'there is a ruler and a ruled; throughout nature this is so; we see it even in things without life, they have their harmony or law. The living being is composed of soul and body, whereof the one is naturally ruler and the other ruled. Now what is natural we are to learn from what fulfils the law of its nature most, and not from what is depraved. So we ought to take the man who has the best disposition of body and soul; and in him we shall find that this is so; for in people that are grievous both to others and to them selves the body may often appear ruling the soul, because such people are poor creatures and false to nature,' And Aristotle goes on to distinguish between the body, over which, he says, the rule of the soul is absolute, and the movement of thought and desire, over which reason has, says he, 'a constitutional rule,' in words which exactly recall St. Paul's phrase for our double enemy: 'the flesh and the current thoughts.' So entirely are we here on ground of general experience. And if we go on and take this maxim from Stobæus: 'All fine acquirement implies a foregoing effort of self-control;'[1] or this from Horace: 'Rule your current self or it will rule you! bridle it in and chain it down!'[2] or this from Goethe's autobiography: 'Everything cries out to us that we must renounce;'[3] or still more this from his Faust: 'Thou must go without, go without! that is the everlasting song which every hour, all our life through, hoarsely sings to us!'[4]—then we have testimony not only to the necessity of this natural law of rule and suppression, but
- ↑ Παντὸς καλοῦ κτήματος πόνος προηγεῖται ὁ κατ᾿ ἐγκράτειαν.
- ↑ ....Animum rege, qui nisi paret
Imperat; hunc frænis, hunc tu compesce catenis. - ↑ Alles ruft uns zu, dass wir entsagen sollen.
- ↑
- Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren!
- Das ist der ewige Gesang,
- Den unser ganzes Leben lang
- Uns heiser jede Stunde singt.
- Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren!
