FullReads

“I never can mistake the burning eye
Of the young woman that has once known man,”[280]

so to the young man who has tasted of true progress in philosophy the following lines of Sappho are applicable, “My tongue cleaves to the roof of my month, and a fire courses all over my lean body,” and his eye will be gentle and mild, and you would desire to hear him speak. For as those who are initiated come together at first with confusion and noise and jostle one another, but when the mysteries are being performed and exhibited, they give their attention with awe and silence, so also at the commencement of philosophy you will see round its doors much confusion and assurance and prating, some rudely and violently jostling their way to reputation, but he who once enters in, and sees the great light, as when shrines are open to view, assumes another air and is silent and awe-struck, and in humility and decorum follows reason as if she were a god. And the playful remark of Menedemus seems to suit these very well. He said that the majority of those who went to school at Athens became first wise, and then philosophers, after that orators, and as time went on became ordinary kind of people, the more they had to do with learning, so much the more laying aside their pride and high estimate of themselves.

Sec. XI. Of people that need the help of the physician some, if their tooth ache or even finger smart, run at once to the doctor, others if they are feverish send for one and implore his assistance at their own home, others who are melancholy or crazy or delirious will not sometimes even see the doctor if he comes to their house, but drive him away, or avoid him, ignorant through their grievous disease that they are diseased at all. Similarly of those who have done what is wrong some are incorrigible, being hostile and indignant and furious at those who reprove and admonish them, while others are meeker and bear and allow reproof. Now, when one has done what is wrong, to offer oneself for reproof, to expose the case and reveal one’s wrongdoing, and not to rejoice if it lies hid, or be satisfied if it is not known, but to make confession of it and ask for interference and admonishment, is no small indication of progress in virtue. And so Diogenes said that one who wished to do what was right ought to seek either a good friend or red-hot enemy, that either by rebuke or mild entreaty he might flee from vice. But as long as anyone, making a display of dirt or stains on his clothes, or a torn shoe, prides himself to outsiders on his freedom from arrogance, and, by Zeus, thinks himself doing something very smart if he jeers at himself as a dwarf or hunchback, but wraps up and conceals as if they were ulcers the inner vileness of his soul and the deformities of his life, as his envy, his malignity, his littleness, his love of pleasure, and will not let anyone touch or look at them from fear of disgrace, such a one has made little progress in virtue, yea rather none. But he that joins issue with his vices, and shows that he himself is even more pained and grieved about them than anyone else, or, what is next best, is able and willing to listen patiently to the reproof of another and to correct his life accordingly, he seems truly to be disgusted at his depravity and resolute to divest himself of it. We ought certainly to be ashamed of and shun every appearance of vice, but he who is more put about by his vice itself than by the bad reputation that ensues upon it, will not mind either hearing it spoken against or even speaking against it himself if it make him a better man. That was a witty remark of Diogenes to a young man, who when seen in a tavern retired into the kitchen: “The more,” said he, “you retire, the more are you in the tavern.”[281] Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice, the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people really poor who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false display. But he who is really making progress in virtue imitates Hippocrates, who confessed publicly and put into black and white that he had made a mistake about the sutures of the skull,[282] for he will think it monstrous, if that great man declared his mistake, that others might not fall into the same error, and yet he himself for his own deliverance from vice cannot bear to be shown he is in the wrong, and to confess his stupidity and ignorance. Moreover the sayings of Bion and Pyrrho will test not so much one’s progress as a greater and more perfect habit of virtue. Bion maintained that his friends might think they had made progress, when they could listen as patiently to abuse as to such language as the following, “Stranger, you look not like a bad or foolish person,”[283] “Health and joy go with you, may the gods give you happiness!”[284] While as to Pyrrho they say, when he was at sea and in peril from a storm, that he pointed out a little pig that was quietly enjoying some grain that had been scattered about, and said to his companions that the man who did not wish to be disturbed by the changes and chances of life should attain a similar composedness of mind through reason and philosophy.