are like a person who refuses to take an antidote unless the vessel is made of the best Attic earthenware; or who declines to put on a thick cloak in winter unless the wool is from Attic sheep, preferring to sit, stubborn and impracticable, in the thin napless mantle of the ‘style of Lysias’. Perversities of this kind are responsible for a plentiful [Sidenote: E] lack of good sense and an abundance of loquacious claptrap in the schools. Young fellows keep no watch upon the life, the practical action, or the public services of a philosopher, but make a great merit of diction, phrase, and fine method of statement, while they possess neither the ability nor the desire to find out whether the statement is valuable or worthless, whether it is vital or a mere futility.
The next rule concerns the propounding of difficulties. A guest at a dinner is bound to accept what is put upon the [Sidenote: F] table, and neither to ask for anything else nor to find fault. When the feast consists of a discourse, any one who comes to it should listen and say nothing, if there is an understanding to that effect. Persons who cannot listen in a pleasant and sociable manner, but keep drawing the speaker off to other topics, interposing questions and mooting side-issues, get no benefit themselves and confuse both the speaker and the speech. When, however, he invites the audience to ask questions and advance difficulties, any that are proposed should prove to be useful and important. Odysseus, when in the suitors’ company, incurs ridicule through _Begging for morsels and scraps, and not for a sword or a cauldron._ [Sidenote: 43] regard it as a sign of lofty-mindedness not only to give, but to ask for, something of value. It is, however, more a case for ridicule when a hearer poses a speaker with petty little problems of the kind often propounded by young men, when they are talking claptrap in order to make a show of attainments in logic or mathematics—for example, concerning ‘division of the indeterminate’ and the nature of ‘lateral’ or ‘diagonal’ [Sidenote: B] motion. The proper answer to such persons is the remark of Philotimus to a man who was suffering with abscesses and consumption, but who had been talking to him for some time about requiring ‘some little thing to cure a whitlow’. Perceiving the man’s condition from his complexion and breathing, Philotimus observed: ‘My good sir, a whitlow is not the question with you.’ Nor in your case, young sir, is it worth while to be discussing such questions as yours, but how you are to get rid of conceit, swaggering about love-affairs, and such-like nonsense, and how you are to plant your feet on the way to a healthy and sober-minded life.
Especially are you bound, in putting your questions, to accommodate yourself to a speaker’s range of knowledge or natural [Sidenote: C] ability—to his special _forte_. A philosopher who is more concerned with ethics should not be attacked with difficulties in natural science or mathematics, nor should one who prides himself upon his scientific knowledge be dragged into determining hypothetical syllogisms or solving fallacies. If you attempted to chop your wood with the key and to open your door with the axe, it would not be thought that you were making sport of these implements, but that you were depriving yourself of their respective powers and uses. In the same way, if you ask of a speaker a thing for which he has no gift or training, while you make no harvest of what he possesses and offers, [Sidenote: D] you not only do yourself harm to that extent, but you incur condemnation for malicious ill-nature.
Be careful also not to propound difficulties yourself in too great numbers or too frequently. This is, in a sense, another way of showing off. Meanwhile, to listen equably when some one else is mooting them, shows that you are a clubbable person and a student. This is assuming you have no harassing and urgent trouble of your own, no mental disturbance to be controlled or malady to be comforted. It may not, after all, be (as Heracleitus says) ‘better to conceal ignorance’, but to bring it into the open and cure it. If your mind is upset by a fit of anger, an attack of superstition, a violent quarrel with your friends, or a mad amorous passion which _Stirreth the heart-strings that should rest unstirred_, [Sidenote: E] you must not run away from a discourse which searches it home, and fly to others of a different nature. On the contrary, these are the very topics to which you should listen, both at lectures and also by privately approaching the lecturer afterwards and asking for further light.
The opposite course is the one too generally followed. So long as the philosopher is dealing with other persons, his hearers are all delight and admiration. But when he leaves those others alone and frankly administers some important reminder to themselves personally, they are disgusted with him for not minding his own business. Generally speaking, they think [Sidenote: F] a philosopher is entitled to a hearing inside his school, as the tragedian is in the theatre; but in matters beyond it they do not consider him in any way superior to themselves. Towards a sophist their attitude is natural enough; for when he rises from his chair, lays aside his books and his introductory manuals, and makes his appearance in the practical departments of life, he ranks in the popular mind as an unimportant and inferior person. But towards a philosopher in the real sense their attitude is wrong. They do not recognize that a tone of earnestness or jest, a sign of approval or disapproval, a smile or a frown, [Sidenote: 44] on his part—and, above all, his direct handling of their individual cases—are fruitful in good to those who have learned the art of listening with submission.
