Plutarch's Morals
wholly impelled by his passion for philosophy. For we ought not to
rejoice at discourses only when we hear them, as people like perfumes
only when they smell them, and not to seek or care about them in their
absence, but in the same condition as people who are hungry and thirsty
are in if torn away from food and drink, we ought to follow after true
proficiency in philosophy, whether marriage, or wealth, or friendship,
or military service, strike in and produce a separation. For just as
more is to be got from philosophy, so much the more does what we fail
to obtain trouble us.
Sec. V. Either precisely the same as this or very similar is Hesiod's[261]
very ancient definition of progress in virtue, namely, that the road is
no longer very steep or arduous, but easy and smooth and level, its
roughness being toned down by exercise, and casting the bright light of
philosophy on doubt and error and regrets, such as trouble those who
give themselves to philosophy at the outset, like people who leave a
land they know, and do not yet descry the land they are sailing to. For
by abandoning the common and familiar, before they know and apprehend
what is better, they frequently flounder about in the middle and are
fain to return. As they say the Roman Sextius, giving up for philosophy
all his honours and offices in Rome, being afterwards discontented with
philosophy from the difficulties he met with in it at first, very nearly
threw himself out of window. Similarly they relate of Diogenes of
Sinope,[262] when he began to be a philosopher, that the Athenians were
celebrating a festival, and there were public banquets and shows and
mutual festivities, and drinking and revelling all night, and he, coiled
up in a corner of the market-place intending to sleep, fell into a train
of thought likely seriously to turn him from his purpose and shake his
resolution, for he reflected that he had adopted without any necessity a
toilsome and unusual kind of life, and by his own fault sat there
debarred of all the good things. At that moment, however, they say a
mouse stole up and began to munch some of the crumbs of his barley-cake,
and he plucked up his courage and said to himself, in a railing and
chiding fashion, "What say you, Diogenes? Do your leavings give this
mouse a sumptuous meal, while you, the gentleman, wail and lament
because you are not getting drunk yonder and reclining on soft and
luxurious couches?" Whenever such depressions of mind are not frequent,
and the mind when they take place quickly recovers from them, after
having put them to flight as it were, and when such annoyance and
distraction is easily got rid of, then one may consider one's progress
in virtue as a certainty.
Sec. VI. And since not only the things that in themselves shake and turn
them in the opposite direction are more powerful in the case of weak
philosophers, but also the serious advice of friends, and the playful
and jeering objections of adversaries bend and soften people, and have
ere now shaken some out of philosophy altogether, it will be no slight
indication of one's progress in virtue if one takes all this very
calmly, and is neither disturbed nor aggravated by people who tell us
and mention to us that some of our former comrades are flourishing in
kings' courts, or have married wives with dowries, or are attended by a
crowd of friends when they come down to the forum to solicit some office
or advocateship. He that is not moved or affected by all this is already
plainly one upon whom philosophy has got a right hold; for it is
impossible that we should cease to be envious of what most people
admire, unless the admiration of virtue was strongly implanted in us.
For over-confidence may be generated in some by anger and folly, but to
despise what men admire is not possible without a true and steady
elevation of mind. And so people in such a condition of mind, comparing
it with that of others, pride themselves on it, and say with Solon, "We
would not change virtue for wealth, for while virtue abides, wealth
changes hands, and now one man, now another, has it."[263] And Diogenes
compared his shifting about from Corinth to Athens, and again from
Thebes to Corinth, to the different residences of the King of Persia, as
his spring residence at Susa, his winter residence at Babylon, and his
summer residence in Media. And Agesilaus said of the great king, "How is
he better than me, if he is not more upright?" And Aristotle, writing to
Antipater about Alexander, said, "that he ought not to think highly of
himself because he had many subjects, for anyone who had right notions
about the gods was entitled to think quite as highly of himself." And
Zeno, observing that Theophrastus was admired for the number of his
pupils,[264] said, "His choir is, I admit, larger than mine, but mine
is more harmonious."
