18.  Place and time and age and season and the like are the subjects of a physician’s scrutiny; he will prescribe medicines and diet, and guard against things injurious, that the desires of the sick may not be a hindrance to his art.  Sometimes, and in certain cases, he will make use of the cautery or the knife or the severer remedies; but none of these, laborious and hard as they may seem, is so difficult as the diagnosis and cure of our habits, passions, lives, wills, and whatever else is within us, by banishing from our compound nature everything brutal and fierce, and introducing and establishing in their stead what is gentle and dear to God, and arbitrating fairly between soul and body; not allowing the superior to be overpowered by the inferior, which would be the greatest injustice; but subjecting to the ruling and leading power that which naturally takes the second place:  as indeed the divine law enjoins, which is most excellently imposed on His whole creation, whether visible or beyond our ken.

ΙΗʹ. Χώρας, καὶ καιροὺς, καὶ ἡλικίας, καὶ ὥρας, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ὁ ἰατρὸς ἐπισκέψεται: φαρμακεύσει τε καὶ διαιτήσει, καὶ τηρήσει τὰ βλαβερὰ, ὡς ἂν μὴ ἀντιβῆναι τῇ τέχνῃ τὰς τῆς ἀῤῥωστίας ἐπιθυμίας: καί που καὶ καύσεσι, καὶ τομαῖς, καὶ τοῖς αὐστηροτέροις τῆς θεραπείας, ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ ἐφ' ὧν χρήσεται: ὧν οὔπω τοσοῦτον οὐδὲν, κἂν ἐπίπονα σφόδρα καὶ χαλεπὰ φαίνηται, ὅσον ἤθη, καὶ πάθη, καὶ βίους, καὶ προαιρέσεις, καὶ εἴ τι ἄλλο τοιοῦτο τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν, κατοπτεῦσαί τε καὶ ἰατρεῦσαι, καὶ πᾶν ὅσον θηριῶδες καὶ ἄγριον ἐξορίσαντας τῆς συζυγίας τῆς ἡμετέρας, πᾶν ὅσον ἥμερον καὶ Θεῷ φίλον ἀντεισαγαγεῖν τε καὶ βεβαιώσασθαι, καὶ βραβεῦσαι δικαίως ψυχῇ τε καὶ σώματι: μὴ τῷ χείρονι τὸ κρεῖττον δυναστεύεσθαι συγχωρήσαντας, ἥπερ ἀδικιῶν ἡ μεγίστη: τῷ δὲ ἄρχοντι καὶ ἡγεμονικῷ τὸ τῇ φύσει δεύτερον ὑποτάξαντας: ὥσπερ δὴ νόμος θεῖος, καὶ κάλλιστα ἔχων ἐπὶ πάσης αὐτοῦ τῆς κτίσεως, ὅση τε ὁρατὴ, καὶ ὅση ὑπὲρ τὴν αἴσθησιν.