according to Pythagoras, upon virtue and upon truth.[1] The virtue, that he acquires by purification, tempers and directs the passions; the truth, which he attains by his union with the Being of beings, dissipates the darkness with which his intelligence is obsessed; and both of them, acting jointly in him, give him the divine form, according as he is disposed to receive it, and guide him to supreme felicity.[2] But how difficult to obtain this desired goal!
32. For few know happiness: playthings of the passions, Hither, thither tossed by adverse waves, Upon a shoreless sea, they blinded roll, Unable to resist or to the tempest yield.
Lysis shows in these lines what are the greatest obstacles
to the happiness of man. They are the passions: not the
passions in themselves, but the evil effects that they produce
by the disordered movement that the understanding allows
them to take. It is to this that the attention must be directed
so that one should not fall into the error of the Stoics.
Pythagoras, as I have said, did not command his disciples
to destroy their passions, but to moderate their ardour, and
to guide them well. "The passions," said this philosopher,
"are given to be aids to reason; it is necessary that they be
its servants and not its masters." This is a truth that the
Platonists and even the Peripatetics have recognized, by
the evidence of Hierocles.[3] Thus Pythagoras regarded the
passions as instruments of which the understanding makes
use in raising the intellectual edifice. A man utterly deprived
of them would resemble a mass inert and immovable
in the course of life; it is true that he might be able not to
become depraved, but then he could not enjoy his noblest
advantage, which is perfectibility. Reason is established
in the understanding to hold sway over the passions; it must
