3
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, Euripides, Orestes, 258; cf. 475 d, supra. 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.
4
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. cf. Cicero, Tusc. Disp., iii. 5. 10.
