ct to honesty, so we speak in the contrary manner of
infamy; nothing is so odious, so detestable, nothing so unworthy of a man:
and if you are thoroughly convinced of this (for, at the beginning of this
discourse, you allowed that there appeared to you more evil in infamy than
in pain), it follows that you ought to have the command over yourself,
though I scarcely know how this expression may seem an accurate one, which
appears to represent man as made up of two natures, so that one should be
in command and the other be subject to it.

XXI. Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul
admits of a two-fold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other
is without it; when, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves,
the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. There is in the
soul of every man, something naturally soft, low, enervated in a manner,
and languid. Were there nothing besides this, men would be the greatest of
monsters; but there is present to every man reason, which presides over,
and gives laws to all; which, by improving itself, and making continual
advances, becomes perfect virtue. It behoves a man, then, to take care
that reason shall have the command over that part which is bound to
practise obedience. In what manner? you will say. Why, as a master has
over his slave, a general over his army, a father over his son. If that
part of the soul which I have called soft behaves disgracefully, if it
gives itself up to lamentations and womanish tears, then let it be
restrained, and committed to the care of friends and relations, for we
often see those persons brought to order by shame, whom no reasons can
influence. Therefore, we should confine those feelings, like our servants,
in safe custody, and almost with chains. But those who have more
resolution, and yet are not utterly immovable, we should encourage with
our exhortations, as we would good soldiers, to recollect themselves, and
maintain their honour. That wisest man of all Greece, in the Niptrae, does
not lament too much over his wounds, or rather, he is moderate in his
grief:--

Move slow, my friends, your hasty speed refrain,
Lest by your motion you increase my pain.

Pacuvius is better in this than Sophocles, for in the one Ulysses bemoans
his wounds too vehemently; for the very people who carried him after he
was wounded, though his grief was moderate, yet, considering the dignity
of the m