To this the poet[8] is a witness, who says:

"From the noble thou shalt be instructed in nobleness; but, and if
thou minglest with the base thou wilt destroy what wisdom thou
hast now";

And he[9] who says:

"But the good man has his hour of baseness as well as his hour of
virtue"--

to whose testimony I would add my own. For I see that it is impossible
to remember a long poem without practice and repetition; so is
forgetfulness of the words of instruction engendered in the heart that
has ceased to value them. With the words of warning fades the
recollection of the very condition of mind in which the soul yearned
after holiness; and once forgetting this, what wonder that the man
should let slip also the memory of virtue itself! Again I see that a
man who falls into habits of drunkenness or plunges headlong into
licentious love, loses his old power of practising the right and
abstaining from the wrong. Many a man who has found frugality easy
whilst passion was cold, no sooner falls in love than he loses the
faculty at once, and in his prodigal expenditure of riches he will no
longer withhold his hand from gains which in former days were too base
to invite his touch. Where then is the difficulty of supposing that a
man may be temperate to-day, and to-morrow the reverse; or that he who
once has had it in his power to act virtuously may not quite lose that
power?[10] To myself, at all events, it seems that all beautiful and
noble things are the result of constant practice and training; and
pre-eminently the virtue of temperance, seeing that in one and the