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GRYLLUS. Now since you are not unaware that I am a sophist, let me marshal my arguments in some order by defining temperance and analysing the desires according to their kinds. Temperance,See Epicurus, frag. 456 (Usener); contrast Aristotle, Nic. Ethics iii. 10 ff. (1117 b 23 ff.); [Plato], Def. 411 e; al. For the temperance of animals see Aristotle, De Gen. Animal. i. 4 (717 a 27). then, is a curtailment and an ordering of the desires that eliminate those that are extraneous or superfluous and discipline in modest and timely fashion those that are essential. Cf. Mor. 127 a, 584 d f. You can, of course, observe countless differences in the desiresThere is probably a short lacuna at this point. and the desire to eat and drink is at once natural and essential, while the pleasures of love, which, though they find their origin in nature, yet may be forgone and discarded without much inconvenience, have been called natural, but not essential. But there are desires of another kind, neither essential nor natural, that are imported in a deluge from without as a result of your inane illusions and because you lack true culture. So great is their multitude that the natural desires are, every one of them, all but overwhelmed, as though an alien rabble were overpowering the native citizenry. But beasts have souls completely inaccessible and closed to these adventitious passions and live their lives as free from empty illusions as though they dwelt far from the sea.See Plato, Laws, 704 e ff. (and Shorey, What Plato Said, ad loc. p. 630): the sea is the symbol of mischievous foreign influence. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1327 a 11 ff. They fall short in the matter of delicate and luxurious living, but solidly protect their sobriety and the better regulation of their desires since those that dwell within them are neither numerous nor alien.
