Timaeus

Tim.

Of these maladies the cure also is severe for what does most to relieve them is, in fact, an attack of fever. White phlegm, also, is dangerous when it is blocked inside because of the air in its bubbles; but when it has air-vents outside the body it is milder, although it marks the body with spots by breeding white scabs and tetters and the maladies akin thereto. And when this phlegm is blended with black bile and spreads over the revolutions of the head, which are the most divine, and perturbs them, its action is more gentle during sleep, but when it attacks persons who are awake it is harder to shake off; and because it is a disease of the sacred substance it is most justly termed the sacred disease.[*](i.e., epilepsy; Cf. Laws916 A.) Phlegm that is sharp and saline is the fount of all the maladies which are of the nature of catarrhs; and these have received all kinds of names because the regions into which they flow are of all varieties. All those diseases which are called inflammations, owing to the burning and inflaming of the body which they involve, are caused by bile. This, when it gains an external outlet, boils and sends up all kinds of eruptions; but when it is confined inside it produces many burning diseases; and of these the gravest occurs when the bile, being mixed with pure blood, displaces the matter of the fibrine from its proper position. For this fibrine is dispersed through the blood in order that the blood may have a due proportion of both rarity and density, and may neither flow out from the porous body through being liquefied by heat, nor yet prove immobile through its density and circulate with difficulty in the veins. Of these qualities the fibrine preserves the due amount owing to the nature of its formation.[*](Cf. 82 D.) Even when anyone collects together the fibrine of blood that is dead and in process of cooling, all the rest of the blood turns liquid; but if the fibrine is left alone as it is, it acts in combination with the surrounding cold and rapidly congeals the blood. As the fibrine, then, has this property, bile, which is naturally formed of old blood and dissolved again into blood from flesh, penetrates the blood gradually at first, while it is hot and moist, and is congealed by this property of the fibrine; and as it becomes congealed and forcibly chilled it causes internal cold and shivering.

Tim.

But when the bile flows in with more volume, it overpowers the fibrine by the heat it contains, and shakes it into disorder by its boiling up; and should it be capable of thus overpowering the fibrine continuously, it penetrates to the substance of the marrow and loosens from thence, by burning, the mooring-ropes of the soul,[*](Cf. 73 D, 81 D.) as it were of a ship, and sets it free. But when the bile is in smaller quantity and the body resists dissolution, then the bile itself is overpowered, and either it is ejected over the whole surface of the body, or else it is forced through the veins into the lower or the upper belly, being ejected from the body like fugitives from a city in revolt; and it produces diarrhoea and dysentery and all suchlike maladies. When a body has become diseased mainly from an excess of fire, it produces constant inflammations and fevers; when from air, quotidian fevers; when from water, tertian fevers, because that element is more sluggish than air or fire; and when from earth, which is the fourth and most sluggish of the elements and is purged in four-fold periods of time,[*](i.e., the fever recurs after an interval of two days.) it causes quartan fevers and is cured with difficulty. Such is the manner in which diseases of the body come about; and those of the soul which are due to the condition of the body arise in the following way. We must agree that folly is a disease of the soul[*](Cf. Rep. 571 D,Soph. 228 A,Laws689 A ff.); and of folly there are two kinds, the one of which is madness, the other ignorance. Whatever affection a man suffers from, if it involves either of these conditions it must be termed disease; and we must maintain that pleasures and pains in excess are the greatest of the soul’s diseases. For when a man is overjoyed or contrariwise suffering excessively from pain, being in haste to seize on the one and avoid the other beyond measure, he is unable either to see or to hear anything correctly, and he is at such a time distraught and wholly incapable of exercising reason. And whenever a man’s seed grows to abundant volume in his marrow,[*](Cf. 73 C, 91 C.) as it were a tree that is overladen beyond measure with fruit, he brings on himself time after time many pangs and many pleasures owing to his desires and the issue thereof, and comes to be in a state of madness for the most part of his life because of those greatest of pleasures and pains, and keeps his soul diseased and senseless by reason of the action of his body. Yet such a man is reputed to be voluntarily wicked and not diseased; although, in truth, this sexual incontinence, which is due for the most part to the abundance and fluidity of one substance because of the porosity of the bones, constitutes a disease of the soul. And indeed almost all those affections which are called by way of reproach incontinence in pleasure, as though the wicked acted voluntarily, are wrongly so reproached; for no one is voluntarily wicked,[*](For this Socratic dictum Cf. Protag. 345 D ff.,Laws731 C ff.) but the wicked man becomes wicked by reason of some evil condition of body and unskilled nurture, and these are experiences which are hateful to everyone and involuntary. And again, in respect of pains likewise the soul acquires much evil because of the body.

