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Essays and Miscellanies

BOOK IV
6/38

We have often heard him declare that it is the quality that makes meat hard to be digested; that to mix many things together is hurtful, and begets unnatural qualities; and that every man should take that which by experience he finds most agreeable to his temper.
Now if nothing is by its own nature hard to be digested, but it is the quantity that disturbs and corrupts, I think we have still greater reason to forbear that variety with which Philo's cook, as it were in opposition to his master's practice, would draw us on to surfeits and diseases.

For by the different sorts of food and new ways of dressing, he still keeps up the unwearied appetite, and leads it from one dish to another, till tasting of everything we take more than is sufficient and enough; as Hypsipyle's foster-son, Who, in a garden placed, plucked up the flowers, One after one, and spent delightful hours; But still his greedy appetite goes on, And still he plucked till all the flowers were gone.
(From the "Hypsipyle" of Euripides, Frag.

754.) But more, methinks, Socrates is here to be remembered, who adviseth us to forbear those junkets which provoke those that are not hungry to eat; as if by this he cautioned us to fly variety of meats.

For it is variety that in everything draws us on to use more than bare necessity requires.
This is manifest in all sorts of pleasures, either of the eye, ear, or touch; for it still proposeth new provocatives; but in simple pleasures, and such as are confined to one sort, the temptation never carries us beyond nature's wants.

In short, in my opinion, we should more patie musician praise a disagreeing variety of notes, or a perfumer mixed ointments, than a physician commend the variety of dishes; for certainly such changes and turnings as must necessarily ensue will force us out of the right way of health.
Philinus having ended his discourse, Marcion said: In my opinion, not only those that separate profit from honesty are obnoxious to Socrates's curse, but those also that separate pleasure from health, as if it were its enemy and opposite, and not its great friend and promoter.


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