the educators and not the educated. Still, we should endeavour to attain
virtue and avoid vice; but this is part of another subject.

Enough of disease--I have now to speak of the means by which the mind and
body are to be preserved, a higher theme than the other. The good is the
beautiful, and the beautiful is the symmetrical, and there is no greater or
fairer symmetry than that of body and soul, as the contrary is the greatest
of deformities. A leg or an arm too long or too short is at once ugly and
unserviceable, and the same is true if body and soul are disproportionate.
For a strong and impassioned soul may 'fret the pigmy body to decay,' and
so produce convulsions and other evils. The violence of controversy, or
the earnestness of enquiry, will often generate inflammations and rheums
which are not understood, or assigned to their true cause by the professors
of medicine. And in like manner the body may be too much for the soul,
darkening the reason, and quickening the animal desires. The only security
is to preserve the balance of the two, and to this end the mathematician or
philosopher must practise gymnastics, and the gymnast must cultivate music.
The parts of the body too must be treated in the same way--they should
receive their appropriate exercise. For the body is set in motion when it
is heated and cooled by the elements which enter in, or is dried up and
moistened by external things; and, if given up to these processes when at
rest, it is liable to destruction. But the natural motion, as in the
world, so also in the human frame, produces harmony and divides hostile
powers. The best exercise is the spontaneous motion of the body, as in
gymnastics, because most akin to the motion of mind; not so good is the
motion of which the source is in another, as in sailing or riding; least
good when the body is at rest and the motion is in parts only, which is a
species of motion imparted by physic. This should only be resorted to by
men of sense in extreme cases; lesser diseases are not to be irritated by
medicine. For every disease is akin to the living being and has an