pain.”  “How,” said Socrates, “you know not this difference between things voluntary and constrained, that he who suffers hunger because he is pleased to do so may likewise eat when he has a mind; and he who suffers thirst because he is willing may also drink when he pleases.  But it is not in the power of him who suffers either of them through constraint and necessity to relieve himself by eating and drinking the moment he desires it?  Besides, he that voluntarily embraceth any laborious exercise finds much comfort and content in the hope that animates him.  Thus the fatigues of hunting discourage not the hunters, because they hope to take the game they pursue.  And yet what they take, though they think it a reward for all their toil, is certainly of very little value.  Ought not they, then, who labour to gain the friendship of good men, or to overcome their enemies, or to render themselves capable of governing their families, and of serving their country, ought not these, I say, joyfully to undertake the trouble, and to rest content, conscious of the inward approbation of their own minds, and the regard and esteem of the virtuous?  And to convince you that it is good to impose labours on ourselves, it is a maxim among those who instruct youth that the exercises which are easily performed at the first attempt, and which we immediately take delight in, are not capable to form the body to that vigour and strength that is requisite in great undertakings, nor of imprinting in the soul any considerable knowledge:  but that those which require patience, application, labour, and assiduity, prepare the way to illustrious actions and great achievements.  This is the opinion of good judges, and of Hesiod in particular, who says somewhere—­

   ’To Vice, in crowded ranks, the course we steer,
   The road is smooth, and her abode is near;
   But Virtue’s heights are reached with sweat and pain,
   For thus did the immortal powers ordain. 
   A long and rough ascent leads to her gate,
   Nor, till the summit’s gained, doth toil abate.’

And to the same purpose Epicharmus:—­

   “The gods confer their blessings at the price
   Of labour—.”

Who remarks in another place—­

   “Thou son of sloth, avoid the charms of ease,
   Lest pain succeed—.”

“Of the same opinion is Prodicus, in the book he has written of the life of Hercules, where Virtue and Pleasure make their court to that hero under the appearance of two beautiful women.  His words, as near as I can remember, are as follows:—­

“‘When Hercules,’ says the moralist, ’had arrived at that part of his youth in which young men commonly choose for themselves, and show, by the result of their choice, whether they will, through the succeeding stages of their lives, enter into and walk in the path of virtue or that of vice, he went out into a solitary place fit for contemplation, there to consider with himself which of those two paths he should pursue.