Advice About Keeping Well (25)

ZEUXIPPUS. Therefore, when circumstances afford us opportunity, we should give ourselves a chance to recuperate, and to this end we should not grudge to our body either sleep or luncheon or ease, which is the mean between indulgence and discomfort,[*] nor observe the sort of limit that most people observe whereby they wear out their body, like steel that is being tempered, by the changes to which they subject it; whenever the body has been strained and oppressed by much hard work, it is once more softened and relaxed immoderately in pleasures, and again, as the next step, while it is still flaccid and relaxed from venery and wine, it is coerced into going to the Forum or to Court or into some business requiring fervent and intense application. Heracleitus, suffering from dropsy, bade his physician to bring on a drought to follow the wet spell;[*] but most people are completely in error, inasmuch as, when they are in the midst of exertions, labours, and deprivations, they are most inclined to surrender their bodies to pleasures to be made languid and relaxed, and then, after their pleasures, bending them, as it were, into place, and stretching them tight again. For Nature does not require any such form of compensation in the case of the body. But, on the other hand, in the soul the licentious and unmannerly element, immediately after undergoing hardships, is carried away, as sailors are, by wantonness to pleasures and enjoyments, and, after the pleasures, it is again coerced to tasks and business; and the result is that it does not allow Nature to attain the composure and calm which she needs most, but deranges and disturbs her because of this irregularity. But people who have sense are least given to proffering pleasures to the body when it is busied with labours. For they have absolutely no need, nor even recollection, of such things, inasmuch as they are keeping their thoughts intent on the good to be accomplished by their activity; and by the joy or earnestness in their souls they completely dwarf their other desires. There is a jocose remark attributed to Epameinondas in regard to a good man who fell ill and died about the time of the battle of Leuctra: Great Heavens! How did he find time to die when there was so much going on? This may be repeated with truth in the case of a man who has in hand some public activity or philosophic meditation: What time has this man now for indigestion or drunkenness or carnal desires? But when such men find themselves again at leisure following upon their activities, they compose and rest their bodies, guarding against and avoiding useless toils, and more especially unnecessary pleasures, on the ground that they are inimical to Nature.