manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of every vice, devising one
shameless pleasure after another, insensibly plunges into unmentionable
debauchery, experienced in every form of brutal lust. "Whereas, if each
would abide by the laws prescribed by Providence, we should be satisfied
with intercourse with women, and our lives would be undefiled by shameful
practices. Consider the animals, which cannot corrupt by innate
viciousness, how they observe the law of Nature in all its purity.
He-lions do not lust after he-lions, but, in due season, passion excites
them towards the females of their species: the bull that rules the herd
mounts cows, and the ram fills the whole flock of ewes with the seed of
generation. Again, boars mate with sows, he-wolves with shewolves,
neither the birds that fly through the air, nor the fish that inhabit the
deep, or any living creatures upon earth desire male intercourse, but
amongst them the laws of Nature remain unbroken. But you men, who boast
idly of your wisdom, but are in reality worthless brutes, what strange
disease provokes you to outrage one another unnaturally? What blind
folly fills your minds, that you commit the two-fold error of avoiding
what you should pursue, and pursuing what you should avoid? If each and
all were to pursue such evil courses, the race of human beings would
become extinct on earth. And here comes in that wonderful Socratic
argument, whereby the minds of boys, as yet unable to reason clearly, are
deceived, for a ripe intellect could not be misled. These followers of
Socrates pretend to love the soul alone, and, being ashamed to profess
love for the person, call themselves lovers of virtue, whereat I have
often been moved to laughter. How comes it, O grave philosophers, that
you hold in such slight regard a man who, during a long life, has given
proofs of merit, and of that virtue which old age and white hairs become?
How is it that the affections of the philosophers are all in a flutter
after the young; who cannot yet make up their minds which path of life to
take? Is there a law, then, that all ugliness is to be condemned as