now shown to be rest and not motion, and in a mean between them? Yes. How, then, can we be right in supposing that the absence of pain is pleasure, or that the absence of pleasure is pain? Impossible. This then is an appearance only and not a reality; that is to say, the rest is pleasure at the moment and in comparison of what is painful, and painful in comparison of what is pleasant; but all these representations, when tried by the test of true pleasure, are not real but a sort of imposition? That is the inference.
Thus what we know as pleasure and pain may be identified: pain is our perception of a body despoiled, deprived of the image of the soul; pleasure our...
(19) Thus what we know as pleasure and pain may be identified: pain is our perception of a body despoiled, deprived of the image of the soul; pleasure our perception of the living frame in which the image of the soul is brought back to harmonious bodily operation. The painful experience takes place in that living frame; but the perception of it belongs to the sensitive phase of the soul, which, as neighbouring the living body, feels the change and makes it known to the principle, the imaging faculty, into which the sensations finally merge; then the body feels the pain, or at least the body is affected: thus in an amputation, when the flesh is cut the cutting is an event within the material mass; but the pain felt in that mass is there felt because it is not a mass pure and simple, but a mass under certain conditions; it is to that modified substance that the sting of the pain is present, and the soul feels it by an adoption due to what we think of as proximity.
And, itself unaffected, it feels the corporeal conditions at every point of its being, and is thereby enabled to assign every condition to the exact spot at which the wound or pain occurs. Being present as a whole at every point of the body, if it were itself affected the pain would take it at every point, and it would suffer as one entire being, so that it could not know, or make known, the spot affected; it could say only that at the place of its presence there existed pain- and the place of its presence is the entire human being. As things are, when the finger pains the man is in pain because one of his members is in pain; we class him as suffering, from his finger being painful, just as we class him as fair from his eyes being blue.
But the pain itself is in the part affected unless we include in the notion of pain the sensation following upon it, in which case we are saying only that distress implies the perception of distress. But we cannot describe the perception itself as distress; it is the knowledge of the distress and, being knowledge, is not itself affected, or it could not know and convey a true message: a messenger, affected, overwhelmed by the event, would either not convey the message or not convey it faithfully.
Timaeus: pains when they suffer alteration, and pleasures when they are restored to their original state. And all those bodies which undergo losses...
(65) Timaeus: pains when they suffer alteration, and pleasures when they are restored to their original state. And all those bodies which undergo losses of substance and emptyings that are gradual, but replenishings that are intense and abundant, become insensitive to the emptyings but sensitive to the replenishings; consequently, they furnish no pains to the mortal part of the soul, but the greatest pleasures—a result which is obvious in the case of perfumes. But all those parts which undergo violent alterations, and are restored gradually and with difficulty
Chapter V: On Contempt for Pain, Poverty, and Other External Things. (4)
Similarly, also, the same rule holds with pains, some of which we endure, and others we shun. But choice and avoidance are exercised according to...
(4) Similarly, also, the same rule holds with pains, some of which we endure, and others we shun. But choice and avoidance are exercised according to knowledge; so that it is not pleasure that is the good thing, but knowledge by which we shall choose a pleasure at a certain time, and of a certain kind. Now the martyr chooses the pleasure that exists in prospect through the present pain. If pain is conceived as existing in thirst, and pleasure in drinking, the pain that has preceded becomes the efficient cause of pleasure. But evil cannot be the efficient cause of good. Neither, then, is the one thing nor the other evil.
What of the suspension of consciousness which drugs or disease may bring about? Could either welfare or happiness be present under such conditions? An...
(5) But what of sorrows, illnesses and all else that inhibit the native activity?
What of the suspension of consciousness which drugs or disease may bring about? Could either welfare or happiness be present under such conditions? And this is to say nothing of misery and disgrace, which will certainly be urged against us, with undoubtedly also those never-failing "Miseries of Priam."
