The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel
all knowledge[8] from the brain. But he who is in good bodily plight
has large security. He runs no risk of incurring any such catastrophe
through ill-health at any rate; he has the expectation rather that a
good habit must procure consequences the opposite to those of an evil
habit;[9] and surely to this end there is nothing a man in his senses
would not undergo. . . . It is a base thing for a man to wax old in
careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what
manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily
strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is
guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth
 The Memorabilia |