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Chapter I.  A Conference of Socrates with Aristippus Concerning Pleasure and Temperance

In the same manner, likewise, he encouraged his hearers by the following arguments to support hunger and thirst, to resist the temptations of love, to fly from laziness, and inure themselves to all manner of fatigues.  For, being told that one of them lived too luxuriously, he asked him this question: “If you were entrusted, Aristippus, with the education of two young men, one to be a prince and the other a private man, how would you educate them?  Let us begin with their nourishment, as being the foundation of all.”  “It is true,” said Aristippus, “that nourishment is the foundation of our life, for a man must soon die if he be not nourished.”  “You would accustom both of them,” said Socrates, “to eat and drink at a certain hour?”  “It is likely I should?”  “But which of the two,” said Socrates, “would you teach to leave eating before he was satisfied, to go about some earnest business?”  “Him, without doubt,” answered Aristippus, “whom I intended to render capable to govern, to the end that under him the affairs of the Republic might not suffer by delay.”  “Which of the two,” continued Socrates, “would you teach to abstain from drinking when he was thirsty, to sleep but little, to go late to bed, to rise early, to watch whole nights, to live chastely, to get the better of his favourite inclinations, and not to avoid fatigues, but expose himself freely to them?”  “The same still,” replied Aristippus.  “And if there be any art that teaches to overcome our enemies, to which of the two is it rather reasonable to teach it?”  “To him to,” said Aristippus, “for without that art all the rest would avail him nothing.”  “I believe,” said Socrates, “that a man, who has been educated in this manner, would not suffer himself to be so easily surprised by his enemies as the most part of animals do.  For some perish by their gluttony, as those whom we allure with a bait, or catch by offering them to drink, and who fall into the snares, notwithstanding their fears and distrust.  Others perish through their lasciviousness, as quails and partridges, who suffer themselves to be decoyed by the counterfeit voice of their females, and blindly following the amorous warmth that transports them, fall miserably into the nets.”  “You say true,” said Aristippus.  “Well, then,” pursued Socrates, “is it not scandalous for a man to be taken in the same snares with irrational animals?  And does not this happen to adulterers, who skulk and hide themselves in the chambers and closets of married women, though they know they run a very great risk, and that the laws are very strict and rigorous against those crimes?  They know themselves to be watched, and that, if they are taken, they shall not be let go with impunity.  In a word, they see punishment and infamy hanging over the heads of criminals like themselves.  Besides, they are not ignorant, that there are a thousand honourable diversions to deliver them from those infamous passions, and yet they run hand over head into the midst of these dangers, and what is this but to be wretched and desperate to the highest degree?”  “I think it so,” answered Aristippus.  “What say you to this,” continued Socrates, “that the most necessary and most important affairs of life, as those of war and husbandry, are, with others of little less consequence, performed in the fields and in the open air, and that the greatest part of mankind accustom themselves so little to endure the inclemency of the seasons, to suffer heat and cold?  Is not this a great neglect? and do you not think that a man who is to command others ought to inure himself to all these hardships?”  “I think he ought,” answered Aristippus.  “Therefore,” replied Socrates, “if they who are patient and laborious, as we have said, are worthy to command, may we not say that they who can do nothing of all this, ought never to pretend to any office?”  Aristippus agreed to it, and Socrates went on.