Jowett: passions

Soc. A simple thing enough ; just what is commonly said, that a man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions. GORGIAS

Soc. There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of approaching the argument ; for what you say is what the rest of the world think, but do not like to say. And I must beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life may become manifest. Tell me, then : — you say, do you not, that in the rightly-developed man the passions ought not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to the utmost and somehow or other satisfy them, and that this is virtue ? GORGIAS

Again, there is temperance. Is not the calm, and control, and disdain of the passions which even the many call temperance, a quality belonging only to those who despise the body and live in philosophy ? PHAEDO  

That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible worldto the divine and immortal and rational : thither arriving, she lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods. Is not this true, Cebes ? PHAEDO

And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the exact opposite — leading the elements of which she is believed to be composed ; almost always opposing and coercing them in all sorts of ways throughout life, sometimes more violently with the pains of medicine and gymnastic ; then again more gently ; threatening and also reprimanding the desires, passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself, as Homer in the "Odyssey" represents Odysseus doing in the words, PHAEDO

He who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible. Now to him who has a mind discased anything is agreeable which is not opposed to him, but that which is equal or superior is hateful to him, and therefore the lover Will not brook any superiority or equality on the part of his beloved ; he is always employed in reducing him to inferiority. And the ignorant is the inferior of the wise, the coward of the brave, the slow of speech of the speaker, the dull of the clever. These, and not these only, are the mental defects of the beloved ; — defects which, when implanted by nature, are necessarily a delight to the lover, and when not implanted, he must contrive to implant them in him, if he would not be deprived of his fleeting joy. And therefore he cannot help being jealous, and will debar his beloved from the advantages of society which would make a man of him, and especially from that society which would have given him wisdom, and thereby he cannot fail to do him great harm. That is to say, in his excessive fear lest he should come to be despised in his eyes he will be compelled to banish from him divine philosophy ; and there is no greater injury which he can inflict upon him than this. He will contrive that his beloved shall be wholly ignorant, and in everything shall look to him ; he is to be the delight of the lover’s heart, and a curse to himself. Verily, a lover is a profitable guardian and associate for him in all that relates to his mind. PHAEDRUS  

