Whether the Affections of the Soul are Worse Than Those of the Body (intro-4)

This popular oration, or diatribe, [*] was read by Plutarch[*] in some city of Asia Minor: Volkmann [*] thought Sardis, the capital of the province; Haupt[*] thought Halicarnassus; Wilamowitz[*] Ephesus. The occasion is clearly the consul’s yearly hearing of lawsuits from the whole province.

The proof that afflictions of the soul are worse than diseases of the body is treated in a popular and, in chapter 4, dramatic manner. The conclusion is lost.

The same subject was treated in his commonplace fashion by Maximus Tyrius,[*] who shows no knowledge of Plutarch’s oration, nor any relation to his sources; Cicero, however, at the beginning of the third book of the Tusculan Disputations, exhibits some kinship with Plutarch’s argument. Siefert[*] has twice elaborated his opinion that some of this work of

Plutarch’s was drawn from the ὑπόμνημα (I should prefer to say ὑπομνήματα [*]) which Plutarch used in writing De Tranquillitate.

The text is not good. The work is listed as No. 208 in the Lamprias catalogue.

Homer,[*] having contemplated the mortal varieties of animals and having compared them with each other in respect to their lives and habits, cried out that nothing is

More wretched than man,

Of all that breathes and creeps upon the earth,

awarding to man an unfortunate primacy in excess of evils. But as for us, as though acknowledging that man has won the victory in wretchedness and has been proclaimed the most miserable of animals, let us compare him with himself, dividing body and soul for competition of their individual miseries, a task not unprofitable but even quite necessary, to the end that we may learn whether it is through Fortune or through ourselves that we live more wretchedly. For while disease grows in the body through Nature, vice and depravity in the soul are first the souls own doing, and then its affliction. It will be no slight aid toward tranquillity of mind, if the worse condition be curable, being both lighter to bear and lacking intensity.

The fox in Aesop,[*] disputing at law with the leopard concerning their claims to variety,[*] when the leopard had shown her body with its glossy surface bright and spotted, and the fox’s tawny skin was rough and unpleasant to the eye,

But look at me within, sir judge,

said she,

And you will find me fuller far than she

Of fair variety,

[*]

making manifest the versatility of her character which changes to many forms as necessity arises. Shall we, then, say in our own case, Many of your diseases and affections, O man, your body naturally produces of itself, and it receives also many that befall it from without; but if you lay yourself open on the inside, you will find a storehouse and treasury, as Democritus[*] says, of all manner of evils and many abnormal states, which do not flow in from outside, but have, as it were, subterranean and earth-born springs, which Vice, being widely diffused and abundantly supplied with those abnormal states, causes to gush forth? And if the diseases in the flesh are detected by the pulse and biliousness, and temperatures and sudden pains confirm their presence, but the evils in the soul escape the notice of most men, they are for this reason worse evils, since they also deprive the sufferer of any awareness of themselves. For although the reason,[*] if sound, perceives the diseases which affect the body, yet, being itself afflicted with those of the soul, it can form no judgement of its own afflictions, for it is affected in the very part by which it judges; and, of the souls diseases, one must account as first and greatest ignorance, which causes Vice beyond hope of cure to abide with most men, to cling to them through life, and to die with them. For the beginning of the riddance of disease is awareness which leads the ailing part to the use of what will relieve it; but the man who through disbelief in his ailment does not know what he needs, refuses the remedy, even if it be at hand. For it is true of the diseases of the body also that those are worse which are attended by inability to perceive the body’s condition: lethargies, migraine, epilepsies, apoplexies, and those very fevers which, raising inflammation to the pitch of delirium and confounding consciousness, as on a musical instrument,

Will touch the heart-strings never touched before.[*]

Therefore professional physicians desire, in the first place that a man should not be ill; and next, if he is ill, that he should not be unaware that he is ill[*] - which is the case with all the maladies which affect the soul. For when men act foolishly[*] or licentiously or unjustly, they do not think that they are doing wrong, but some even think that they are doing right. For although no one has ever called a fever health, nor consumption excellent condition, nor gout swiftness of foot, nor sallowness a fresh complexion, yet many call hot temper[*]

manliness, and love friendship, [*] and envy emulation, and cowardice caution. Again, while men sick in body send for a doctor, since they perceive whom they need to counteract their ailments, yet those that are sick in soul avoid philosophers, for they think that they are doing well in those very matters where they are at fault. The fact is that, if we follow on this line of reasoning, we maintain that defective eyesight is easier to bear than madness and gout than inflammation of the brain! For a man that is sick in body perceives it and calls loudly for a physician, and when he comes, allows him to anoint the eyes or open the veins; but you hear the maddened Agave say,[*] not recognizing her dearest by reason of her affliction:

From the mountain we bring

To the palace a fresh-cut tendril,

A fortunate capture.

It is true that one who is sick in body gives in at once and goes to bed and remains quiet while he is being cured, and if, perchance, when the fever comes upon him, he tosses a bit and tumbles his body about, one of those who sit by him will say to him gently,

Lie still, poor wretch, and move not from your bed, [*]

and so checks and restrains him; but those who suffer from diseases of the soul are then most active, then least at rest. For impulses are the beginning of action, and the soul’s abnormal states are violent impulses. That is the reason why they do not allow the soul to be at rest, but just at the time when man most needs repose and silence and relaxation, then his fits of temper, of contentiousness, of love, of grief, drag him into the open air and strip him bare, and he is forced both to do many lawless things and to give tongue to many things unsuited to the occasion.

As, therefore, the storm that prevents a sailor from putting into port is more dangerous than that which does not allow him to sail, so those storms of the soul are more serious which do not allow a man to compose or to calm his disturbed reason; but pilotless and without ballast, in confusion and aimless wandering, rushing headlong in oblique and reeling courses, he suffers a terrible shipwreck, as it were, and ruins his life. Consequently for this reason also it is worse to be sick in soul than in body; for men afflicted in body only suffer, but those afflicted in soul both suffer and do ill.[*]

But why need I recount the multitude of the soul’s maladies? The present occasion of itself brings them to mind. Do you see this vast and promiscuous crowd which jostles and surges in confusion here about the tribunal and the market-place? These persons have come together, not to sacrifice to their country’s gods, not to share in each other’s family rites, not bringing to Ascraean Zeus [*] the first-fruits

of Lydian harvests, [*] nor, in honour of Dionysus, to celebrate his mystic festival on sacred nights with common revellings, but, as it were, a mighty pestilence drives them together here with yearly visitations stirring up Asia, which must come for law-suits and litigation at certain stated times; and the overwhelming multitude, like streams flowing together, has inundated this one market-place and boils with fury and dashes together in a tumult

of destroyers and destroyed.

[*] What fevers, what agues, have brought this about? What stoppages, or irruptions of blood,[*] or distemperature of heat, or overflow of humours, have caused this? If you examine every law-suit, as though it were a person, to discover what gave rise to it and whence it came, you will find that obstinate anger begat one, frantic ambition another, unjust desire a third...