Applause, again, has its duties, which call for a certain caution and moderation. A gentleman bestows neither too little nor too much of it. A hearer shows churlishly bad taste when nothing whatever in a lecture will make him thaw or unbend; when he is diseased with festering conceit and chronic self-complacency, and is all the time thinking he could improve upon the deliverance; when he neither makes any appropriate movement of the brow nor utters any sound to prove that he is [Sidenote: B] a considerate and willing listener; when he is seeking a reputation for solidity and depth by means of silence, an affected gravity, and attitudes of pose, under the notion that applause is like money, and that whatever amount you give to another you take from yourself. The fact is that there are many who take up the well-known saying of Pythagoras and sing it to a false tune. His own gain from philosophy, he said, was to ‘_wonder at [Sidenote: *] nothing_‘; whereas theirs is to ‘praise nothing’ or to ‘honour nothing’. With them wisdom lies in contempt, and the way to be dignified is to be disdainful. While, by means of knowledge [Sidenote: C] and the ascertainment of the cause in a given case, philosophic reason does away with the wonder and awe due to unenlightenment and ignorance, it does not destroy a generous appreciation. Those whose excellence is genuine and firmly seated find it the highest honour to bestow honour, the highest distinction to bestow distinction, where honour and distinction are due. Such conduct implies that they have fame enough and to spare, and are free from jealousy, whereas those who are niggards of praise to others are in all probability pinched and hungry for praise of their own.
On the other hand, the opposite type of hearer is the fluttering feather-head who uses no discrimination, but punctuates with loud cheers at every word and syllable. While he is frequently obnoxious to the disputant himself, he is invariably a nuisance [Sidenote: D] to the hearers. He worries them on to their feet against their judgement, and drags them willy-nilly to join in the chorus because they are ashamed to refuse. Thanks to his applause deranging the lecture and making an imbroglio of it, he gets no good from it, but goes home with one of three descriptions to his credit—fleerer, sycophant, or ignoramus.
It is true that, when hearing a case in court, we must lean [Sidenote: E] neither towards hostility nor towards favour, but towards justice as we best understand it. But at a lecture on a subject of learning there is neither law nor oath to debar us from granting the speaker an indulgent reception. The reason why the ancients placed the statue of Hermes in the company of the Graces was that speaking has a special claim to a gracious friendliness. It is impossible for any one to be so complete a failure or so utterly astray as to offer us nothing deserving of a cheer, in the shape of a thought, a reference to others, the mere choice of theme or purpose, or, possibly, in the wording or arrangement of the matter, _As among urchin-foot or mid coarse broom The tender snowflake springeth into bloom._ [Sidenote: F] There are persons who, for exhibition purposes, can lend a fair measure of plausibility to a panegyric upon vomiting or fever, or even a pot; and surely a deliverance by a man who has some sort of claim to be thought, or to call himself, a philosopher cannot absolutely fail to afford a well-disposed or courteous audience some opportunity of finding relief in applause.
According to Plato young persons in the bloom of life can always manage somehow to excite a lover’s passion. If they are white he calls them ‘regal’, a snub nose ‘piquant’; a sallow skin is a ‘complexion of honey’. He uses these pretty names, and is pleased and satisfied. Love has, indeed, an ivy-like gift for clinging to any pretext. Much less will an eager and earnest student of letters ever fail in inventiveness.
In every speaker he will discover some grounds for reasonable applause.
In the speech of Lysias, though Plato objects to its want of arrangement, and though he has no praise for its inventiveness, he nevertheless commends him for his manner of statement, and because there is ‘a clear round finish in the chiselling of every word’. [Sidenote: B] We might find fault with Archilochus for his subject-matter, Parmenides for his versification, Phocylides for his commonplaceness, Euripides for his garrulity, Sophocles for his inequality. Similarly one of the orators has no characterization, another exerts no passion, a third is lacking in grace and charm. Nevertheless each wins praise for a power to move and sway us in his own peculiar way.