Tim.

For whenever the humors which arise from acid and saline phlegms, and all humors that are bitter and bilious wander through the body and find no external vent but are confined within, and mingle their vapor with the movement of the soul and are blended therewith, they implant diseases of the soul of all kinds, varying in intensity and in extent; and as these humors penetrate to the three regions[*](Cf. 73 D ff.) of the Soul, according to the region which they severally attack, they give rise to all varieties of bad temper and bad spirits, and they give rise to all manner of rashness and cowardice, and of forgetfulness also, as well as of stupidity. Furthermore, when, with men in such an evil condition, the political administration also is evil, and the speech in the cities, both public and private, is evil; and when, moreover, no lessons that would cure these evils are anywhere learnt from childhood,—thus it comes to pass that all of us who are wicked become wicked owing to two quite involuntary causes. And for these we must always blame the begetters more than the begotten, and the nurses more than the nurslings; yet each man must endeavor, as best he can, by means of nurture and by his pursuits and studies to flee the evil and to pursue the good. This, however, forms a separate subject of discussion. Again, it is reasonable and proper to set forth in turn the subject complementary to the foregoing, namely the remedial treatment of body and mind, and the causes which conserve this. For what is good merits description more than what is evil. All that is good is fair, and the fair is not void of due measure; wherefore also the living creature that is to be fair must be symmetrical. Of symmetries we distinguish and reason about such as are small, but of the most important and the greatest we have no rational comprehension. For with respect to health and disease, virtue and vice, there is no symmetry or want of symmetry greater than that which exists between the soul itself and the body itself. But as regards these, we wholly fail to perceive or reflect that, whenever a weaker and inferior type of body is the vehicle[*](Cf. 44 E, 69 C.) of a soul that is strong and in all ways great,—or conversely, when each of these two is of the opposite kind,—then the creature as a whole is not fair, seeing that it is unsymmetrical in respect of the greatest of symmetries; whereas a creature in the opposite condition is of all sights, for him who has eyes to see, the fairest and most admirable. A body, for example, which is too long in the legs, or otherwise disproportioned owing to some excess, is not only ugly, but, when joint effort is required, it is also the source of much fatigue and many sprains and falls by reason of its clumsy motion, whereby it causes itself countless evils.

Tim.

So likewise we must conceive of that compound of soul and body which we call the living creature. Whenever the soul within it is stronger than the body and is in a very passionate state, it shakes up the whole body from within and fills it with maladies; and whenever the soul ardently pursues some study or investigation, it wastes the body; and again, when the soul engages, in public or in private, in teachings and battles of words carried on with controversy and contention, it makes the body inflamed and shakes it to pieces, and induces catarrhs; and thereby it deceives the majority of so-called physicians and makes them ascribe the malady to the wrong cause. And, on the other hand, when a large and overbearing body is united to a small and weak intellect, inasmuch as two desires naturally exist amongst men, —the desire of food for the body’s sake, and the desire of wisdom for the sake of the most divine part we have,—the motions of the stronger part prevail and augment their own power, but they make that of the soul obtuse and dull of wit and forgetful, and thereby they produce within it that greatest of diseases, ignorance. From both these evils the one means of salvation is this—neither to exercise the soul without the body nor the body without the soul,[*](Cf. Laws728 E.) so that they may be evenly matched and sound of health. Thus the student of mathematics, or of any other subject, who works very hard with his intellect must also provide his body with exercise by practising gymnastics; while he who is diligent in molding his body must, in turn, provide his soul with motion by cultivating music[*](i.e., music in the wide sense of mental culture.) and philosophy in general, if either is to deserve to be called truly both fair and good. The various parts, likewise, must be treated in the same manner, in imitation of the form of the Universe. For as the body is inflamed or chilled within by the particles that enter it, and again is dried or moistened by those without, and suffers the affections consequent on both these motions, whenever a man delivers his body, in a state of rest, to these motions, it is overpowered and utterly perishes; whereas if a man imitates that which we have called the nurturer and nurse of the Universe,[*](Cf. 49 A, 52 D.) and never, if possible, allows the body to be at rest but keeps it moving, and by continually producing internal vibrations defends it in nature’s way against the inward and outward motions, and by means of moderate vibrations arranges the affections and particles which stray about in the body in their due reciprocal order,[*](Cf. 33 A.) according to their affinities,—as described in the previous account which we have given of the Universe—then he will not suffer foe set beside foe to breed war in the body and disease, but he will cause friend to be set beside friend so as to produce sound health.