"The Sage," we shall be told, "may bear such afflictions and even take them lightly but they could never be his choice, and the happy life must be one that would be chosen. The Sage, that is, cannot be thought of as simply a sage soul, no count being taken of the bodily-principle in the total of the being: he will, no doubt, take all bravely... until the body's appeals come up before him, and longings and loathings penetrate through the body to the inner man. And since pleasure must be counted in towards the happy life, how can one that, thus, knows the misery of ill-fortune or pain be happy, however sage he be? Such a state, of bliss self-contained, is for the Gods; men, because of the less noble part subjoined in them, must needs seek happiness throughout all their being and not merely in some one part; if the one constituent be troubled, the other, answering to its associate's distress, must perforce suffer hindrance in its own activity. There is nothing but to cut away the body or the body's sensitive life and so secure that self-contained unity essential to happiness."
(6) Now if happiness did indeed require freedom from pain, sickness, misfortune, disaster, it would be utterly denied to anyone confronted by such trials: but if it lies in the fruition of the Authentic Good, why turn away from this Term and look to means, imagining that to be happy a man must need a variety of things none of which enter into happiness? If, in fact, felicity were made up by heaping together all that is at once desirable and necessary we must bid for these also. But if the Term must be one and not many; if in other words our quest is of a Term and not of Terms; that only can be elected which is ultimate and noblest, that which calls to the tenderest longings of the soul.
The quest and will of the Soul are not pointed directly towards freedom from this sphere: the reason which disciplines away our concern about this life has no fundamental quarrel with things of this order; it merely resents their interference; sometimes, even, it must seek them; essentially all the aspiration is not so much away from evil as towards the Soul's own highest and noblest: this attained, all is won and there is rest- and this is the veritably willed state of life.
There can be no such thing as "willing" the acquirement of necessaries, if Will is to be taken in its strict sense, and not misapplied to the mere recognition of need.
It is certain that we shrink from the unpleasant, and such shrinking is assuredly not what we should have willed; to have no occasion for any such shrinking would be much nearer to our taste; but the things we seek tell the story as soon as they are ours. For instance, health and freedom from pain; which of these has any great charm? As long as we possess them, we set no store upon them.
Anything which, present, has no charm and adds nothing to happiness, which when lacking is desired because of the presence of an annoying opposite, may reasonably be called a necessity but not a Good.
Such things can never make part of our final object: our Term must be such that though these pleasanter conditions be absent and their contraries present, it shall remain, still, intact.
The pleasure demanded for the life cannot be in the enjoyments of the licentious or in any gratifications of the body- there is no place for these,...
(12) The pleasure demanded for the life cannot be in the enjoyments of the licentious or in any gratifications of the body- there is no place for these, and they stifle happiness- nor in any violent emotions- what could so move the Sage?- it can be only such pleasure as there must be where Good is, pleasure that does not rise from movement and is not a thing of process, for all that is good is immediately present to the Sage and the Sage is present to himself: his pleasure, his contentment, stands, immovable.
Thus he is ever cheerful, the order of his life ever untroubled: his state is fixedly happy and nothing whatever of all that is known as evil can set it awry- given only that he is and remains a Sage.
If anyone seeks for some other kind of pleasure in the life of the Sage, it is not the life of the Sage he is looking for.
How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-forms Came Into Being: and Upon the Good (29)
Suppose, however, that pleasure did not result from the good but there were something preceding pleasure and accounting for it, would not this be a...
(29) Suppose, however, that pleasure did not result from the good but there were something preceding pleasure and accounting for it, would not this be a thing to be embraced?
But when we say "to be embraced" we say "pleasure."
But what if accepting its existence, we think of that existence as leaving still the possibility that it were not a thing to be embraced?
This would mean the good being present and the sentient possessor failing, nonetheless, to perceive it.
It would seem possible, however, to perceive and yet be unmoved by the possession; this is quite likely in the case of the wiser and least dependent- and indeed it is so with the First, immune not merely because simplex, but because pleasure by acquisition implies lack.
But all this will become clear on the solution of our remaining difficulties and the rebuttal of the argument brought up against us. This takes the form of the question: "What gain is there in the Good to one who, fully conscious, feels nothing when he hears of these things, whether because he has no grasp of them but takes merely the words or because he holds to false values, perhaps being all in search of sense, finding his good in money or such things?"
