gentlemanly sort. He does not say that the philosopher should wholly abstain from ordinary
pleasures, but only that he should not be a slave to them. The philosopher should not care about
eating and drinking, but of course he should eat as much as is necessary; there is no suggestion of
fasting. And we are told that Socrates, though indifferent to wine, could, on occasion, drink more
than anybody else, without ever becoming intoxicated. It was not drinking that he condemned, but
pleasure in drinking. In like manner, the philosopher must not care for the pleasures of love, or for
costly raiment, or sandals, or other adornments of the person. He must be entirely concerned with
the soul, and not with the body: "He would like, as far as he can, to get away from the body and to
turn to the soul."
It is obvious that this doctrine, popularized, would become ascetic, but in intention it is not,
properly speaking, ascetic. The philosopher will not abstain with an effort from the pleasures of
sense, but will be thinking of other things. I have known many philosophers who forgot their
meals, and read a book when at last they did eat. These men were acting as Plato says they should:
they were not abstaining from gluttony by means of a moral effort, but were more interested in
other matters. Apparently the philosopher should marry, and beget and rear children, in the same
absent-minded way, but since the emancipation of women this has become more difficult. No
wonder Xanthippe was a shrew.
Philosophers, Socrates continues, try to dissever the soul from communion with the body, whereas
other people think that life is not worth living for a man who has "no sense of pleasure and no part
in bodily pleasure." In this phrase, Plato seems-perhaps inadvertently--to countenance the view of
a certain class of moralists, that bodily pleasures are the only ones that count. These moralists hold
that the man who does not seek the pleasures of sense must be eschewing pleasure altogether, and
living virtuously. This is an error which has done untold harm. In so far as the division of mind
and body can be accepted, the worst pleasures, as well as the best, are mental--for example, envy,
and many forms of cruelty and love of power. Milton's Satan rises superior to physical torment,
and devotes himself to a work of destruction from which he derives a pleasure that is wholly of
the mind. Many eminent ecclesiastics, having renounced the pleasures of sense, and being not on
their guard against