The hearer, then, has ample scope for showing good feeling to a speaker.
In some instances it is sufficient if, without further declaration by word of mouth, we contribute a kindly eye, a genial expression, a friendly and agreeable mood. There are certain things for which even the man who is a total failure may [Sidenote: C] look, and which are but ordinary items of common etiquette for any and every audience. I mean an upright posture in our chairs, with no lolling or lounging; eyes kept directly upon the speaker; an air of businesslike attention; composure of countenance, with no sign, I need not say of insolence or peevishness, but of being taken up with other thoughts.
If in every exacting task beauty is made up of a number of factors happily combined in a due proportion and harmony, ugliness is the prompt and immediate outcome of the faulty [Sidenote: D] omission or addition of this or that one element. And in this particular matter of listening, not only is there impropriety in a scowling brow, a disagreeable expression, a roving glance, a twisting of the body, and a crossing of the legs; but nodding or whispering to a neighbour, smiling, yawning sleepily, looking at the ground, and actions of a similar nature, are censurable and should be studiously avoided.
There are some who think that, though the speaker has a duty, the hearer has none. They expect the former to present himself with his thoughts studiously prepared; yet, without a thought or care for their own obligations, they drop casually in and take their seats, for all the world as if they had come to a dinner to enjoy themselves while others are doing the work. Yet even a polite table-companion has his part to play, much [Sidenote: E] more a polite hearer. He is a partner in the speech and a coadjutor of the speaker; and he has no right to be sharply criticizing the mistakes, and taking every phrase and fact to task, while himself free from responsibility for the impropriety and the frequent solecisms which he commits as a hearer. In ball-play the catcher has to regulate his movements according to those of the thrower.
So, in the case of a speech, there is a certain consonance of action in which both speaker and listener are concerned, if each is to sustain his proper part. [Sidenote: F] Our expressions in applauding must not, however, be used without discrimination. It is an unpleasing phrase of Epicurus when, in speaking of the little epistles from his friends, he says, ‘We give them a rattling clapping.’ But what of those who nowadays introduce such and _Very true!_ which were the terms of commendation used by the hearers of Plato, Socrates, and Hypereides, are not enough for these persons. With their exclamations _Divine!_ _An inspiration!_ or _Unapproachable!_ they commit a gross impropriety, libellously making out that the speaker requires far-fetched eulogies of an [Sidenote: 46] outrageous kind. Highly obnoxious also are those who accompany their attestations with an oath, as if they were in a court of law. And equally so those who blunder in their descriptive terms; for instance, when the lecturer is a philosopher and they call out, _A shrewd hit!_, or an old man and they exclaim _Cleverly put!_ or _Brilliant!_, thus misapplying to a philosopher the expressions used at academic exercises, where the speaking is not serious but merely an exhibition of adroitness. To offer [Sidenote: B] to a sober discourse such meretricious praise is like crowning an athlete with a wreath of lilies or roses instead of laurel or wild olive. Once when the poet Euripides was going over a song [Sidenote: *] with an original setting for the benefit of the members of his chorus, and one of them happened to laugh, he observed: ‘If you had not been an ignorant dolt, you could not have laughed while I was teaching you a mixolydian[46] piece.’ So, I take it, a serious and practical philosopher might very well make short work of the airs and affectations of a hearer by saying, ‘I presume your case is one of foolishness or ill breeding; otherwise you would not have been piping out and jigging about at my remarks, when I was teaching, or admonishing, or arguing concerning religion, statesmanship, or the duties of [Sidenote: C] office.’ Just frankly consider what it means, when a philosopher is speaking, and the shouting and hurrahing inside the building make people outside wonder whether it is a flute-player, a harpist, or a dancer who is being applauded.
Meanwhile, in listening to admonition and reproof, the pupil must be neither insensible nor unmanly. There are some who bear the philosopher’s reproaches with an easy-going indifference, laughing under the correction and applauding the corrector, just as parasites applaud in sheer impudence and recklessness when they are abused by those who keep them. The shamelessness which such persons display is no proper or genuine proof of courage. When a jibe containing no insult, and uttered in [Sidenote: D] a playful and tactful way, is borne cheerfully and without annoyance, it shows neither a want of spirit nor a want of breeding. On the contrary, it is exactly what a gentleman of the true Spartan style would do. But it is different when admonition takes in hand the correction of character by means of a stinging remedy in the shape of rational reproof. If a young man does not cower under the lesson and feel his soul burning with shame, till he breaks into a sweat and is ready to faint; if, on the contrary, he is unperturbed, gives a broad grin of self-depreciation, and refuses to take the matter seriously, then he is an extremely vulgar creature beyond all sense of shame, a constant habituation to misconduct having made his soul no more capable of a bruise than a thick callus in the flesh.
