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But the sayings of incontinence are otherwise and different: A mind I have, but Nature forces meNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2 p. 634, Euripides, Frag. 840 = Aeschylus, Frag. 262 ed. Smyth (L.C.L.).; and Alas I from God this evil comes to men When, knowing what is good, they do it notEuripides, Frag. 841; quoted also in Moralia, 33 e. Cf. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, vii. 19, in the King James Version; Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 21: video meliora proboque, | deteriora sequor.; and The spirit yields and can resist no more, Like anchor-hook in sand amid the surge.Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 911, ades. 379; quoted also in Moralia, 782 d. Some ascribe this and the following quotation to Euripides. Here not inaptly the poet terms an anchor-hook in sand that which is not under the control of reason, nor firmly fixed, but surrenders its judgement to the loose and soft part of the soul. Very close to this imagery are also those famous linesNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 911, ades. 380.: I, like some ship, am tied by ropes to shore, And when winds blow, our cables do not hold. For here the poet calls cables the judgements which resist shameful conduct and then are broken by passion, as by a great gust of wind. Truly the intemperate man is swept along to his pleasures by his desires with sails full-spread and delivers himself over to them and steers his course directly thither; whereas the course of the incontinent man zigzags here and there, as he strives to emerge from his passion and to stave it off and is yet swept down and shipwrecked on the reef of shameful conduct. Just as TimonFrag. 9 (ed. Wachsmuth, p. 106); portions are quoted again in Moralia, 529 a and 705 d; Cf. also Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker 5, ii. p. 238. used to lampoon Anaxarchus: The Cynic might of Anaxarchus seemed Steadfast and bold, wherever he wished, to spring; Well did he know the truth, they said, and yet Was bad: for Nature smote him with desire And led him back from truth - ’twas Nature’s dart, Before whom trembles many a Sophist heart. For neither is the wise man continent, though he is temperate, nor is the fool incontinent, though he is intemperate. For the wise man takes pleasure in what is honourable, but the fool is not vexed by shamefulness. Incontinence, therefore, is the mark of a sophistic soul, which has, indeed, reason, but reason which cannot stand firm by its own just decisions.
