On Listening to Lectures (9)

Let the young man, then, find pleasure when

he finds profit from a discourse; but he should not hold that the pleasure derived from the lecture is an end in itself, nor would I have him hum a merry note or show a jovial face as he leaves the philosopher’s school, any more than he should seek to be sprinkled with perfume when he needs a fomentation and a hot poultice; but he should feel grateful if by pungent discourse someone has cleansed his mind teeming with fogginess and dullness, as a beehive is cleared by smoke. For even though it is quite right for a speaker not to be altogether neglectful of pleasantness and persuasion in his style, yet the young man should make least concern of this, at any rate at first. Afterwards no doubt he may have an eye to that; for just as those who drink, after they have quenched their thirst, begin then to observe the ornamentation of the drinking-cups and to turn them about, so the young man, when he is well replenished with doctrines and has some respite, may be allowed to inspect the style to see whether it contains anything elegant and exquisite. But he who at the very outset does not stick to the subject matter, but insists that the style shall be pure Attic and severely plain, is like the man who is unwilling to swallow an antidote for a poison unless the cup be of the finest Attic ware, or unwilling to put on an overcoat in winter unless the wool be from Attic sheep, but must needs sit still and inactive, with a delicate thin jacket of Lysias’s language cast over him. Indeed, this sort of unhealthiness has produced much barrenness of mind and of good sense, much foolery and bibble-babble in the schools, since younger men do not keep in view the life, the actions, and the public conduct of a man who follows philosophy, but rate as matters for commendation points of style and phrasing, and a fine delivery, while as for what is being delivered, whether it be useful or useless, whether essential or empty and superfluous, they neither understand nor wish to inquire.