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But that every man has within himself the storerooms of tranquillity and discontent, and that the jars
containing blessings and evils are not stored ‘on the
threshold of Zeus,’
1 but are in the soul, is made
plain by the differences in men's passions. For the
foolish overlook and neglect good things even when
they are present, because their thoughts are ever
intent upon the future, but the wise by remembrance
[p. 217]
make even those benefits that are no longer at hand
to be vividly existent for themselves. For the
present good, which allows us to touch it but for the
smallest portion of time and then eludes our perception, seems to fools to have no further reference
to us or to belong to us at all ; but like that painting
of a man2 twisting rope in Hades, who permits a
donkey grazing near by to eat it up as he plaits it, so
insensible and thankless forgetfulness steals upon the
multitude and takes possession of them, consuming
every action and success, every pleasant moment of
leisure and companionship and enjoyment; it does
not allow life to become unified, when past is interwoven with present, but separating yesterday, as
though it were different, from to-day, and to-morrow
likewise, as though it were not the same as to-day,
forgetfulness straightway makes every event to have
never happened because it is never recalled. For
those who in the Schools do away with growth and
increase on the ground that Being is in a continual
flux, in theory make each of us a series of persons
different from oneself3; so those who do not preserve or recall by memory former events, but allow
them to flow away, actually make themselves deficient and empty each day and dependent upon the
morrow, as though what had happened last year and
yesterday and the day before had no relation to
them nor had happened to them at all.
1 Cf. Homer, Il., xxiv. 527; Moralia, 24 b and the note, 105 c and the note, 600 c; Plato, Republic, 379 d; Siefert, op. cit., pp. 37 f. and the notes.
2 Oenus or ‘Sloth’; the painting was by Polygnotus in the Lesche at Delphi: Pausanias, x. 29. 1. Cf. also Propertius, iv. 3. 21-22: dignior obliquo funem qui torqueat Oeno, | aeternusque tuam pascat, aselle, famem; Diodorus, i. 97; Pliny, Natural History, xxxv. 137.
3 Cf. Moralia, 392 d, 559 b.