those lusts you do so in order to protect the intellect and to devote yourselves to knowledge? — Disc.: Certainly. — Aristotle. — Then, since you confess that lusts have the power to damage the intellect, surely the body which enjoys those lusts must be more detrimental to the intellect? — Disc.: Our judgment forces us to agree with what your discourse has proved thus far; but what shall we do and how shall we act, in order to become as brave about death as you are, and as regardless of life as you are? — Aristotle: The best means for a seeker of knowledge to attain his end is an effort on the part of the speaker to speak only what is true, and of the hearer to hear correctly. I will now endeavour to speak truly; do you endeavour on your part to hear and receive correctly and truly. Do you not know that the meaning of the word ‘philosophy’ is ‘fondness for wisdom’? and that the mind in its substance and origin is philosophy, and only delights in it, and only obtains peace therefrom? — Disc.: Certainly. — Aristotle: Do you not know that wisdom is the joy of the mind, and that wisdom can be obtained by goodness of soul and mind: now goodness of soul consists in its adjustment, and the adjustment of the mind consists in diminution of phlegm, rheum and blood? — Disc.: Aye. — Aristotle: If the goodness of the mind lie in its adjustment, and its adjustment in the diminution of those humours, when those humours altogether depart, it will become sounder and better? — Disc.: We cannot fail to admit the truth of what you say, but nevertheless we do not find in ourselves the same pleasure in death that we perceive in you. — Aristotle: Since sight guides the seer to his gain and preserves him from harm, try to let me increase your sight as to the advantage of death. O friends of wisdom! do you not see that the seeker after wisdom whose soul has become free from sin has mortified himself before death in respect of friends, and wealth, and empire, for the sake of which men desire the life of this world, and undertaken much sorrow and a heavy burden in seeking wisdom — sorrow so great that it can only be relieved by death? What desire has he for life who enjoys none of the pleasures
