When
the constitution is disordered by excess of fire, continuous heat
and fever are the result; when excess of air is the cause, then
the fever is quotidian; when of water, which is a more sluggish
element than either fire or air, then the fever is a tertian;
when of earth, which is the most sluggish of the four, and is
only purged away in a four-fold period, the result is a quartan
fever, which can with difficulty be shaken off.
Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise; the
disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as
follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of
intelligence; and of this there are two kinds; to wit, madness
and ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of
them, that state may be called disease; and excessive pains and
pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to
which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in
great pain, in his unseasonable eagerness to attain the one and
to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything
rightly; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of
any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal
marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with
fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his
desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life
deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great; his
soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body; yet he is
regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad,
which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is
a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity
which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency
of the bones. And in general, all that which is termed the
incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea
that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for
reproach. For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad
by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education,
things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against
his will. And in the case of pain too in like manner the soul
suffers much evil from the body. For where the acid and briny
phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the
body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up within and
mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are
blended, with them, they produce all sorts of diseases, more or
fewer, and in every degree of intensity; and being carried to the
three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail,
they create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of
rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity.
Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of
government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private
as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in
youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad
from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such
cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the
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 animal 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.
