6
And this difference between them is not to be collected only from their actions, but may as plainly also be discovered by their words. For at this rate do intemperate persons use to talk: What mirth in life, what pleasure, what delight, Without content in sports of Venus bright? Were those joys past, and I for them unmeet, Ring out my knell, bring forth my winding-sheet. From Mimnermus. And thus says another: To eat, to drink, to wench are principal, All pleasures else I accessories call; as if from his very soul he were wholly abandoned and given up to pleasures and voluptuousness, and even over whelmed therein. And much of the same mind was he, and his judgment was as totally depraved by his passions, who said, Let me, ye dull and formal fops, alone, I am resolved, ’tis best to be undone. But quite another spirit do we find running through the sayings of the incontinent: Blame Nature only for it, blame not me, Would she permit, I then should virtuous be, From the Chrysippus of Euripides, Frag. 837 and 838. says one of them. And again, Ah! ’tis decreed by Fate. We know, ’tis true, We know those virtues, which we ne’er pursue. From the Chrysippus of Euripides, Frag. 837 and 838. And another, What will my swelling passions’ force assuage? No more can I sustain this tempest’s rage, Than anchor’s fluke, dropt on loose ground, a storm; where not improperly he compares the fluke of an anchor dropped in loose ground to that ill-grounded, feeble, and irresolute reason, which by the vanity, weakness, and luxury of the mind is easily brought to forsake the judgment. And the like metaphor has the poet made use of happily enough in these verses: To us, in ships moored near the shore who lie, Though strong the cables, when the winds rise high Cables will prove but small security; where by the cables the poet means the judgment opposing itself against all that is evil or dishonest, which is, however, oftentimes disturbed and broken by violent and sudden gusts of the passions. For, indeed, the intemperate are borne away directly and with full sail to their pleasures; to them they deliver up themselves entirely, and thither it is they bend their whole course. While the incontinent, indirectly only, as endeavoring to sustain and repel the assaults of the passions and withstand their temptations, either is allured and as it were slides into evil, or else is plunged violently into it whether he will or no. As Timon, in his bitter way of raillery, reproaches Anaxarchus, When first the dogged Anaxarchus strove The power of virtue o’er his mind to prove, Firm though he seemed, and obstinately good, In vain th’ impulse of temper he withstood. Nature recoiled, whatever he could do; He saw those ills, which yet he did pursue; In this not single, other sophists too Felt the same force, which they could ne’er subdue. And neither is a wise man continent, but temperate; nor a fool incontinent, but intemperate; the one taking true pleasure and delight in good, the other having no displeasure against evil. And therefore incontinence is said to be found only in a mind which is sophistical (or which barely makes a show of being governed and directed by prudence), and which has indeed the use of reason, but in so weak and faint a manner, that it is not able to persevere in that which it knows to be right.
