[97] Plat. Tim. p. 77 B-C.
[98] Plat. Tim. pp. 78-79.
[99] Plat. Tim. p. 81.
General view of Diseases and their Causes.
Here Plato passes into a general survey of diseases and the proper treatment of them. “As to the source from whence diseases arise (he says) this is a matter evident to every one. They arise from unnatural excess, deficiency, or displacement, of some one or more of the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) which go to compose the body.”[100] If the element in excess be fire, heat and continuous fever are produced: if air, the fever comes on alternate days: if water (a duller element), it is a tertian fever: if earth, it is a quartan — since earth is the dullest and most sluggish of the four.[101]
[100] Plat. Tim. p. 81 E. τὸ δὲ τῶν νόσων ὅθεν ξυνίσταται, δῆλόν που καὶ παντί.
[101] Plat. Tim. p. 86 A. τὸ δὲ γῆς, τετάρτως ὂν νωθέστατον τούτων.
Diseases of mind — wickedness is a disease — no man is voluntarily wicked.
Having dwelt at considerable length on the distempers of the body, the Platonic Timæus next examines those of the soul, which proceed from the condition of the body.[102] The generic expression for all distemper of the soul is, irrationality — unreason — absence of reason or intelligence. Of this there are two sorts — madness and ignorance. Intense pleasures and pains are the gravest cause of madness.[103] A man under either of these two influences — either grasping at the former, or running away from the latter, out of season — can neither see nor hear any thing rightly. He is at that moment mad and incapable of using his reason. When the flow of sperm round his marrow is overcharged and violent, so as to produce desires with intense throes of uneasiness beforehand and intense pleasure when satisfaction arrives, — his soul is really distempered and irrational, through the ascendancy of his body. Yet such a man is erroneously looked upon in general not as distempered, but as wicked voluntarily, of his own accord. The truth is, that sexual intemperance is a disorder of the soul arising from an abundant flow of one kind of liquid in the body, combined with thin bones or deficiency in the solids. And nearly all those intemperate habits which are urged as matters of reproach against a man — as if he were bad willingly, — are urged only from the assumption of an erroneous hypothesis. No man is bad willingly, but only from some evil habit of body and from wrong or perverting treatment in youth; which is hostile to his nature, and comes upon him against his own will.[104]
[102] Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. Καὶ τὰ μὲν περὶ τὸ σῶμα νοσήματα ταύτῃ ξυμβαίνει γιγνόμενα, τὰ δὲ περὶ ψυχὴν διὰ σώματος ἕξιν τῇδε.