Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/34

14 an exaggeration or a deficiency of these virtues. The nutritive and the imaginative powers have neither vices nor virtues.

The diseases of the soul are described in Chapter III. The ancient philosophers laid down the dictum that the soul, like the body, can be healthy or sick. A healthy soul is in such a condition that only good and honorable deeds flow from it. The opposite is true of a diseased soul. Just as the physically sick desire things that are bad for them, but which they consider good, so do those whose souls are ill seek the bad and the evil, thinking that they are good. Furthermore, just as those whose bodies are diseased consult a physician and take medicines that are unpleasant to the taste in order that they may be restored to a healthy condition, so must the morally ill consult the wise men, who are the physicians of the soul , and ascertain from them what are the bad and what are the good deeds. They must follow the advice of the soul-physicians, even though what they prescribe be distasteful. If a person is physically ill, and does not consult a physician, his end will be premature death, and, likewise, one morally ill, who does not seek the advice of the sages, will experience a moral death.

Chapter IV deals with the cure of the diseases of the soul. In agreement with Aristotle, Maimonides declares that actions are good when they follow a medium course between two extremes which are both bad. Virtues are conditions of the soul and characteristics which are midway between two states, one of which is excessive and the other deficient. Thus, generosity is the mean between sordidness and extravagance ; courage, the mean between recklessness  and cowardice ; humility , that between haughtiness  and self-abasement , and so forth. People often consider one or the other extreme a virtue, as when they praise the reckless man as being brave, or the lazy as being contented. To cure a person who is morally unsound, that is who performs deeds which go to the one or the other extreme, he should be made to practise the opposite extreme until his original fault has been remedied.