Sec. VII. Whenever then, by thus comparing the advantages of virtue with
external things, you get rid of envies and jealousies and those things
which fret and depress the minds of many who are novices in philosophy,
this also is a great indication of your progress in virtue. Another and
no slight indication is a change in the style of your discourses. For
generally speaking all novices in philosophy adopt most such as tend to
their own glorification; some, like birds, in their levity and ambition
soaring to the height and brightness of physical things; others like
young puppies, as Plato[265] says, rejoicing in tearing and biting,
betake themselves to strifes and questions and sophisms; but most
plunging themselves into dialectics immediately store themselves for
sophistry; and some collect sentences[266] and histories and go about
(as Anacharsis said he saw the Greeks used money for no other purpose
but to count it up), merely piling up and comparing them, but making no
practical use of them. Applicable here is that saying of Antiphanes,
which someone applied to Plato's pupils. Antiphanes said playfully that
in a certain city words were frozen directly they were spoken, owing to
the great cold, and were thawed again in the summer, so that one could
then hear what had been said in the winter. So he said of the words
which were spoken by Plato to young men, that most of them only
understood them late in life when they were become old men. And this is
the condition people are in in respect to all philosophy, until the
judgement gets into a sound and healthy state, and begins to adapt
itself to those things which can produce character and greatness of
mind, and to seek discourses whose footsteps turn inwards rather than
outwards, to borrow the language of AEsop.[267] For as Sophocles said he
had first toned down the pompous style of AEschylus, then his harsh and
over-artificial method, and had in the third place changed his manner
of diction, a most important point and one that is most intimately
connected with the character, so those who go in for philosophy, when
they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as
deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make genuine and
modest progress in virtue.
Sec. VIII. Furthermore, take care, in reading the writings of philosophers
or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than
things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by
what is serviceable and solid and useful. And also, in studying poems or
history, let nothing escape you of what is said to the point, which is
likely either to correct the character or to calm the passions. For as
Simonides says the bee hovers among the flowers "making the yellow
honey,"[268] while others value and pluck flowers only for their beauty
and fragrance, so of all that read poems for pleasure and amusement he
alone that finds and gathers what is valuable seems capable of knowledge
from his acquaintance with and friendship for what is noble and
good.[269] For those who study Plato and Xenophon only for their style,
and cull out only what is pure and Attic, and as it were the dew and the
bloom, do they not resemble people who love drugs for their smell and
colour, but care not for them as anodynes or purges, and are not aware
of those properties? Whereas those who have more proficiency can derive
benefit not from discourses only, but from sights and actions, and cull
what is good and useful, as is recorded of AEschylus and other similar
kind of men. As to AEschylus, when he was watching a contest in boxing at
the Isthmus, and the whole theatre cried out upon one of the boxers
being beaten, he nudged with his elbow Ion of Chios, and said, "Do you
observe the power of training? The beaten man holds his peace, while the
spectators cry out." And Brasidas having caught hold of a mouse among
some figs, being bitten by it let it go, and said to himself, "Hercules,
there is no creature so small or weak that it will not fight for its
life!" And Diogenes, seeing a lad drinking water out of the palm of his
hand, threw away the cup which he kept in his wallet. So much does
attention and assiduous practice make people perceptive and receptive of
what contributes to virtue from any source. And this is the case still
more with those who mix discourses with actions, who not only, to use
the language of Thucydides,[270] "exercise themselves in the presence of
danger," but also in regard to pleasures and strifes, and judgements,
and advocateships, and magistrateships make a display of their opinions,
or rather form their opinions by their practice. For we can no more
think those philosophers who are ever learning and busy and
investigating what they have got from philosophy, and then straightway
publish it in the market-place or in the haunt of young men, or at a
royal supper-party, any more than we give the name of physicians to
those who sell drugs and mixtures. Nay rather such a sophist differs
very little at all from the bird described in Homer,[271] offering his
scholars like it whatever he has got, and as it feeds its callow young
from its own mouth, "though it goes ill with itself," so he gets no
advantage or food from what he has got for himself.
Sec. IX. We must therefore see to it that our discourse be serviceable to
ourselves, and that it may not appear to others to be vain-glorious or
ambitious, and we must show that we are as willing to listen as to
teach, and especially must we lay aside all disputatiousness and love of
strife in controversy, and cease bandying fierce words with one another
as if we were contending with one another at boxing, and leave off
rejoicing more in smiting and knocking down one another than in learning
and teaching. For in such cases moderation and mildness, and to commence
arguing without quarrelsomeness and to finish without getting into a
rage, and neither to be insolent if you come off best in the argument,
nor dejected if you come off worst, is a sufficient sign of progress in
virtue. Aristippus was an excellent example of this, when overcome in
argument by the sophistry of a man, who had plenty of assurance, but
was generally speaking mad or half-witted. Observing that he was in
great joy and very puffed up at his victory, he said, "I who have been
vanquished in the argument shall have a better night's rest than my
victor." We can also test ourselves in regard to public speaking, if we
are not timid and do not shrink from speaking when a large audience has
unexpectedly been got together, nor dejected when we have only a small
one to harangue to, and if we do not, when we have to speak to the
people or before some magistrate, miss the opportunity through want of
proper preparation; for these things are recorded both of Demosthenes
and Alcibiades. As for Alcibiades, though he possessed a most excellent
understanding, yet from want of confidence in speaking he often broke