The answer is that even in his disregard of the good proposed he is with us in setting a good before him but fails to see how the good we define fits into his own conception. It is impossible to say "Not that" if one is utterly without experience or conception of the "That"; there will generally have been, even, some inkling of the good beyond Intellection. Besides, one attaining or approaching the good, but not recognising it, may assure himself in the light of its contraries; otherwise he will not even hold ignorance an evil though everyone prefers to know and is proud of knowing so that our very sensations seek to ripen into knowledge.
If the knowing principle- and specially primal Intellectual-Principle- is valuable and beautiful, what must be present to those of power to see the Author and Father of Intellect? Anyone thinking slightingly of this principle of Life and Being brings evidence against himself and all his state: of course, distaste for the life that is mingled with death does not touch that Life Authentic.
Timaeus: When an affection which is against nature and violent occurs within us with intensity it is painful, whereas the return back to the natural...
(64) Timaeus: When an affection which is against nature and violent occurs within us with intensity it is painful, whereas the return back to the natural condition, when intense, is pleasant ; and an affection which is mild and gradual is imperceptible, while the converse is of a contrary character. And the affection which, in its entirety, takes place with ease is eminently perceptible, but it does not involve pain or pleasure; such, for example, are the affections of the visual stream itself, which, as we said before, becomes in the daylight a body substantially one with our own. For no pains are produced therein by cuttings or burnings
Chapter XX: The True Gnostic Exercises Patience and Self - Restraint. (27)
If, then, it were possible to drink without it, or take food, or beget children, no other need of it could be shown. For pleasure is neither a functio...
(27) For the feeling of pleasure is not at all a necessity, but the accompaniment of certain natural needs - hunger, thirst, cold, marriage. If, then, it were possible to drink without it, or take food, or beget children, no other need of it could be shown. For pleasure is neither a function, nor a state, nor any part of us; but has been introduced into life as an auxiliary, as they say salt was to season food. But when it casts off restraint and rules the house, it generates first concupiscence, which is an irrational propension and impulse towards that which gratifies it; and it induced Epicurus to lay down pleasure as the aim of the philosopher. Accordingly he deifies a sound condition of body, and the certain hope respecting it. For what else is luxury than the voluptuous gluttony and the superfluous abundance of those who are abandoned to self-indulgence? Diogenes writes significantly in a tragedy: "Who to the pleasures of effeminate And filthy luxury attached in heart, Wish not to undergo the slightest toil."
There remains the question whether the body possesses any force of its own- so that, with the incoming of the soul, it lives in some individuality-...
(18) There remains the question whether the body possesses any force of its own- so that, with the incoming of the soul, it lives in some individuality- or whether all it has is this Nature we have been speaking of, the superior principle which enters into relations with it.
Certainly the body, container of soul and of nature, cannot even in itself be as a soulless form would be: it cannot even be like air traversed by light; it must be like air storing heat: the body holding animal or vegetive life must hold also some shadow of soul; and it is body thus modified that is the seat of corporeal pains and pleasures which appear before us, the true human being, in such a way as to produce knowledge without emotion. By "us, the true human being" I mean the higher soul for, in spite of all, the modified body is not alien but attached to our nature and is a concern to us for that reason: "attached," for this is not ourselves nor yet are we free of it; it is an accessory and dependent of the human being; "we" means the master-principle; the conjoint, similarly is in its own way an "ours"; and it is because of this that we care for its pain and pleasure, in proportion as we are weak rather than strong, gripped rather than working towards detachment.
The other, the most honourable phase of our being, is what we think of as the true man and into this we are penetrating.
Pleasure and pain and the like must not be attributed to the soul alone, but to the modified body and to something intermediary between soul and body and made up of both. A unity is independent: thus body alone, a lifeless thing, can suffer no hurt- in its dissolution there is no damage to the body, but merely to its unity- and soul in similar isolation cannot even suffer dissolution, and by its very nature is immune from evil.
