[407c]
forever
imagining headaches1 and dizziness and
attributing their origin to philosophy. So that wherever this kind of virtue
is practiced2 and tested it is in every way a hindrance.3 For
it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing
about his body.” “Naturally,” he said.
“Then, shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew
this—that for those who were by nature and course of life sound of
body
1 As Macaulay, Essay on “Bacon,” puts it: “That a valetudinarian . . . who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English schools of wisdom altogether rejected.” For the thought cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 12. 6-7.
2 Literally “virtue is practiced in this way.” Cf. 503 D for a similar contrast between mental and other labors. And for the meaning of virtue cf. the Elizabethan: “Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds.”
3 There is a suggestion of Stoic terminology in Plato's use of ἐμπόδιος and similar words. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. 2. 4. On the whole passage cf. again Macaulay's Essay on “Bacon,” Maximus of Tyre (Duebn.) 10, and the diatribe on modern medicine and valetudinarianism in Edward Carpenter's Civilization, Its Cause and Cure.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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