ly or lawlessly through their
desires, but will keep to their usual habits, which acquire their power
and force by attention. For if the body can by training make itself and
its members so subject to control, that the eyes in sorrow can refrain
from tears, and the heart from palpitating in fear, and the passions can
be calm in the presence of beautiful youths and maidens, is it not far
more likely that the training of the passions and emotions of the soul
will allay, tame down, and mould their propensities even in dreams? A
story is told about the philosopher Stilpo,[286] that he thought he saw
in a dream Poseidon angry with him because he had not sacrificed an ox
to him, as was usual among the Megarians:[287] and that he, not a bit
frightened, said, "What are you talking about, Poseidon? Do you come
here as a peevish boy, because I have not with borrowed money filled the
town with the smell of sacrifice, and have only sacrificed to you out of
what I had at home on a modest scale?" Then he thought that Poseidon
smiled at him, and held out his right hand, and said that for his sake
he would give the Megarians a large shoal of anchovies. Those, then,
that have such pleasant, clear, and painless dreams, and no frightful,
or harsh, or malignant, or untoward apparition, may be said to have
reflections of their progress in virtue; whereas agitation and panics
and ignoble flights, and boyish delights, and lamentations in the case
of sad and strange dreams, are like the waves that break on the coast,
the soul not having yet got its proper composure, but being still in
course of being moulded by opinions and laws, from which it escapes in
dreams as far as possible, so that it is once again set free and open
to the passions. Do you investigate all these points too, as to whether
they are signs of progress in virtue, or of some habit which has already
a settled constancy and strength through reason.

Sec. XIII. Now since entire freedom from the passions is a great and divine
thing, and progress in virtue seems, as we say, to consist in a certain
remissness and mildness of the passions, we must observe the passions
both in themselves and in reference to one another to gauge the
difference: in themselves as to whether desire, and fear, and rage are
less strong in us now than formerly, through our quickly extinguishing
their violence and heat by reason; and in reference to one another as to
whether we are animated now by modesty more