But when two distinct things become one in an artificial unity, there is a probable source of pain to them in the mere fact that they were inapt to partnership. This does not, of course, refer to two bodies; that is a question of one nature; and I am speaking of two natures. When one distinct nature seeks to associate itself with another, a different, order of being- the lower participating in the higher, but unable to take more than a faint trace of it- then the essential duality becomes also a unity, but a unity standing midway between what the lower was and what it cannot absorb, and therefore a troubled unity; the association is artificial and uncertain, inclining now to this side and now to that in ceaseless vacillation; and the total hovers between high and low, telling, downward bent, of misery but, directed to the above, of longing for unison.
What view are we to take of that which is opposed to Motion, whether it be Stability or Rest? Are we to consider it as a distinct genus, or to refer...
(27) What view are we to take of that which is opposed to Motion, whether it be Stability or Rest? Are we to consider it as a distinct genus, or to refer it to one of the genera already established? We should, no doubt, be well advised to assign Stability to the Intellectual, and to look in the lower sphere for Rest alone.
First, then, we have to discover the precise nature of this Rest. If it presents itself as identical with Stability, we have no right to expect to find it in the sphere where nothing is stable and the apparently stable has merely a less strenuous motion.
Suppose the contrary: we decide that Rest is different from Stability inasmuch as Stability belongs to the utterly immobile, Rest to the stationary which, though of a nature to move, does not move. Now, if Rest means coming to rest, it must be regarded as a motion which has not yet ceased but still continues; but if we suppose it to be incompatible with Motion, we have first to ask whether there is in the Sensible world anything without motion.
Yet nothing can experience every type of motion; certain motions must be ruled out in order that we may speak of the moving object as existing: may we not, then, say of that which has no locomotion and is at rest as far as pertains to that specific type of motion, simply that it does not move?
Rest, accordingly, is the negation of Motion: in other words, it has no generic status. It is in fact related only to one type of motion, namely, locomotion; it is therefore the negation of this motion that is meant.
But, it may be asked, why not regard Motion as the negation of Stability? We reply that Motion does not appear alone; it is accompanied by a force which actualizes its object, forcing it on, as it were, giving it a thousand forms and destroying them all: Rest, on the contrary, comports nothing but the object itself, and signifies merely that the object has no motion.
Why, then, did we not in discussing the Intellectual realm assert that Stability was the negation of Motion? Because it is not indeed possible to consider Stability as an annulling of Motion, for when Motion ceases Stability does not exist, but requires for its own existence the simultaneous existence of Motion; and what is of a nature to move is not stationary because Stability of that realm is motionless, but because Stability has taken hold of it; in so far as it has Motion, it will never cease to move: thus, it is stationary under the influence of Stability, and moves under the influence of Motion. In the lower realm, too, a thing moves in virtue of Motion, but its Rest is caused by a deficiency; it has been deprived of its due motion.
What we have to observe is the essential character of this Sensible counterpart of Stability.
Consider sickness and health. The convalescent moves in the sense that he passes from sickness to health. What species of rest are we to oppose to this convalescence? If we oppose the condition from which he departs, that condition is sickness, not Stability; if that into which he passes, it is health, again not the same as Stability.
It may be declared that health or sickness is indeed some form of Stability: we are to suppose, then, that Stability is the genus of which health and sickness are species; which is absurd.
Stability may, again, be regarded as an attribute of health: according to this view, health will not be health before possessing Stability.
These questions may however be left to the judgement of the individual.
How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-forms Came Into Being: and Upon the Good (30)
Whether pleasure must enter into the good, so that life in the contemplation of the divine things and especially of their source remains still...
(30) Whether pleasure must enter into the good, so that life in the contemplation of the divine things and especially of their source remains still imperfect, is a question not to be ignored in any enquiry into the nature of the good.
Now to found the good upon the Intellect and upon that state of soul or mind which springs from wisdom does not imply that the end or the absolute good is the conjunction : it would follow merely that Intellect is the good and that we feel happy in possession of that good. That is one theory; another associates pleasure with Intellect in the sense that the Good is taken to be some one thing founded upon both but depending upon our attaining or at least contemplating an Intellect so modified; this theory would maintain that the isolated and unrelated could be the good, could be an object of desire.
But how could Intellect and pleasure combine into one mutually complementary nature?
