Letter 894

To Philoumenos the Monk. We reckon that the divine achievements have their good repute and their praise not in their having once been accomplished, but in their being always practiced and carried into effect. ---Letter 268--- The charioteer is the mind: it guides one horse straight, reins back another, and reaches a third with the lash; for of the horses one is fierce and swift, another sluggish, and another hot-tempered, until the mind produces in them all a single concerted breath toward the race. Therefore, when the hot element abounds in the season of youth, you must not devise additions to its burning; nor, when things have been chilled by passion or by the passage of time, must you let the cooling and withering elements abound; so that neither may the excess increase nor the deficiency fall short. Rather, by cutting away whatever is immoderate in each, one will give attention to supplying what is lacking, and beyond that will guard against the body's uselessness in either direction, so as neither, through excessive good condition, to train up for oneself an unruly and unmanageable flesh, nor, through immoderate ill treatment, to render it sickly and slack and feeble for the necessary service. This is the most perfect aim of self-control [enkrateia]: not to look to the body's ill treatment and its dissolution and its complete uselessness, but to the readiness of the soul's movements.

Οὐκ ἐν τῷ πεπράχθαι ποτέ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῷ ἀεὶ πράττεσθαι, καὶ ἐνεργεῖσθαι τὰ θεῖα κατορθώματα τὴν εὐφημίαν ἔχειν, καὶ τὸν ἔπαινον λογιζόμεθα. ---LETTER ΣΞΗ΄--- Ὁ ἡνίοχος; νοῦς μὲν εὐθύνει τὴν ἵππων, τὸν δὲ ἀνακόπτει, τὸν δὲ καθικνεῖται διὰ τῆς μάστιγος· ἐπειδὴ τῶν ἵππων ὁ μὲν γοργὸς καὶ ὀξύς, ὁ δὲ βραδύς, ὁ δὲ θερμός· μέχρις ἂν τοῖσι πᾶσι σύμπνοιαν πρὸς τὸν δρόμον ἐμποίηση. Οὐκοῦν οὔτε πλεονάζοντι τῷ θερμῷ κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν τῆς νέοτητος, τὰς τῆς πυρώσεως προσθήκας ἐπινοήσης, οὔτε κατεψυγμένα διὰ πάθος, ἢ χρόνον τὰ ψύχοντα, καὶ καταμαραίνοντα πλεονάσῃ· ἵνα μήτε τὸ πολὺ πλεονάσῃ, μήτε τὸ ὀλίγον ἐλαττονήσῃ· ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἄμετρον περικόπτων τῆς τοῦ ἐνδέοντος προσθήκης ἐπιμελήσεται, καὶ μετὰ τοσοῦτον τῆς ἐφ᾽ ἑκάτερα τοῦ σώματος ἀχρηστίας φυλάξεται, ὡς μήτε δι᾽ ὑπερβαλούσης εὐπαθείας ἄτακτον ἑαυτῷ, καὶ δυσήνιον ἐπασκήσῃ τὴν σάρκα, μήτε διὰ τῆς ἀμέτρου κακοπαθείας, νοσώδη, καὶ λελυμένην, καὶ ἄτονον πρὸς τὴν ἀναγκαίαν ὑπ-ηρεσίαν κατασκευάσῃ. Οὗτος ὁ τελειώτατος τῆς ἐγκρατείας σκοπός, οὐ τὸ βλέπειν πρὸς τὴν τοῦ σώματος κακοπάθειαν, καὶ κατάλυσιν, καὶ παντελῆ ἀχρείωσιν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν τῶν ψυχικῶν κινημάτων εὔκο-λιαν.