These form the one class. Youths of the opposite disposition, [Sidenote: E] if a single hard word is said to them, turn deserters from philosophy and run away without a glance behind them. While nature has given them, in the shape of modesty, an excellent start towards moral salvation, they are so squeamish and timid that they throw their chance away.
Unable to put up with reproof or to accept correction with spirit, they turn away to listen to the soft and agreeable utterances of some time-server or sophist, who charms them with melodious phrases as useless and futile as they are pleasing. If a man runs away from the surgeon after the operation and objects to be bandaged, he is submitting to the pain of the treatment but refusing to put up with its benefit. So when a lesson has lanced and probed his [Sidenote: F] folly, if he will not permit it to close and dress the wound, he is abandoning philosophy after feeling the sting and the pain but before deriving any advantage therefrom.
Euripides says that the wound of Telephus was _Soothed by the filings ground from the same spear._ It is no less true that the sting implanted by philosophy in [Sidenote: 47] a youth of parts is cured by the same reasoning that caused the wound. While, therefore, it is right that the subject of reproof should feel some pain from the sting, he must not be crushed or dispirited, but, after undergoing the first discomposing rites of purification, he should look for some sweet and splendid revelation to follow the distress and confusion of the moment. For though the reproof may appear to be unjust, the proper course is to endure it with all patience until the speaker concludes. Then he may be met by a plea in self-defence, and by [Sidenote: B] a request to reserve for some real fault all the vigorous candour which he has shown in the present instance.
To proceed to the next consideration. In reading and writing, playing the lyre, or wrestling, the first lessons are very harassing, laborious, and unsure; but, as we advance step by step, it is much as in dealing with mankind. By dint of frequent and familiar acquaintance we find that it all becomes pleasant and manageable, and every word or action easy.
It is the same with philosophy. No doubt the language and matter, as first met with, contain something both hard and strange. But we must not take fright at the rudiments and prove so timid and spiritless [Sidenote: C] as to abandon the study. On the contrary, our duty is to grapple with every question, to persevere, to be resolved on making progress, and then to wait for that familiarity which converts all right action into a pleasure. It will not be long before it arrives, casting upon the study a flood of light, and inspiring an ardent passion for excellence. To be without such passion and to put up with the ordinary type of life because one is driven from philosophy by a lack of mettle, is to be a miserable or cowardly creature.
We may also expect that at first the argumentation will prove somewhat difficult for young and inexperienced students to understand. For the most part, however, the obscurity and want of comprehension are due to themselves. Opposite dispositions [Sidenote: D] lead to the same mistake. Thus one class, through bashfulness and a desire to spare the teacher, will shrink from putting questions and making sure of the argument, and will ostensibly assent as if they quite understood. The others, led by misplaced ambition and meaningless rivalry to make a show of cleverness and quickness, pretend to have mastered a thing before they take it in, and so will not take it in at all. The consequence is that when the former—the modest and silent kind—go home, they will worry themselves with their perplexities, and in the end they will be driven perforce to trouble the speaker by harking back with their questions at a later date, when they will feel still more ashamed. Meanwhile the bold and ambitious kind will be perpetually cloaking their ignorance and hiding the fact that it haunts them.
Let us then thrust aside all this pretentious silliness, and march [Sidenote: E] on towards learning. Let our business be to get an intelligent grasp upon valuable instruction. And let us put up with the laughter of those who are thought to be clever. Remember how Cleanthes and Xenocrates, though to all appearance slower than their fellow-pupils, refused to give up or run away from their studies. On the contrary, they were the first to joke at their own expense, comparing themselves to a narrow-necked bottle or a brass tablet, inasmuch as, though slow at taking their instruction in, they were safe and sure at retaining it. Not only must we, as Phocylides puts it, _Oft-times be baulked of our hope while seeking to come unto goodness_; we must also ‘oft-times’ be laughed at, and bear with scoffing [Sidenote: F] and jeering, meanwhile putting all our heart and energy into winning the struggle against our ignorance.
