ow
using; but the truer and longer way would take up too much of our time.
'The shorter will satisfy me.' Well then, you would admit that the
qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who compose
them? The Scythians and Thracians are passionate, our own race
intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians covetous, because
the individual members of each have such and such a character; the
difficulty is to determine whether the several principles are one or
three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one part of our nature,
desire with another, are angry with another, or whether the whole soul
comes into play in each sort of action. This enquiry, however, requires
a very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the same relation
cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no impossibility
in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which is fixed
on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no necessity to mention
all the possible exceptions; let us provisionally assume that opposites
cannot do or be or suffer opposites in the same relation. And to the
class of opposites belong assent and dissent, desire and avoidance.
And one form of desire is thirst and hunger: and here arises a new
point--thirst is thirst of drink, hunger is hunger of food; not of warm
drink or of a particular kind of food, with the single exception of
course that the very fact of our desiring anything implies that it is
good. When relative terms have no attributes, their correlatives have
no attributes; when they have attributes, their correlatives also have
them. For example, the term 'greater' is simply relative to 'less,' and
knowledge refers to a subject of knowledge. But on the other hand, a
particular knowledge is of a particular subject. Again, every science
has a distinct character, which is defined by an object; medicine, for
example, is the science of health, although not to be confounded with
health. Having cleared our ideas thus far, let us return to the original
instance of thirst, which has a definite object--drink. Now the thirsty
soul may feel two distinct impulses; the animal one saying 'Drink;'
the rational one, which says 'Do not drink.' The two impulses are
contradictory; and therefore we may assume that they spring from
distinct principles in the soul. But is passion a third principle, or
akin to desire? There is a story of a certain Leontius which throws some
light on this questio