Book 5
1.9
Why Cyrus, said the young man breakingAraspas maintains that love is a matter of will into a laugh, you do not think, do you, that human beauty is able to compel a man against his will to act contrary to his own best interests? Why, said he, if that were a law of nature, it would compel us all alike.
1.10
Do you observe, said he, how fire burns all alike? That is its nature. But of beautiful things we love some and some we do not; and one loves one, another another; for it is a matter of free will, and each one loves what he pleases. For example, a brother does not fall in love with his sister, but somebody else falls in love with her; neither does a father fall in love with his daughter, but somebody else does; for fear of God and the law of the land are sufficient to prevent such love.
1.11
But, he went on, if a law should be passed forbidding those who did not eat to be hungry, those who did not drink to be thirsty, forbidding people to be cold in winter or hot in summer, no such law could ever bring men to obey its provisions, for they are so constituted by nature as to be subject to the control of such circumstances. But love is a matter of free will; at any rate, every one loves what suits his taste, as he does his clothes or shoes.