Bodily pleasure no one, certainly, would think capable of blending in with Intellect; the unreasoning satisfactions of soul are equally incompatible with it.
Every activity, state, and life, will be followed and as it were escorted by the over-dwelling consciousness; sometimes as these take their natural course they will be met by hindrance and by intrusion of the conflicting so that the life is the less self-guided; sometimes the natural activity is unmixed, wholly free, and then the life goes brilliantly; this last state is judged the pleasantest, the most to be chosen; so, for lack of an accurate expression, we hear of "Intellect in conjunction with pleasure." But this is no more than metaphor, like a hundred others drawn by the poets from our natural likings- "Drunk with nectar," "To banquet and feast," "The Father smiled." No: the veritably pleasant lies away in that other realm, the most to be loved and sought for, not something brought about and changing but the very principle of all the colour and radiance and brightness found here. This is why we read of "Truth introduced into the Mixture" and of the "measuring standard as a prior condition" and are told that the symmetry and beauty necessary to the Mixture come Thence into whatever has beauty; it is in this way that we have our share in Beauty; but in another way, also, we achieve the truly desirable, that is by leading our selves up to what is best within us; this best is what is symmetry, beauty, collective Idea, life clear, Intellective and good.
Timaeus: or any other affections, nor does its reversion to its original form produce pleasures; but it has most intense and clear perceptions...
(64) Timaeus: or any other affections, nor does its reversion to its original form produce pleasures; but it has most intense and clear perceptions concerning every object that affects it, and every object also which it strikes against or touches; for force is wholly absent both from its dilation and from its contraction. But those bodied which are composed of larger particles, since they yield with difficulty to the agent and transmit their motions to the whole, feel pleasures and pains—
We come to the same result by examining the sense of pain. We say there is pain in the finger: the trouble is doubtless in the finger, but our...
(7) We come to the same result by examining the sense of pain. We say there is pain in the finger: the trouble is doubtless in the finger, but our opponents must admit that the sensation of the pain is in the centre of consciousness. The suffering member is one thing, the sense of suffering is another: how does this happen?
By transmission, they will say: the psychic pneuma stationed at the finger suffers first; and stage by stage the trouble is passed on until at last it reaches the centre of consciousness.
But on this theory, there must be a sensation in the spot first suffering pain, and another sensation at a second point of the line of transmission, another in the third and so on; many sensations, in fact an unlimited series, to deal with one pain; and at the last moment the centre of consciousness has the sensation of all these sensations and of its own sensation to boot. Or to be exact, these serial sensations will not be of the pain in the finger: the sensation next in succession to the suffering finger will be of pain at the joint, a third will tell of a pain still higher up: there will be a series of separate pains: The centre of consciousness will not feel the pain seated at the finger, but only that impinging upon itself: it will know this alone, ignore the rest and so have no notion that the finger is in pain.
Thus: Transmission would not give sensation of the actual condition at the affected spot: it is not in the nature of body that where one part suffers there should be knowledge in another part; for body is a magnitude, and the parts of every magnitude are distinct parts; therefore we need, as the sentient, something of a nature to be identical to itself at any and every spot; this property can belong only to some other form of being than body.
It would be absurd to think that happiness begins and ends with the living-body: happiness is the possession of the good of life: it is centred theref...
(14) For man, and especially the Sage, is not the Couplement of soul and body: the proof is that man can be disengaged from the body and disdain its nominal goods.
It would be absurd to think that happiness begins and ends with the living-body: happiness is the possession of the good of life: it is centred therefore in Soul, is an Act of the Soul- and not of all the Soul at that: for it certainly is not characteristic of the vegetative soul, the soul of growth; that would at once connect it with the body.
A powerful frame, a healthy constitution, even a happy balance of temperament, these surely do not make felicity; in the excess of these advantages there is, even, the danger that the man be crushed down and forced more and more within their power. There must be a sort of counter-pressure in the other direction, towards the noblest: the body must be lessened, reduced, that the veritable man may show forth, the man behind the appearances.
