Plutarch Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores 4

[4] As therefore that storm which hinders a ship from entering into the port is more dangerous than that which suffers it not to sail; so the tempests of the soul are more difficult, which permit not a man to restrain himself, nor to settle his disturbed reason, so that, being without pilot or cables, he is through tumult and deceit hurried headlong by rash and pernicious courses, till he falls into some terrible shipwreck, where he casts away his life. So that also for these reasons it is worse to be sick in the soul than body; for to the one it happens only to suffer, but to the other both to suffer and do amiss. And what need is there to reckon up the greater number of our passions? This very nick of time is a sufficient remembrance. Do you see this vast and promiscuous multitude, here crowding and thrusting each other about the tribunal and forum? They are not assembled to sacrifice to their country Gods, nor to participate together in the sacred ceremonies. They are not come to offer up to Jupiter Ascraeus the first of the Lydian fruits, nor to celebrate the solemnities of Bacchus by the observance of festival nights and common revellings; but a mighty pestilence, as it were by yearly revolutions irritating Asia, drives them hither to manage their processes and suits at law; and a multitude of affairs, as it were of impetuous torrents, fall into one market-place, where they grow hot and are eagerly prosecuted both by those that destroy and by those that are destroyed. Of what fevers, of what agues, are these the effects? What lodgements, what irruptions, what distemperature of heat, what superfusion of humors produces them? Should you ask every suit at law as if it were a man, whence it had its original, whence it proceeded; you would find, that audacious anger generated one, furious obstinacy another, and unjust covetousness a third...