Philosophies for Sale (20-21)

Call another, the one over there with the cropped head, the dismal fellow from the Porch.

Quite right; at all events it looks as if the men who frequent the public square were waiting for him in great numbers.[*] I sell virtue itself, the most perfect of philosophies. Who wants to be the only one to know everything?

What do you mean by that?

That he is the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is.[*]

Then he is the only cook,—yes and the only tanner or carpenter, and so forth?

So it appears.

Come here, my good fellow, and tell your buyer what you are like, and first of all whether you are not displeased with being sold and living in slavery?

Not at all, for these things are not in our control, and all that is not in our control is immaterial.

I don’t understand what you mean by this.

What, you do not understand that of such things some are “approved,” and some, to the contrary, “disapproved”’?[*]

Even now I do not understand.

Of course not, for you are not familiar with our vocabulary and have not the faculty of forming concepts; but a scholar who has mastered the science of logic knows not only this, but what predicaments and bye-predicaments are, and how they differ from each other.[*]

In the name of wisdom, don’t begrudge telling me

Indeed, I do not begrudge it at all. If a man who is lame dashes his lame foot against a stone and receives an unlooked-for injury, he was already in a predicament, of course, with his lameness, and with his injury he gets into a bye-predicament too.