– On Restraining Your Will –

long remembered as being particularly ambitious for probity. Nowadays men are so conditioned to bustle and ostentation that we have lost the feel of goodness, moderation, even-temper, steadfastness and other such quiet and unpretentious qualities; rough objects make themselves felt: smooth ones can be handled without sensation. Illness is felt: good health, little or not at all; neither do we feel things which flatter us, compared with those which batter us.

If we postpone something which could be done in the council-chamber until it is done in the marketsquare, keeping back till noon something which could have been finished the night before, or if we are anxious to do personally something which a colleague could have done just as well, then we are acting for the sake of our own reputation and for private advantage, not for the Good. (That is what some barber-surgeons used to do in ancient Greece, performing their operations on a daïs in view of passers-by so as to enlarge their practices and the number of patients.) They think that good regulations can only be heard when announced with a fanfare.

Ambition is not a vice fit for little fellows or for enterprises such as ours. Alexander was told: ‘Your father will leave you wide dominions, peaceful and secure.’ But that lad wanted to rival his father’s victorious and righteous government. He had no wish to enjoy ruling the entire world undemandingly and peacefully. (Alcibiades in Plato says he prefers to die young as a

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