, who would
reason and debate with them concerning virtue and other human interests
in the noblest manner. And of these two I know that as long as they were
companions of Socrates even they were temperate, not assuredly from fear
of being fined or beaten by Socrates, but because they were persuaded
for the nonce of the excellence of such conduct.

(6) {sophrosune} = "sound-mindedness," "temperence." See below, IV.
iii. 1.

Perhaps some self-styled philosophers (7) may here answer: "Nay, the man
truly just can never become unjust, the temperate man can never become
intemperate, the man who has learnt any subject of knowledge can
never be as though he had learnt it not." That, however, is not my own
conclusion. It is with the workings of the soul as with those of the
body; want of exercise of the organ leads to inability of function, here
bodily, there spiritual, so that we can neither do the things that
we should nor abstain from the things we should not. And that is why
fathers keep their sons, however temperate they may be, out of the reach
of wicked men, considering that if the society of the good is a training
in virtue so also is the society of the bad its dissolution.

(7) In reference to some such tenet as that of Antisthenes ap. Diog.
Laert. VI. ix. 30, {areskei d' autois kai ten areten didakten
einai, katha phesin 'Antisthenes en to 'Rraklei kai anapobleton
uparkhein}. Cf. Plat. "Protag." 340 D, 344 D.

To this the poet (8) is a witness, who says:

"From the noble thou shalt be instructed in nobleness; but, and if
thou minglest with the base thou wilt destroy what wisdom thou
hast now";

And he (9) who says:

"But the good man has his hour of baseness as well as his hour of
virtue"--

to whose testimony I would add my own. For I see that it is impossible
to remember a long poem without practice and repetition; so is
forgetfulness of the words of instruction engendered in the heart
that has ceased to value them. With the words of warning fades the
recollection of the very condition of mind in which the soul yearned
after holiness; and once forgetting this, what wonder that the man
should let slip also the memory of virtue itself! Again I see that a man
who falls into habits of drunkenness or plunges headlong into licentious
love, loses his old power of practising the right and abstaining from
the wrong. Many a man who has found frugality easy whilst passion was
col