Book 4, Chapter 11

“These conditions I describe differ in thought, but in reality they are linked, and they arise from lust and delight. When money is coveted, unless reason is immediately applied like a Socratic medicine to heal that desire, the evil spreads into the veins and clings to the inward parts. Disease and infirmity arise, which cannot be rooted out once they are chronic, and the name of this disease is avarice.

25 “The other diseases arise in a similar way: the desire for glory, for instance, or womanizing, if I may use that term for what the Greeks call φιλογυνία, ‘love of women.’ Other diseases and infirmities arise similarly. Their opposites are thought to arise from fear: hatred of women, such as appears in Atilius’ Woman-Hater; hatred of the entire human race, as we are told of Timon, who is called μισάνθρωπος, ‘the misanthrope’; or inhospitality. All these infirmities of the soul arise from a certain fear of the things they shun and hate.

26 “They define an infirmity of the soul as a strong belief, firmly lodged and deeply implanted, that something not worth seeking is highly desirable. The condition arising from aversion they define as a strong belief, firmly lodged and deeply implanted, that something not to be avoided ought to be avoided. This belief is a judgment that one knows what one does not know. Under infirmity fall such things as avarice, ambition, womanizing, obstinacy, dainty nibbling, drunkenness, a taste for delicacies, and any similar conditions. Avarice is a strong belief about money, firmly lodged and deeply implanted, that it is highly desirable; the definitions of the others of the same kind are similar.

27 “The definitions of aversions are of this sort: inhospitality is a strong belief, firmly lodged and deeply implanted, that a guest is greatly to be avoided. Hatred of women, such as Hippolytus’, and of the human race, such as Timon’s, are similarly defined.”

“These distinctions exist in thought, although the conditions themselves occur together. Craving and delight give rise to them. Take a desire for money: unless reason intervenes at once, acting as a sort of Socratic medicine to heal the desire, this evil seeps through the veins and lodges in the organs. It becomes disease and illness; once established, neither can be uprooted. We call that disease greed.

25 “A hunger for glory develops the same way, and so does an obsession with women—my expression for the Greek philogynia. The remaining diseases and illnesses follow the same course. Fear, they think, produces the opposite conditions. Examples are woman-hatred, represented in Atilius’ Woman-Hater; hatred for humanity as a whole, recorded of Timon, the man known as misanthrōpos; and hostility to guests. In all these mental illnesses there’s some fear behind people’s avoidance and hatred of their objects.

26 “They define mental illness as a powerful belief, firmly fixed and deeply rooted, that something not worth seeking is very much worth seeking. They define what arises from aversion this way: a powerful belief, firmly fixed and deeply rooted, that something not worth avoiding ought to be avoided. This belief is judging that you know what you don’t know. The kinds of illness include greed, ambition, an obsession with women, obstinacy, nibbling at treats, drunkenness, a passion for fine food, and anything similar. Greed is a powerful belief about money, firmly fixed and deeply rooted, that it’s very much worth seeking. The other definitions of this kind follow the same pattern.

27 “The definitions of aversions go like this: hostility to guests is a powerful belief, firmly fixed and deeply rooted, that a guest is very much to be avoided. Hatred of women, like Hippolytus’, and of humanity, like Timon’s, are defined in the same way.”