How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue (6-8)

Since, however, students of philosophy are not of themselves the only source of the dejecting and reactionary influences, which, as the result of weakness, affect them, but since also the sober advice of friends and the bitter criticisms of the unfriendly, in the form of scoffing and joking, cause a warping and weakening of purpose, and have even made some persons renounce philosophy altogether, no slight indication of progress would be shown by gentleness of demeanour in the face of such criticisms, and by not being disturbed or irritated by those who name this or that acquaintance of about the same age, and tell how he is prospering at Court, or getting a big dower at marriage, or going down to the Forum, attended by a great crowd, to stand for some office or to advocate some cause. For plainly the man who is not disconcerted or affected under such circumstances is one on whom philosophy has got a right hold. For to cease emulating what the great majority admire is impossible, except for those who have acquired the faculty of admiring virtue. For to confront the world boldly is with some people possible only under the influence of anger or mental derangement; but to contemn actions which the world admires is quite impossible without real and solid wisdom. This is the reason why they compare their own state with the other and vaunt themselves over it, as does Solon: [*]

We will not bargain with them ever to take in exchange All of their wealth for our virtue, since virtue is ever abiding; Riches are held for a time here or there among men.

Diogenes, too, used to compare his moving from Corinth to Athens, and from Athens to Corinth again, with the sojourns of the Persian king at Susa in the spring, at Babylon in the winter, and in Media in the summer. So too Agesilaus remarked in regard to the Great King, In what is he greater than I, unless he be more just? And Aristotle, writing to Antipater about Alexander, said that it was not Alexander alone who had the right to be proud because he held sway over many, but any man had just as good a right, if he had the correct ideas about God. [*] And Zeno, seeing that Theophrastus was admired for having many pupils, said, It is true his chorus is larger, but mine is more harmonious.

Whenever, then, by thus setting the advantages of virtue over against merely external advantages, you have succeeded in dispelling all envy and jealousy and the things that vex and depress many beginners in philosophy, you are thus again making clear to yourself in a significant way the reality of your progress. Of no slight significance either is the change which occurs in one’s discourse. For practically all beginners in philosophy are more inclined to pursue those forms of discourse which make for repute; some of these beginners, like birds, are led by their flightiness and ambition to alight on the resplendent heights of the Natural Sciences; while others, like puppies, delighting to pull and tear, as Plato puts it, [*] go in for the disputations, knotty problems, and quibbles; but the majority enter a course in Logic and Argumentation, where they straightway stock themselves up for the practice of sophistry; while a few go about making a collection of apophthegms and anecdotes, but, as Anacharsis said of the Greeks that he never saw them put their money to any use

save to count it, so these persons are for ever foolishly taking account and inventory of their literary stock, but they lay up nothing else which would be to their own profit. Quite in place here is Antiphanes’ [*] story, which somebody has recounted and applied to Plato’s close acquaintances. Antiphanes said humorously that in a certain city words congealed with the cold the moment they were spoken, and later, as they thawed out, people heard in the summer what they had said to one another in the winter; it was the same way, he asserted, with what was said by Plato to men still in their youth; not until long afterwards, if ever, did most of them come to perceive the meaning, when they had become old men. And this is the general experience with philosophy as a whole until the judgement acquires a healthy stability, and begins to find itself in accord with principles productive of character and breadth of mind, and to look for the kind of discourse whose footprints, in the words of Aesop, [*] are turned toward us rather than away from us. For as Sophocles said, that only after handling with a light touch the turgidity of Aeschylus and next his harshness and artificiality in composition, did he, as a third step, change the character of the language, which has the most to do with moral character and goodness, so, in the same way, when students of philosophy pass from the ostentatious and artificial to the kind of discourse which deals with character and feeling they begin to make real and unaffected progress.

Observe, then, not only when you are perusing the writings of philosophers and listening to

their discourses, whether you do not give more attention to the mere language than to the subject matter, and whether you are not more on the alert for passages which involve something difficult and odd rather than for those which convey something useful, substantial, and beneficial; moreover, when you are busying yourself with poems and history, you must watch yourself to see whether anything escapes you among the ideas which are suitably expressed and tend to improvement of character or alleviation of emotion. For as Simonides [*] says of the bee that it flits among the flowers,

Making the yellow honey its care,

while the rest of the world contents itself with their colour and fragrance, getting nothing else from them, so, while the rest of the world ranges amid poems for the sake of pleasure or diversion, if a man, through his own initiative, finds and collects something worth while, it is reasonable to expect that he at last, from force of habit and fondness for what is beautiful and appropriate, has made himself capable of appreciating it. In the case, for example, of persons who make use of Plato and Xenophon for their language, and gather therefrom nothing else but the purity of the Attic style, like dew and bloom, what can you say of them, save that they are the sort of persons that content themselves with the sweet odour and bouquet of medicines, but have no desire for their sedative and purgative virtues, nor the power to discern them ? But those who are making still more and more progress are always able to derive benefit, not only from what is said, but also from what is seen and done, and to gather what is appropriate and useful therefrom. Examples are found in the stories told of Aeschylus and of others like him. Aeschylus at the Isthmian games was watching a boxing-match, and when one of the men was hit the crowd in the theatre burst into a roar. Aeschylus nudged Ion of Chios, and said, You see what a thing training is; the man who is hit says nothing; it is the spectators who shout. [*] Brasidas caught a mouse among some dried figs, got bitten, and let it go; thereupon he said to himself, Heavens, there is nothing so small or weak that it will not save its life if it has courage to defend itself. [*] Diogenes [*] at the first sight of a man drinking from his hands took his cup from his wallet and threw it away. Thus attention and intense application makes persons perceptive and receptive of anything that conduces to virtue, from whatever source it come. This is more apt to be the case if they combine theory with practice, not only, as Thucydides [*] said, carrying on their practice amid dangers, but also when confronted by pleasures or contentions, and when busy over lawsuits and pleadings at court and the conduct of public offices, thus, as it were, giving themselves a demonstration of their convictions, or rather arriving at their convictions by putting them to a practical test; whereas, those who are still studying, and busily looking to see what they can get from philosophy which they can straightway haul out for display in the Forum, or at a gathering of young men, or at an evening party at Court, ought not to be thought to practise philosophy any more than apothecaries are to be thought to practise medicine; or rather, a charlatan of this sort does not differ at all from the bird described by Homer, [*] for whatever he gets he proffers through the mouth to his pupils as to an unfledged brood,

Badly, however, it goes with himself,

if he does not devote to his own advantage, or assimilate at all, anything of what he receives.