state similar to these.
And their saying what embodies Knowledge is no proof of their actually then exercising it, because they who are under the operation of these passions repeat demonstrations; or verses of Empedocles,187 just as children, when first learning, string words together, but as yet know nothing of their meaning, because they must grow into it, and this is a process requiring time: so that we must suppose these men who fail in Self-Control to say these moral sayings just as actors do.
Furthermore, a man may look at the account of the phænomenon in the following way, from an examination of the actual working of the mind: All action may be analysed into a syllogism, in which the one premiss is an universal maxim and the other concerns particulars of which Sense [moral or physical, as the case may be] is cognisant: now when one results from these two, it follows necessarily that, as far as theory goes the mind must assert the conclusion, and in practical propositions the man must act accordingly.
For instance, let the universal be, “All that is sweet should be tasted,” the particular, “This is sweet;” it follows necessarily that he who is able and is not hindered should not only draw, but put in practice, the conclusion “This is to be tasted.” When then there is in the mind one universal proposition forbidding to taste, and the other “All that is sweet is pleasant” with its minor “This is sweet” (which is the one that really works), and desire happens to be in the man, the first universal bids him avoid this but the desire leads him on to taste; for it has the power of moving the various organs: and so it results that he fails in Self-Control, in a certain sense under the influence of Reason and Opinion not contrary in itself to Reason but only accidentally so; because it is the desire that is contrary to Right Reason, but not the Opinion:188 and