Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/232

210 and safety, but also for a mutual and reciprocal help, and not for to quarrel and fight one with another. As for the hands, when she parted them into many fingers, and those of unequal length and bigness, she hath made them of all other organical parts the most proper artificious and workmanlike instruments; insomuch as that ancient philosopher Anaxagoras ascribed the very cause of man's wisdom and understanding unto the hands. Howbeit, the contrary unto this should seem rather to be true; for man was not the wisest of all other living creatures in regard of his hands, but because by nature being endued with reason, given to be witty and capable of arts and sciences, he was likewise naturally furnished with such instruments as these. Moreover, this is well known unto every man, that nature hath formed of one and the same seed, as of one principle of life, two, three, and more brethren; not to the end that they should be at debate and variance, but that being apart and asunder, they might the better and more commodiously help one another. For those men with three bodies and a hundred arms apiece, which the poets describe unto us (if ever there were any such), being joined and grown together in all their parts, were not able to do anything at all when they were parted asunder, or as it were, without themselves: which brethren can do well enough, namely, dwell and keep within house and go abroad together, meddle in affairs of state, exercise husbandry and tillage one with another, in case they preserve and keep well that principle of amity and benevolence which nature hath given them. For otherwise they should (I suppose) nothing differ from those feet which are ready to trip or supplant one another, and cause them to catch a fall: or they should resemble those hands and fingers which enfolded and clasp one another untowardly against the course of nature. But rather according as in one and the same body, the cold, the hot, the dry, and the moist, participating likewise in one and the same nature and nourishment, if they do accord and agree well together, engender an excellent temperature and most pleasant harmony, to wit, the health of the body, without which, neither all the wealth of the world, as men say,

have any pleasure, grace or profit: but in case these principal elements of our life covet to have more than their just proportion, and thereupon break out into a kind of civil sedition, seeking one to surcrease and overgrow another, soon there