Let the earth-bound man be handsome and powerful and rich, and so apt to this world that he may rule the entire human race: still there can be no envying him, the fool of such lures. Perhaps such splendours could not, from the beginning even, have gathered to the Sage; but if it should happen so, he of his own action will lower his state, if he has any care for his true life; the tyranny of the body he will work down or wear away by inattention to its claims; the rulership he will lay aside. While he will safeguard his bodily health, he will not wish to be wholly untried in sickness, still less never to feel pain: if such troubles should not come to him of themselves, he will wish to know them, during youth at least: in old age, it is true, he will desire neither pains nor pleasures to hamper him; he will desire nothing of this world, pleasant or painful; his one desire will be to know nothing of the body. If he should meet with pain he will pit against it the powers he holds to meet it; but pleasure and health and ease of life will not mean any increase of happiness to him nor will their contraries destroy or lessen it.
When in the one subject, a positive can add nothing, how can the negative take away?
Through mental perversity some men do not desire pleasure. In reality, however, pleasure (especially of a physical nature) is the true end of...
(25) Through mental perversity some men do not desire pleasure. In reality, however, pleasure (especially of a physical nature) is the true end of existence and exceeds in every way mental and spiritual enjoyments. Pleasure, furthermore, is limited wholly to the moment; now is the only time. The past cannot be regarded without regret and the future cannot be faced without misgiving; therefore neither is conducive to pleasure. No man should grieve, for grief is the most serious of all diseases. Nature permits man to do anything he desires; he is limited only by his own laws and customs. A philosopher is one free from envy, love, and superstition, and whose days are one long round of pleasure. Indulgence was thus elevated by Aristippus to the chief position among the virtues. He further declared philosophers to differ markedly from other men in that they alone would not change the order of their lives if all the laws of men were abolished. Among prominent philosophers influenced by the Cyrenaic doctrines were Hegesias, Anniceris, Theodorus, and Bion.
How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-forms Came Into Being: and Upon the Good (26)
Any conscious being, if the good come to him, will know the good and affirm his possession of it. But what if one be deceived? In that case there...
(26) Any conscious being, if the good come to him, will know the good and affirm his possession of it.
But what if one be deceived?
In that case there must be some resemblance to account for the error: the good will be the original which the delusion counterfeited and whenever the true presents itself we turn from the spurious.
All the striving, all the pain, show that to everything something is a good: the lifeless finds its share in something outside itself; where there is life the longing for good sets up pursuit; the very dead are cared for and mourned for by the living; the living plan for their own good. The witness of attainment is betterment, cleaving to state, satisfaction, settlement, suspension of pursuit. Here pleasure shows itself inadequate; its choice does not hold; repeated, it is no longer the same; it demands endless novelty. The good, worthy of the name, can be no such tasting of the casual; anyone that takes this kind of thing for the good goes empty, carrying away nothing but an emotion which the good might have produced. No one could be content to take his pleasure thus in an emotion over a thing not possessed any more than over a child not there; I cannot think that those setting their good in bodily satisfactions find table-pleasure without the meal, or love-pleasure without intercourse with their chosen, or any pleasure where nothing is done.
Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other? But pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness- unless indeed by pleasure is...
(4) Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other?
But pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness- unless indeed by pleasure is meant the unhindered Act , in which case this pleasure is simply our "Happiness." And even pleasure, though it exist continuously, has never anything but the present; its past is over and done with.
ANSWER: These more pleasant conditions cannot, it is true, add any particle towards the Sage's felicity: but they do serve towards the integrity of his being,...
(7) Then why are these conditions sought and their contraries repelled by the man established in happiness?
Here is our answer:
These more pleasant conditions cannot, it is true, add any particle towards the Sage's felicity: but they do serve towards the integrity of his being, while the presence of the contraries tends against his Being or complicates the Term: it is not that the Sage can be so easily deprived of the Term achieved but simply that he that holds the highest good desires to have that alone, not something else at the same time, something which, though it cannot banish the Good by its incoming, does yet take place by its side.
In any case if the man that has attained felicity meets some turn of fortune that he would not have chosen, there is not the slightest lessening of his happiness for that. If there were, his felicity would be veering or falling from day to day; the death of a child would bring him down, or the loss of some trivial possession. No: a thousand mischances and disappointments may befall him and leave him still in the tranquil possession of the Term.
