Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/243
not endure either the sight or the crowing of cocks.[1] There may perchance be some hidden property in this; but it could be got rid of, I think, if taken in good season. Training has accomplished this much with me,— not, to be sure, without some difficulty,— that, except beer, my stomach can accommodate itself indifferently to whatever is taken into it. While the body is still supple, we ought then to shape it to all fashions and customs; and, provided that a young man’s desires and will can be held in check, let us boldly make him suited to all nations and all companionships, even to immoderateness and to excesses, if need be. (c) Let his practice follow custom. (a) Let him be able to do every thing, but enjoy doing only the best things. Even philosophers do not deem it praiseworthy in Callisthenes to have lost the favour of Alexander the Great, his master, by refusing to equal him in drinking. [2] Let him laugh and frolic and carouse with his prince; even in his debauches I would have him surpass his companions in vigour and persistency, and fail to do evil from lack neither of strength nor of knowledge, but from lack of inclination. (c) Multum interest utrum peccare aliquis nolit aut nesciat.[3] (a) I thought to do honour to a nobleman as far removed from such excesses as any man in France by asking him, in good company, how many times in his life he had got drunk in the interest of the king’s affairs in Germany. He took it in that sense, and answered that it had happened three times, which he narrated. I know those who, lacking this faculty, have found themselves in sore straits, having to deal with that nation. I have often considered with great admiration the wonderful nature of Alcibiades, shaping himself so readily to customs so diverse, without injury to his health; sometimes surpassing the Persian sumptuousness and pomp, sometimes the Lacedæmonian austerity and frugality — being as much of an ascetic in Sparta as of a voluptuary in Ionia.[4]