BOOK IV. XI. 31-35
Why, look you, nature has not made dirty even the animals which associate with man. A horse doesn't roll around in the mud, does he? or a highly bred dog? No, but the hog, and the miserable rotten geese, and worms, and spiders, the creatures farthest removed from association with human beings. Do you, then, who are a human being, wish to be not even an animal of the kind that associates with men, but rather a worm, or a spider?[1] Will you not take a bath somewhere, some time, in any form you please? Will you not wash yourself? If you don't care to bathe in hot water, then use cold. Will you not come to us clean, that your companions may be glad? What, and do you in such a state go with us even into the temples, where it is forbidden by custom to spit or blow the nose, yourself being nothing but a mass of spit and drivel?
Well, what then? Is anyone demanding that you beautify yourself? Heaven forbid! except you beautify that which is our true nature[2]—the reason, its judgements, its activities; but your body only so far as to keep it cleanly, only so far as to avoid giving offence. But if you hear that one ought not to wear scarlet, go bespatter your rough cloak with dung—or tear it to pieces![3] Yet where am I to get a rough cloak that looks well?—Man, you have water, wash it! 35See, here is a lovable young man, here an elderly man worthy to love and to be loved in return, to whom a person will entrust the education of his son, to whom daughters and young men will come, if it
- ↑ Of course a spider is not ordinarily a dirty animal in its personal habits; the most that can be said is that it is frequently found in quiet and hence dusty spots. Cf. note on § 1.
- ↑ i.e. a man really is not body which he has in common with other animals, but mind, reason, or moral purpose. Cf. such passages as I. 1, 23; III. 1, 25-6; 13, 17; IV. 5, 12 and 23; 7, 31 f.; and § 27 above.
- ↑ That is, the young man carries the precept to extremes, the command being ironical.