But, they cry, great disasters, not the petty daily chances!
What human thing, then, is great, so as not to be despised by one who has mounted above all we know here, and is bound now no longer to anything below?
If the Sage thinks all fortunate events, however momentous, to be no great matter- kingdom and the rule over cities and peoples, colonisations and the founding of states, even though all be his own handiwork- how can he take any great account of the vacillations of power or the ruin of his fatherland? Certainly if he thought any such event a great disaster, or any disaster at all, he must be of a very strange way of thinking. One that sets great store by wood and stones, or... Zeus... by mortality among mortals cannot yet be the Sage, whose estimate of death, we hold, must be that it is better than life in the body.
But suppose that he himself is offered a victim in sacrifice?
Can he think it an evil to die beside the altars?
But if he go unburied?
Wheresoever it lie, under earth or over earth, his body will always rot.
But if he has been hidden away, not with costly ceremony but in an unnamed grave, not counted worthy of a towering monument?
The littleness of it!
But if he falls into his enemies' hands, into prison?
There is always the way towards escape, if none towards well-being.
But if his nearest be taken from him, his sons and daughters dragged away to captivity?
What then, we ask, if he had died without witnessing the wrong? Could he have quitted the world in the calm conviction that nothing of all this could happen? He must be very shallow. Can he fail to see that it is possible for such calamities to overtake his household, and does he cease to be a happy man for the knowledge of what may occur? In the knowledge of the possibility he may be at ease; so, too, when the evil has come about.
He would reflect that the nature of this All is such as brings these things to pass and man must bow the head.
Besides in many cases captivity will certainly prove an advantage; and those that suffer have their freedom in their hands: if they stay, either there is reason in their staying, and then they have no real grievance, or they stay against reason, when they should not, and then they have themselves to blame. Clearly the absurdities of his neighbours, however near, cannot plunge the Sage into evil: his state cannot hang upon the fortunes good or bad of any other men.
As with bodily pain and pleasure so with the bodily desires; their origin, also, must be attributed to what thus stands midway, to that Nature we...
(20) As with bodily pain and pleasure so with the bodily desires; their origin, also, must be attributed to what thus stands midway, to that Nature we described as the corporeal.
Body undetermined cannot be imagined to give rise to appetite and purpose, nor can pure soul be occupied about sweet and bitter: all this must belong to what is specifically body but chooses to be something else as well, and so has acquired a restless movement unknown to the soul and by that acquisition is forced to aim at a variety of objects, to seek, as its changing states demand, sweet or bitter, water or warmth, with none of which it could have any concern if it remained untouched by life.
In the case of pleasure and pain we showed how upon distress follows the knowledge of it, and that the soul, seeking to alienate what is causing the condition, inspires a withdrawal which the member primarily affected has itself indicated, in its own mode, by its contraction. Similarly in the case of desire: there is the knowledge in the sensation and in the next lower phase, that described as the "Nature" which carries the imprint of the soul to the body; that Nature knows the fully formed desire which is the culmination of the less formed desire in body; sensation knows the image thence imprinted upon the Nature; and from the moment of the sensation the soul, which alone is competent, acts upon it, sometimes procuring, sometimes on the contrary resisting, taking control and paying heed neither to that which originated the desire nor to that which subsequently entertained it.
But why, thus, two phases of desire; why should not the body as a determined entity be the sole desirer?
Because there are two distinct things, this Nature and the body, which, through it, becomes a living being: the Nature precedes the determined body which is its creation, made and shaped by it; it cannot originate the desires; they must belong to the living body meeting the experiences of this life and seeking in its distress to alter its state, to substitute pleasure for pain, sufficiency for want: this Nature must be like a mother reading the wishes of a suffering child, and seeking to set it right and to bring it back to herself; in her search for the remedy she attaches herself by that very concern to the sufferer's desire and makes the child's experience her own.
In sum, the living body may be said to desire of its own motion in a fore-desiring with, perhaps, purpose as well; Nature desires for, and because of, that living body; granting or withholding belongs to another again, the higher soul.