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Now as to various difficulties, due to observance of petty detail and to lack
of freedom, which most men encounter—men who are engaged in the
toilsome business of harvesting and caring for their crops and by sleepless
nights and running hither and thither bring to light the latent infirmities
of their bodies—there is no good reason to fear that such will be
experienced by scholars and men in public life, with reference to whom our
discussion has taken its present form ; but these must guard against another
and more subtle kind of pettiness that inheres in letters and learning, an
influence which compels them to be unsparing and careless of their body, so
that they oftentimes, when the body is ready to succumb, will not surrender,
but will force the mortal to be partner with the immortal, and the
earth-born with the celestial, in rivalry and achievement. Then later, to
quote the words of the ox to his fellow-servant the camel, who was unwilling
to lighten his burden : ‘Well, before long you will be carrying me as
well as all this load’ (as actually [p. 293]
resulted when the ox fell dead).1And this is just what happens to the mind
: if it is unwilling to relax a little and give up to the body in distress
and need, a little later a fever or a vertigo attacks it, and it is
compelled to give up its books and discussions and studies, and share with
the body its sickness and weariness. Plato 2 was right, therefore, in
advising that there should be no movement of the body without the mind or of
the mind without the body, but that we should preserve, as it were, the even
balance of a well-matched team ; when the body shares most in the work and
weariness of the mind we should repay it by giving it the most care and
attention, and we should feel that of the good gifts which fair and lovely
Health bestows the fairest is the unhampered opportunity to get and to use
virtue both in words and in deeds. 3