Galen’s theoretical ethics is closely related to his Platonist conception of the soul. Central is the view that rational and non-rational psychic capacities must be treated separately, both in terms of early discipline and education and in terms of our conceptualization and treatment of their pathologies. Virtues—although a full or systematic account of these is elusive—may be understood, Platonically, as consisting in the proper functioning of each soul part, and in the proper internal relationship of the parts within the whole. The non-rational (alogon), if not subject to the discipline of the rational, will lead the soul into pathos (“affection” or “passion”), causing actions of uncontrolled greed, lustfulness or anger. This part is not accessible to rational discourse, but must rather be subjected to a process of training and habituation which will make its appetites appropriate. Within the non-rational, however, there is the further division into desiderative (epithumētikon) and spirited (thumoeides); although non-rational (and in undisciplined cases the cause of uncontrolled rage), the latter also has an instinctive reaction of indignation against wrongdoing and shameful behaviour, and can so be made the ally of the rational in carrying out the discipline of the desiderative part. (This complex relationship within the tripartite soul enables—for Galen as for Plato—an account of how certain non-rational drives, in particular reactions of shame and indignation, may be in conflict with other non-rational drives, e.g., lust or greed.)