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Ekstravaganta problēma: "Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic ...? [..] the melancholic are usually lustful. For sexual excitement is due to breath. The penis proves this, as it quickly increases from small to large by inflation. [..] those with whom this temperament exists by nature, at once develop various types of character, differing according to their different temperaments ; those for instance in whom the bile is considerable and cold become sluggish and stupid, while those with whom it is excessive and hot become mad, clever or amorous and easily moved to passion and desire, and some become more talkative. But many, because this heat is near to the seat of the mind, are affected by the diseases of madness or frenzy, which accounts for the Sibyls, soothsayers, and all inspired persons, when their condition is due not to disease but to a natural mixture. Maracus, the Syracusan, was an even better poet when he was mad. But those with whom the excessive heat has sunk to a moderate amount are melancholic, though more intelligent and less eccentric, but they are superior to the rest of the world in many ways, some in education, some in the arts and others again in statesmanship."
Current Music: Aristotelis (?) |