The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates | Page 6

to their designs to live so at that time.
Many who pretend to philosophy will here object, that a virtuous
person is always virtuous, and that when a man has once come to be
good and temperate, he will never afterwards become wicked nor
dissolute; because habitudes that can be acquired, when once they are
so, can never more be effaced from the mind. But I am not of this
opinion; for as they who use no bodily exercises are awkward and
unwieldy in the actions of the body, so they who exercise not their
minds are incapable of the noble actions of the mind, and have not
courage enough to undertake anything worthy of praise, nor command
enough over themselves to abstain from things that are forbid. For this

reason, parents, though they be well enough assured of the good natural
disposition of their children, fail not to forbid them the conversation of
the vicious, because it is the ruin of worthy dispositions, whereas the
conversation of good men is a continual meditation of virtue. Thus a
poet says,
"By those whom we frequent, we're ever led: Example is a law by all
obeyed. Thus with the good, we are to good inclined, But vicious
company corrupts the mind."
And another in like manner:
"Virtue and vice in the same man are found, And now they gain, and
now they lose their ground."
And, in my opinion, they are in the right: for when I consider that they
who have learned verses by heart forget them unless they repeat them
often, so I believe that they who neglect the reasonings of philosophers,
insensibly lose the remembrance of them; and when they have let these
excellent notions slip out of their minds, they at the same time lose the
idea of the things that supported in the soul the love of temperance; and,
having forgot those things, what wonder is it if at length they forget
temperance likewise?
I observe, besides, that men who abandon themselves to the debauches
of wine or women find it more difficult to apply themselves to things
that are profitable, and to abstain from what is hurtful. For many who
live frugally before they fall in love become prodigal when that passion
gets the mastery over them; insomuch that after having wasted their
estates, they are reduced to gain their bread by methods they would
have been ashamed of before. What hinders then, but that a man, who
has been once temperate, should be so no longer, and that he who has
led a good life at one time should not do so at another? I should think,
therefore, that the being of all virtues, and chiefly of temperance,
depends on the practice of them: for lust, that dwells in the same body
with the soul, incites it continually to despise this virtue, and to find out
the shortest way to gratify the senses only.

Thus, whilst Alcibiades and Critias conversed with Socrates, they were
able, with so great an assistance, to tame their inclinations; but after
they had left him, Critias, being retired into Thessaly, ruined himself
entirely in the company of some libertines; and Alcibiades, seeing
himself courted by several women of quality, because of his beauty,
and suffering himself to be corrupted by soothing flatterers, who made
their court to him, in consideration of the credit he had in the city and
with the allies; in a word, finding himself respected by all the
Athenians, and that no man disputed the first rank with him, began to
neglect himself, and acted like a great wrestler, who takes not the
trouble to exercise himself, when he no longer finds an adversary who
dares to contend with him.
If we would examine, therefore, all that has happened to them; if we
consider how much the greatness of their birth, their interest, and their
riches, had puffed up their minds; if we reflect on the ill company they
fell into, and the many opportunities they had of debauching
themselves, can we be surprised that, after they had been so long absent
from Socrates, they arrived at length to that height of insolence to
which they have been seen to arise? If they have been guilty of crimes,
the accuser will load Socrates with them, and not allow him to be
worthy of praise, for having kept them within the bounds of their duty
during their youth, when, in all appearance, they would have been the
most disorderly and least governable. This, however, is not the way we
judge of other things; for whoever pretended that a musician, a player
on the lute, or any other person that teaches, after he has made a good
scholar, ought to be blamed for his growing more ignorant under the
care