Ath. You ought to have said, Stranger — The Cretan laws are with reason famous among the Hellenes ; for they fulfil the object of laws, which is to make those who use them happy ; and they confer every sort of good. Now goods are of two kinds : there are human and there are divine goods, and the human hang upon the divine ; and the state which attains the greater, at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the greater, has neither. Of the lesser goods the first is health, the second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and the fourth is wealth, not the blind god [Pluto], but one who is keen of sight, if only he has wisdom for his companion. For wisdom is chief and leader of the divine dass of goods, and next follows temperance ; and from the union of these two with courage springs justice, and fourth in the scale of virtue is courage. All these naturally take precedence of the other goods, and this is the order in which the legislator must place them, and after them he will enjoin the rest of his ordinances on the citizens with a view to these, the human looking to the divine, and the divine looking to their leader mind. Some of his ordinances will relate to contracts of marriage which they make one with another, and then to the procreation and education of children, both male and female ; the duty of the lawgiver will be to take charge of his citizens, in youth and age, and at every time of life, and to give them punishments and rewards ; and in reference to all their intercourse with one another, he ought to consider their pains and pleasures and desires, and the vehemence of all their passions ; he should keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them rightly by the mouth of the laws themselves. Also with regard to anger and terror, and the other perturbations of the soul, which arise out of misfortune, and the deliverances from them which prosperity brings, and the experiences which come to men in diseases, or in war, or poverty, or the opposite of these ; in all these states he should determine and teach what is the good and evil of the condition of each. In the next place, the legislator has to be careful how the citizens make their money and in what way they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual contracts and dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary or involuntary : he should see how they order all this, and consider where justice as well as injustice is found or is wanting in their several dealings with one another ; and honour those who obey the law, and impose fixed penalties on those who disobey, until the round of civil life is ended, and the time has come for the consideration of the proper funeral rites and honours of the dead. And the lawgiver reviewing his work, will appoint guardians to preside over these things — some who walk by intelligence, others by true opinion only, and then mind will bind together all his ordinances and show them to be in harmony with temperance and justice, and not with wealth or ambition. This is the spirit, Stranger, in which I was and am desirous that you should pursue the subject. And I want to know the nature of all these things, and how they are arranged in the laws of Zeus, as they are termed, and in those of the Pythian Apollo, which Minos   and Lycurgus gave ; and how the order of them is discovered to his eyes, who has experience in laws gained either by study or habit, although they are far from being self-evident to the rest of mankind like ourselves. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Nothing as yet ; but I ask generally, when the puppet is brought to the drink, what sort of result is likely to follow. I will endeavour to explain my meaning more clearly : what I am now asking is this — Does the drinking of wine heighten and increase pleasures and pains, and passions and loves ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Very likely ; I will endeavour to explain myself more clearly. When I came to the subject of education, I beheld young men and maidens holding friendly intercourse with one another. And there naturally arose in my mind a sort of apprehension — I could not help thinking how one is to deal with a city in which youths and maidens are well nurtured, and have nothing to do, and are not undergoing the excessive and servile toils which extinguish wantonness, and whose only cares during their whole life are sacrifices and festivals and dances. How, in such a state as this, will they abstain from desires which thrust many a man and woman into perdition ; and from which reason, assuming the functions of law, commands them to abstain ? The ordinances already made may possibly get the better of most of these desires ; the prohibition of excessive wealth is a very considerable gain in the direction of temperance, and the whole education of our youth imposes a law of moderation on them ; moreover, the eye of the rulers is required always to watch over the young, and never to lose sight of them ; and these provisions do, as far as human means can effect anything, exercise a regulating influence upon the desires in general. But how can we take precautions against the unnatural loves of either sex, from which innumerable evils have come upon individuals and cities ? How shall we devise a remedy and way of escape out of so great a danger ? Truly, Cleinias, here is a difficulty. In many ways Crete and Lacedaemon furnish a great help to those who make peculiar laws ; but in the matter of love, as we are alone, I must confess that they are quite against us. For if any one following nature should lay down the law which existed before the days of Laius, and denounce these lusts as contrary to nature, adducing the animals as a proof that such unions were monstrous, he might prove his point, but he would be wholly at variance with the custom of your states. Further, they are repugnant to a principle which we say that a legislator should always observe ; for we are always enquiring which of our enactments tends to virtue and which not. And suppose we grant that these loves are accounted by law to be honourable, or at least not disgraceful, in what degree will they contribute to virtue ? Will such passions implant in the soul of him who is seduced the habit of courage, or in the soul of the seducer the principle of temperance ? Who will ever believe this ? — or rather, who will not blame the effeminacy of him who yields to pleasures and is unable to hold out against them ? Will not all men censure as womanly him who imitates the woman ? And who would ever think of establishing such a practice by law ? Certainly no one who had in his mind the image of true law. How can we prove, that what I am saying is true ? He who would rightly consider these matters must see the nature of friendship and desire, and of these so-called loves, for they are of two kinds, and out of the two arises a third kind, having the same name ; and this similarity of name causes all the difficulty and obscurity. LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to subdue them ? He will consecrate the tradition of their evil character among all, slaves and freemen, women and children, throughout the city : — that will be the surest foundation of the law which he can make. LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. Let us proceed : — If any one slays a free man with his own hand, and the deed be done in a moment of anger, and without premeditation, let the offender suffer in other respects as the involuntary homicide would have suffered, and also undergo an exile of two years, that he may learn to school his passions. But he who slays another from passion, yet with premeditation, shall in other respects suffer as the former ; and to this shall be added an exile of three instead of two years — his punishment is to be longer because his passion is greater. The manner of their return shall be on this wise : (and here the law has difficulty in determining exactly ; for in some cases the murderer who is judged by the law to be the worse may really be the less cruel, and he who is judged the less cruel may be really the worse, and may have executed the murder in a more savage manner, whereas the other may have been gentler. But in general the degrees of guilt will be such as we have described them. Of all these things the guardians of the law must take cognisance) : — When a homicide of either kind has completed his term of exile, the guardians shall send twelve judges to the borders of the land ; these during the interval shall have informed themselves of the actions of the criminals, and they shall judge respecting their pardon and reception ; and the homicides shall abide by their judgment. But if after they have returned home, any one of them in a moment of anger repeats the deed, let him be an exile, and return no more ; or if he returns, let him suffer as the stranger was to suffer in a similar case. He who kills his own slave shall undergo a purification, but if he kills the slave of another in anger, he shall pay twice the amount of the loss to his owner. And if any homicide is disobedient to the law, and without purification pollutes the agora, or the games, or the temples, he who pleases may bring to trial the next of kin to the dead man for permitting him, and the murderer with him, and may compel the one to exact and the other to suffer a double amount of fines and purifications ; and the accuser shall himself receive the fine in accordance with the law. If a slave in a fit of passion kills his master, the kindred of the deceased man may do with the murderer (provided only they do not spare his life) whatever they please, and they will be pure ; or if he kills a freeman, who is not his master, the owner shall give up the slave to the relatives of the deceased, and they shall be under an obligation to put him to death, but this may be done in any manner which they please. LAWS BOOK IX

I will tell you, Socrates  , he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together ; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says ; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is : I cannot eat, I cannot drink ; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away ; there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too, being old, and every other old man would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles — are you still the man you were ? Peace, he replied ; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak ; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom ; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers ; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK I

or his insubordination to the river-god, on whose divinity he is ready to lay hands ; or his offerings to the dead Patroclus of his own hair, which had been previously dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius, and that he actually performed this vow ; or that he dragged Hector round the tomb of Patroclus, and slaughtered the captives at the pyre ; of all this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron’s pupil, the son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men and third in descent from Zeus, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time the slave of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted by avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and men. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Why, that all those mercenary individuals, whom the many call Sophists and whom they deem to be their adversaries, do, in fact, teach nothing but the opinion of the many, that is to say, the opinions of their assemblies ; and this is their wisdom. I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him — he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated ; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honorable and that dishonorable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights, and evil to be that which he dislikes ; and he can give no other account of them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never himself seen, and having no power of explaining to others, the nature of either, or the difference between them, which is immense. By heaven, would not such a one be a rare educator ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

It will be clear enough then that in his ordinary dealings which give him a reputation for honesty, he coerces his bad passions by an enforced virtue ; not making them see that they are wrong, or taming them by reason, but by necessity and fear constraining them, and because he trembles for his possessions. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

If the people yield, well and good ; but if they resist him, as he began by beating his own father and mother, so now, if he has the power, he beats them, and will keep his dear old fatherland or motherland, as the Cretans say, in subjection to his young retainers whom he has introduced to be their rulers and masters. This is the end of his passions and desires. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And is there any man in whom you will find more of this sort of misery than in the tyrannical man, who is in a fury of passions and desires ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire, and pain, and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action — in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up ; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X