Life of Pythagoras — Iamblichus, trans. Thomas Taylor (1818)

Since however, the virtue of manners is conversant with the passions, but of the passions pleasure and pain are supreme, it is evident that virtue does not consist in extirpating the passions of the soul, pleasure and pain, but in co-harmonizing them.

For neither does health, which is a certain apt mixture of the powers of the body, consist in eepalliag the cold and the hot, the moist and the dry; but in these being [appropriately] mingled together. For it is as it were, a certain symmetry of these. ‘Thus too, in music, concord does not consist in expelling the sharp and the flat; but when these are co-harmonized, then concord is produced, and dissonance is exterminated.

In a similar manner, the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, being harmoniously mingled together, health is produced, and disease destroyed. But when anger and desire are coharmonized, the vices and the [other] passions are extirpated, and the virtues and manners are ingenerated. Deliberate choice however, in beautiful conduct, is the greatest peculiarity of the virtue of manners. For it Is pomabie rs use reason and power without virtue;

171 but it is not possible to use deliberate choice without it. For deliberate choice indicates the dignity of manners. Hence also, the reasoning power subduing by force anger and desire, produces continence and endurance. And again, when the reasoning power is violently dethroned by the irrational parts, then incontinence and effeminacy are produced.

Such dispositions however, of the soul as these, are half-perfect virtues, and half-perfect vices. For the reasoning ower of the soul is [according to its natural subsistence] in a healthy, but the irrational parts are in a diseased condition.

And so far indeed, as anger and desire are governed and led by the rational part of the soul, continence and endurance become virtues; but so far as this is effected by violence, and not voluntarily, they become vices. For it is necessary that virtue should perform such things as are fit, not with pain, but with pleasure.

Again, so far as anger and desire govern the reasoning power, effeminacy and incontinence are produced, which are certain vices. But so far as they gratify the passions with pain, knowing that they are erroneous, in consequence of the eye of the soul being sane,—so far as this is the case, they are not vices.

Hence, it is evident that virtue must necessarily perform what is fit voluntarily; that which is involuntary indeed, not being without pain and fear; and that which is voluntary, not subsisting without pleasure and delight.

By division also it will at the same time be found that this is the case. For knowledge and the perception of things, are the province of the rational part of the soul; but power pertains to the irrational part. For not to be able to resist pain, or to vanquish pleasure, is the peculiarity of the irrational part of the soul. But deliberate choice subsists in both these, viz. in the rational, and also in the irrational part. For it consists of dianoia and appetite; of which, dianoia indeed, pertains to the rational, but appetite to the

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