On Listening to Lectures (intro-2)

The essay on listening to lectures was first delivered as a formal lecture, and afterwards written out for the benefit of the young Nicander, who had just assumed the toga virilis, and was about to take up the serious study of philosophy. One can see in Terence, Andria, i. 1. 24, for example, how the young men of good family, suddenly released from the care of tutors by assuming the toga virilis, conventionally took up a more or less serious avocation. Some took to horses or hunting, while others went on to the higher studies.

It must be quite evident that this essay is, in a way, a supplement and corollary to the preceding essay on the study of poetry. The former is concerned with the young, the latter with the more mature who are undertaking serious study, and particularly the study of philosophy, in which Plutarch was intensely interested. But it is quite clear that the lectures to which he refers dealt with many other subjects besides philosophy.

The essay has an astonishingly modern tone. The different types of students — the diffident student, the lazy student, the contemptuous student, the over-enthusiastic student who makes a nuisance of himself, the over-confident student who likes to ask questions to show off his own scrappy knowledge,

the student who has no appreciation of his privilege in hearing a great scholar—all these are portrayed in a thoroughly realistic manner.

Stress is laid on the great contrast between the scholar (particularly the philosopher) and the popular lecturer (the sophist). Then as now, it seems, people were not always willing to listen patiently to the scholar, but more often inclined to resort to lectures of the lighter and more entertaining sort. In this matter, as in many others, Plutarch marks the distinction of character—the character of the lecturer, and the effect of the lecture on the character of the hearer. The sophists, having no particular character themselves and being below the general average of mankind, can do little or nothing to improve the character of their hearers, but, on the other hand, practically everything that the scholar says or does has its value for the upbuilding of character if only one have the ability to profit by it.

Proper behaviour in the lecture-room is the main theme of the essay. No lecture can be so bad that it contains nothing good, and while the lecture itself must be subjected to unsparing criticism, the lecturer must always be treated with kindly consideration, and must not be disturbed by any improper behaviour on the part of his audience.

It is worth while to compare Pliny’s Letters, vi. 17 and i. 13 for the record of certain improprieties committed by audiences in Rome. On the general subject of higher education and the wide diffusion of knowledge at this time and later, reference may be made to W. W. Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens,

and J. W. H. Walden, The Universities of Ancient Greece (New York, 1909).

In the catalogue of Lamprias, in which this essay is No. 102, the title is given as Περὶ τοῦ ἀκούειν τῶν φιλοσόφον, On Listening to the Lectures of Philosophers, but it is probable that this title is merely explanatory, for Plutarch himself uses ἀκούειν alone in this sense in the very first line of the essay.

The discourse which I gave on the subject of listening to lectures I have written out and sent to you, my dear Nicander, so that you may know how rightly to listen to the voice of persuasion, now that you are no longer subject to authority, having assumed the garb of a man. Now absence of control, which some of the young men, for want of education, think to be freedom, establishes the sway of a set of masters, harsher than the teachers and attendants of childhood, in the form of the desires, which are now, as it were, unchained. And just as Herodotus [*] says that women put off their modesty along with their undergarments, so some of our young men, as soon as they lay aside the garb of childhood, lay aside also their sense of modesty and fear, and, undoing the habit that invests them, straightway become full of unruliness. But you have often heard that to follow God and to obey reason are the same tiling, and so I ask you to believe that in persons of good sense the passing from childhood to manhood is not a casting off of control, but a recasting of the controlling agent, since instead of some hired person or slave purchased with money they now take as the divine guide of their life reason, whose followers alone may deservedly be considered free. For they alone, having learned to wish for what they

ought, live as they wish; but in untrained and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble, and changing one’s mind many times involves but little freedom of will.

We may find a comparison in the case of newly naturalized citizens; those among them who were alien born and perfect strangers find fault with many of the things that are done, and are discontented; whereas those who come from the class of resident aliens, having been brought up under our laws and grown to be well acquainted with them, have no difficulty in accepting what devolves upon them and are content. And so you, who have been brought up for a long time in contact with philosophy, and have from the beginning been accustomed to philosophic reasoning as an ingredient in every portion of early instruction and information, ought to feel like an old friend and familiar when you come to philosophy, which alone can array young men in the manly and truly perfect adornment that comes from reason.

I think you may not find unwelcome some preliminary remarks about the sense of hearing, which Theophrastus [*] asserts is the most emotional of all the senses. For nothing which can be seen or tasted or touched brings on such distractions, confusions, and excitements, as take possession of the soul when certain crashing, clashing, and roaring noises assail the hearing. Yet this sense is more rational than emotional. For while many places and parts of the body make way for vice to enter through them and fasten itself upon the soul, virtue’s only hold upon the young is afforded by the ears, if they be uncontaminated and kept from the outset unspoiled by

flattery and untouched by vile words. For this reason Xenocrates [*] advised putting ear-protectors on children rather than on athletes, on the ground that the latter have only their ears disfigured by the blows they receive, while the former have their characters disfigured by the words they hear; not that he would thus court heedlessness or deafness, but he advises vigilance against vile words, until such time as other words, of good sort, fostered in the character by philosophy, should, like watchmen, have taken under their charge the post chiefly exposed to influence and persuasion. And Bias [*] of old, on receiving orders to send to Amasis the portion of the sacrificial animal which was at the same time the best and the worst, cut out the tongue and sent it to him, on the ground that speech contains both injuries and benefits in the largest measure. Most people in bestowing an affectionate kiss on little children not only take hold of the children by the ears but bid the children to do the same by them, thus insinuating in a playful way that they must love most those who confer benefit through the ears. For surely the fact is plain, that the young man who is debarred from hearing all instruction and gets no taste of speech not only remains wholly unfruitful and makes no growth towards virtue, but may also be perverted towards vice, and the product of his mind, like that of a fallow and untilled piece of ground, will be a plentiful crop of wild oats. For if the impulses towards pleasure and the feelings of suspicion towards hard work (which are not of external origin nor imported products of the spoken word, but indigenous sources, as it were, of pestilent emotions and disorders without number) be allowed to continue unconstrained along their natural channels, and if they be not either removed or diverted another way through the agency of goodly discourse, thus putting the natural endowments in a fit condition, there is not one of the wild beasts but would be found more civilized than man. [*]