inclined to listen to reason and sense, and turn and submit and mould itself accordingly, unless it be entirely corrupted by brute pleasure and a life of indulgence.
§ iv. As for those who wonder that what is unreasoning should obey reason, they do not seem to me to recognize the power of reason, how great it is, and how far-reaching its dominion is—a power not gained by harsh and repelling methods, but by attractive ones, as mild persuasion which always accomplishes more than compulsion or violence. For even the spirit and nerves and bones, and other parts of the body, though devoid of reason, yet at any instigation of reason, when she shakes as it were the reins, are all on the alert and compliant and obedient, the feet to run, and the hands to throw or lift, at her bidding. Right excellently has the poet set forth in the following lines the sympathy and accordance between the unreasoning and reason:—
So completely under the control of judgement did he keep his spirit and blood and tears. The same is shown by the subsidence of our passions, which are laid to rest in the presence of handsome women or boys, whom reason and the law forbid us to touch; a case which most frequently happens to lovers, when they hear that they have unwittingly fallen in love with a sister or daughter. For at once passion is laid at the voice of reason, and the body exhibits its members as subservient to decorum. And frequently in the case of dainty food, people very much attracted by it, if they find out at the time or learn afterwards that they have eaten what is unclean or unlawful, not only suffer distress and grief in their imagination, but even their very body is upset by the notion, and violent retchings and vomitings follow.4 I fear I should seem to be introducing merely novel and enticing arguments, if I were to enumerate stringed instruments and lyres, and harps and flutes, and other harmonious musical instruments, which, although inanimate, yet speak to man's passions, rejoicing with him, and