Putrefaction

“ If they too are bad, he, seeing them punished, and being seen by them, is released only after having long expiated every one of his crimes by pains and sufferings which in magnitude and severity exceed those which come through the body alone, as much as reality is more substantial than a dream. But the scars and scourge-marks after punishment remain in some more conspicuous; in others, less so. “See,” said he, “those motley colors of every kind in the souls,—that dark and squalid dye, the pigment of meanness and avarice,—that blood-red and fiery hue, of cruelty and bitterness ”

“ But the suspense of sentence has in not a few cases, according to Plutarch, a directly merciful purpose. As the most fertile soil may before tillage produce the rankest weeds, so in the soul most capable of good there may be, prior to culture, a noisome crop of evil, and yet God may spare the sinner for the good that is in him, and for the signal service which, when reclaimed, he may render to mankind. Then, too, by the delay of visible judgment God gives men in his own example the lesson of long-suffering, and rebukes their promptness in resentment and revenge. ”

“ Nor [47] does such a person seem to look beyond the range of his bodily senses; nor does he bear it in mind that a teacher in whipping one boy admonishes all, and that a general in the capital punishment of one out of ten brings all the guilty men under his command back to their duty. In truth not only is one part of the body cured through another part, but there are certain dispositions of mind and conduct, equally those that are evil and those that tend to reformation, as to which soul is influenced by soul more than body is affected by body. ”

“ For as the punishment of the whip and the spur immediately on a horse’s stumbling or shying corrects him and puts him on right behavior, while beating and twitching of the reins and shouting at him at a later period seem to him for some other purpose than discipline, and thus annoy him without teaching him, so guilt rebuked and checked by punishment after each of its wrong-doings and transgressions might gradually become conscience-stricken, and be brought to the fear of God, as presiding over the affairs and experiences of men with a justice that does not linger ”

“ For desire and fear and anger and the like they consider only depraved opinions and judgements, not in one portion of the soul only but in all its leading principles, inclinations and yieldings, and assents and impulses, and generally speaking in its energies soon changed, like the sallies of children, whose fury and excessive violence is unstable by reason of their weakness. But these views are, in the first place, contrary to evidence and observation; for no one observes in himself a change from passion to judgement, and from judgement back to passion ”

“ Many, were employed day and night in destroying them, but the work so multiplied under their hands, that not only his clothes, baths, basins, but his very meat was polluted with that flux and contagion, they came swarming out in such numbers. He went frequently by day into the bath to scour and cleanse his body, but all in vain; the evil generated too rapidly and too abundantly for any ablutions to overcome it. ”

“ In this brief treatise concerning envy and hatred, Plutarch, after he hath shewed in general terms that they be two different vices, and declared withal the properties of the one and the other, proveth this difference by divers reasons and arguments ranged in their order: he discovereth the nature of envious persons and malicious; and sheweth by a proper similitude that the greatest personages in the world be secured from the claws and paws of envious persons, and yet for all that, cease not to have many enemies. ”

“ To whip servants with sound of flutes and hautboys; namely, to make a sport and pastime of punishing men, and to solace ourselves with their punishment for pleasure's sake, and then afterwards, when we have done, repent us of it: for as the one is brutish and beastlike, so the other is as womanish and unmanly: but without grief and pleasure both, at what time as reason and judgment is in force, we ought to let justice take punishment, and leave none occasion at all for choler to get advantage.
But peradventure some one will say, that this is not properly the way to remedy or cure anger ”

“ Our father was ironical and sarcastic; he spoke of Putois as if he were an actual being. He was sometimes so persistent, and described each detail with such precision, that our mother was quite astonished. 'Anyone would say that you are serious, my love, she would say frankly, and yet you know perfectly . . . .' He replied gravely 'The whole of Saint-Omer believes in the existence of Putois. Could I be a good citizen and deny it? One must think well before suppressing an article of universal belief.'
"Only very clear-headed persons are troubled by such scruples. ”

“ He would profess, too, that he was more taken with young men that blushed, than with those who looked pale; and that he never desired to have a soldier that moved his hands too much in marching, and his feet too much in fighting; or snored louder than he shouted. Ridiculing a fat overgrown man: "What use," said he, "can the state turn a man's body to, when all between the throat and groin is taken up by the belly?" When one who was much given to pleasures desired his acquaintance, begging his pardon, he said, he could not live with a man whose palate was of a quicker sense than his heart. ”

“ Thus curst curs, after they have spent and discharged their choler and anger upon the cudgels or stones which have been thrown at them, become thereby more gentle and tractable to men. But above all, it were very expedient and profitable for them to be always near unto personages for years elder, and in authority greater than themselves, and with those to converse; for the reverent regard and fear that they have in respect of their dignity and gravity, may induce and direct them in time and by custom to keep silence ”

“ Very right, said Patrocles, and you reason well as to changes wrought upon the body; but as to the soul, which in some measure exercises the power of witchcraft, how can this cause any disturbance by the eye? Sir, I replied, do not you consider that the soul, when affected, works upon the body? Ideas of love excite lust, and rage often blinds dogs as they fight with wild beasts. Sorrow, covetousness, or jealousy makes us change color, and destroys the habit of the body; and envy more than any passion, when fixed in the soul, fills the body full of ill humors, and makes it pale and ugly ”

“ All which may best be understood, if we consider it a little in that Composition of Fear and Flattery which before we intimated: and indeed Flattery is most incident to base and slavish minds; and when the fear and jealousy of a Deity disquiet a wanton dalliance with sin, and disturb the filthy pleasure of Vice, then this fawning and crouching disposition will find out devices to quiet an angry conscience within, and an offended God without, (though as men grow more expert in this cunning, these fears may in some degree abate) . ”

