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| Chapter XXII
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Chapter
XXII.
We see
how the husbandmen have a method for separating the chaff, which is
united with the wheat, with a view to employ each for its proper
purpose, the one for the sustenance of man, the other for burning and
the feeding of animals. The labourer in the field of temperance will in
like manner distinguish the satisfaction from the mere delight, and
will fling this latter nature to savages1499
| 1499 τοῖς
ἀλογωτέροις. Fronto Ducæus translates “bardis
objiciat,” i.e. “savages,” not
“beasts.” |
“whose end is to be burned1500
| 1500 Heb. vi. 8. “The
Apostle” here is to be noticed. The same teaching, as to
there being no necessity for pleasure, is found in Clement of
Alexandria. He says it is not our σκοπός, 2
Pæd. c. i. and 2 Strom., καθόλου
γὰρ οὐκ
ἀναγκαῖον τὸ
τῆς ἡδονῆς
πάθος,
ἐπακολούθιμον
δὲ χρείαις
ταῖς
φυσικαῖς, κ. τ.
λ. | ,” as the
Apostle says, but will take the other, in proportion to the actual
need, with thankfulness. Many, however, slide into the very opposite
kind of excess, and unconsciously to themselves, in their
over-preciseness, laboriously thwart their own design; they let their
soul fall down the other side from the heights of Divine elevation to
the level of dull thoughts and occupations, where their minds are so
bent upon regulations which merely affect the body, that they can no
longer walk in their heavenly freedom and gaze above; their only
inclination is to this tormenting and afflicting of the flesh. It would
be well, then, to give this also careful thought, so as to be equally
on our guard against either over-amount1501
| 1501 ἐπιμετρίας. Cf. ἐν
ἐπιμέτρῳ, Polyb., “into the bargain.” | ,
neither stifling the mind beneath the wound of the flesh, nor, on the
other hand, by gratuitously inflicted weakenings sapping and lowering
the powers, so that it can have no thought but of the body’s
pain1502
| 1502 καὶ περὶ
τοὺς
σωματικοὺς
πόνους
ἠσχολημένον
(i.e. “busied,”): Galesinius’
translation must here be wrong, “ad corporis labores prorsus
inutilem.” | ; and let every one remember that wise
precept, which warns us from turning to the right hand or to the left.
I have heard a certain physician of my acquaintance, in the course of
explaining the secrets of his art, say that our body consists of four
elements, not of the same species, but disposed to be conflicting: yet
the hot penetrated the cold, and an equally unexpected union of the wet
and the dry took place, the contradictories of each pair being brought
into contact by their relationship to the intervening pair. He added an
extremely subtle explanation of this account of his studies in nature.
Each of these elements was in its essence diametrically1503
| 1503 Cold
can unite with Wet or Dry which “lie on each side of” it,
and are “kindred” to it: and so through one or the other
(which are also “kindred” to Hot) can come “in
contact with” Hot. (So of all.) A wet thing becomes the medium in
which both cold and heat can be manifested. | opposed to its contradictory; but then it
had two other qualities lying on each side of it, and by virtue of its
kinship with them it came into contact with its contradictory; for
example, the cold and the hot each unite with the wet, or the dry; and
again, the wet and the dry each unite with the hot, or the cold: and so
this sameness of quality, when it manifests itself in contradictories,
is itself the agent which affects the union of those contradictories.
What business of mine, however, is it to explain exactly the details of
this change from this mutual separation and repugnance of nature, to
this mutual union through the medium of kindred qualities, except for
the purpose for which we mentioned it? And that purpose was to add that
the author of this analysis of the body’s constitution advised
that all possible care be taken to preserve a balance between these
properties, for that in fact health consisted in not letting any one of
them gain the mastery within us. If his doctrine has truth in it, then,
for our health’s continuance, we must secure such a habit, and by
no irregularity of diet produce either an excess or a defect in any
member of these our constituent elements. The chariot-master, if the
young horses which he has to drive will not work well together, does
not urge a fast one with the whip, and rein in a slow one; nor, again,
does he let a horse that shies in the traces or is
hard-mouthed gallop his own way to the confusion of orderly driving;
but he quickens the pace of the first, checks the second, reaches the
third with cuts of his whip, till he has made them all breathe evenly
together in a straight career. Now our mind in like manner holds in its
grasp the reins of this chariot of the body; and in that capacity it
will not devise, in the time of youth, when heat of temperament is
abundant, ways of heightening that fever; nor will it multiply the
cooling and the thinning things when the body is already chilled by
illness or by time; and in the case of all these physical qualities it
will be guided by the Scripture, so as actually to realize it:
“He that gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered
little had no lack1504
.” It will
curtail immoderate lengths in either direction, and so will be careful
to replenish where there is much lack. The inefficiency of the body
from either cause will be that which it guards against; it will train
the flesh, neither making it wild and ungovernable by excessive
pampering, nor sickly and unstrung and nerveless for the required work
by immoderate mortification. That is temperance’s highest aim; it
looks not to the afflicting of the body, but to the peaceful action of
the soul’s functions.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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