“ Putrefy and the adjectives putrid and putrescent, and the nouns putridity and putrescence, are used almost exclusively of animal matter in a state of decomposition, the more general word decay being used of either animal or vegetable substances. ”

“ So we, condemning reason for slackness and mildness in punishing, are in a hurry to punish, borne along by passion as by a dangerous gale. He that is hungry takes his food as nature dictates, but he that punishes should have no hunger or thirst for it, nor require anger as a sauce to stimulate him to it, but should punish when he is as far as possible from having any desire for it, and has to compel his reason to it. ”

“ First we warm and fuse them with praise; then a quiet application of candour serves as a tempering douche. We have, for instance, the opportunity of saying, ‘Is there any comparison between the other conduct and this? Do you see what good fruit comes of doing the right thing? This is what your friends expect of you; it is like you, and what nature meant you for. The other conduct is abominable; away with it
To the mountain or to the wave of the surging tumultuous ocean!‘ A sensible physician will always rather cure a sick man with sleep and feeding than with castor and scammony ”

“ And the most natural place of the irascible faculty seems to be in the middle of the other two. For it is the nature of reason to govern, and of the irascible faculty both to govern and be governed, since it is obsequious to reason, and commands the appetitive faculty when this is disobedient to reason. And as in letters the semi-vowels are middling between mutes and vowels, having something more than those and less than these; so in the soul of man, the irascible faculty is not purely passive, but hath often an imagination of good mixed with the irrational appetite of revenge. ”

“ On the same grounds they consider incontinence to be something less than vice, but intemperance to be a complete vice. For it, having both its appetite and reason depraved, is by the one carried away to desire disgraceful things,229 by the other, through bad judgement consenting to desire, loses even the perception of wrongdoing. But incontinence keeps its judgement sound through reason, but is carried away against its judgement by passion which is too strong for reason, whence it differs from intemperance. ”

“ But—the converse of this—guilt, bringing with itself into being its own pain and punishment, not subsequently to, but in the very act of wrong-doing receives its penalty. The malefactor who is to be crucified carries his cross with his own body; and in like manner wickedness creates from itself, to be borne by itself, each several form of chastisement, being, so to speak, an expert artificer of a wretched life, attended by thronging fears and distressing emotions, by ceaseless remorse and constant perturbation. ”

“ With the flatterer it is different. In the first place, when he displays sharpness or heat or inflexibility, it is in dealing with others than yourself. He is severe upon his own servants; he is terribly hard upon the misdeeds of his own relations; he shows no admiration or respect for a stranger, but treats |E| him with contempt; his scandalizing is merciless when exacerbating other people. His object is to make it appear that he detests low practices, and that he would not consent to abate a jot of his candour in your behalf, or to do or say anything to curry favour. ”

“ Once, after being reviled and ill-spoken of all day long in his own hearing by some vile and abandoned fellow in the open market-place, where he was engaged in the despatch of some urgent affair, he continued his business in perfect silence, and in the evening returned home composedly, the man still dogging him at the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse and foul language ”

“ No! while a friend will, for his own part, carefully avoid such unremitting censoriousness, the incessant niggling and pettifogging of some other person will afford him an opening to attack those faults which are more serious. Once when a man with an ulcerated liver showed the physician Philotimus a sore on his finger, the doctor observed, ‘My good sir, your case is not a matter of a whitlow!’ So when some one is finding fault 237with a number of insignificant peccadilloes, the real friend will be offered the opportunity of saying to him, ‘What have his tippling and foolery to do with us? ”

“ For like as cupping glasses, boxes, and ventoses draw the worst matter out of the flesh; even so, the ears of curious and busy folk are willing to receive and admit the most lewd and naughtiest speeches that are: or rather, to speak more properly, as towns and cities have certain cursed and unlucky gates, at which they send out malefactors to execution, carry and throw forth their dung, ordure, filthiness, and cleansings whatsoever, but never cometh in or goeth out that way anything that pure is and holy ”

“ The robber could be no one but Putois. That was the opinion of the corporal, who knew all about Putois, and had tried hard to put his hand on that bird. The ‘Journal of Saint-Omer’ devoted an article to the three melons of Madame Cornouiller, and published a portrait of Putois from descriptions furnished by the town. ‘He has,’ said the paper, ‘a low forehead, squinting eyes, a shifty glance, crow’s-feet, sharp cheek-bones, red and shining. No rims to the ears. Thin, somewhat bent, feeble in appearance, in reality he is unusually strong. ”

“ But him who comes hither from these punishments uncorrected and uncleansed Dice takes in hand, open and naked as he is in soul, having nothing whereby to conceal or hide or cover his depravity, but beheld in every direction and by all and in his entire selfhood, and shows him first to his good parents, if good they are, as being despicable to his progenitors and unworthy of them. ”

“ Some of them take up with toadies and parasites, wretched nondescripts who are the ruin and bane of youth; others with haughty and expensive mistresses and strumpets, whom they ransom from their employers. Some spend recklessly on gormandizing; some are wrecked upon dice and carousals; some go so far as to venture on the more daring vices—they commit adultery, and think death not too much |C| to pay for a single pleasure. Had these last studied philosophy, they would in all probability not have succumbed to temptation of this kind. ”

“ Now when people give you praise and applause for something |B| you do or say, whether in sober earnest or in careless jest, the harm they do is only for the moment, and only affects the matter in hand. But when their praises go so far as to influence your moral being, and their flatteries to affect your character, they are as bad as servants who pilfer ‘not from the stack, but from the seed‘. For the moral disposition and the moral character—first principle and fountain-head of conduct—are the seed of actions, and these they corrupt by clothing vice in the titles of virtue. ”