We must, however, be quite as careful not to err in the opposite direction. Some do so from sloth, which makes them a wearisome infliction. Unwilling to trouble themselves when [Sidenote: 48] alone, they keep troubling the teacher by repeatedly asking for information on the same questions. Like unfledged birds in the nest, they are perpetually agape to be fed from another’s mouth, and expect to receive everything ready masticated by someone else.
Another kind, in the misplaced quest of a reputation for alertness and acumen, worry the lecturer with their fussy garrulity, perpetually mooting some unimportant difficulty or demanding some unnecessary demonstration, _Till a short journey so becometh long_ [Sidenote: B] —as Sophocles says—not only to themselves but to every one else. By continually arresting the teacher with superfluous and futile questions, as if they were merely chatting with a companion, they interfere with the continuity of the lesson by a series of checks and delays. Persons of this class are (to quote Hieronymus) like wretched cowardly puppies, who bite the skins and tear the odds and ends of wild animals at home, but who never touch the animals themselves.
As for the former and lazy class, let us give them this advice. When they have managed to comprehend the main points, let them piece the rest together for themselves, using their [Sidenote: C] memory as a guide to independent thought. And let them take the reasoning they hear from another as a beginning—a seed which they are to make grow and thrive.
The mind is not a vessel which calls for filling. It is a pile, which simply requires kindling-wood to start the flame of eagerness for original thought and ardour for truth. Suppose someone goes to borrow from his neighbour’s fire, and then, on finding a large bright blaze, persists in staying and basking on the spot. It is the same when a man comes to another to borrow reason, and does not realize that he must kindle a light of his own in the shape of thinking for himself, but sits enchanted with enjoyment of the lecture. He derives from the lesson [Sidenote: D] a ruddy glow or outward brilliance, but he fails to drive out the mould and darkness from within by the warming power of philosophy.
If therefore any advice is needed for the hearing of lectures, it is to remember the rule just given—to practise independent thought along with learning. We shall thus attain, not to the ability of a sophist or the ‘well-informed’ man, but to a deep-seated philosophic power. Right listening will be for us the introduction to right living.
Footnote 44: The _paedagogus_, an attendant slave, who accompanied the boy and watched over his conduct.
Footnote 45: In his _Phaedrus_.
Footnote 46: i. e. in the mixolydian mode, which was of a sad and dirgelike character.
ON MORAL IGNORANCE IN HIGH PLACES [Sidenote: 779 D] When Plato was invited by the Cyrenaeans to draw up a code of laws for their use and to organize their constitution, he begged to be excused, on the ground that it was difficult to legislate for so prosperous a people: _For nought so arrogant_— nor so impracticable and headstrong— _as human kind_, when prosperity—or what is so considered—lies within its grasp.
[Sidenote: E] No less difficult is the task of advising a ruler how to rule. To admit reason, he fears, is to admit a ruler, whose law of duty will make a slave of him and curtail the advantage he derives from power. He has yet to learn a lesson from Theopompus, the Spartan king, who was the first to modify the powers of the throne by means of that of the Ephors. When his wife reproached him for proposing to leave to his children less authority than he had inherited, he replied: ‘Nay, greater, because more assured.’ By relaxing its excessive absolutism he escaped the [Sidenote: F] consequent ill-feeling, and therewith its dangers. But note. Theopompus, in diverting into other channels a portion of the full stream of power, deprived himself of just so much as he gave away. But when philosophic reason becomes the established colleague and protector of a ruler, it merely removes the perilous element and leaves the healthy—a process as necessary to power as to sound health.
In most cases, however, monarchs or rulers show as little wisdom as a tasteless sculptor, who fancies that to represent a figure with a huge stride, strained muscles, and gaping mouth, is to make it appear massive and imposing. They imagine that [Sidenote: 780] an arrogant tone, harsh looks, short temper, and exclusiveness give them the true regal air of awe and majesty. In reality they are not a bit better than a colossal statue with the outward shape and form of a god or demigod, while the inside is a mass of earth, stone, or lead. Indeed, in the case of the statue, these heavy materials serve to keep it erect and prevent it from warping; whereas, with an unschooled governor or chief, the unreason within is often the cause of instability and collapse. [Sidenote: B] His foundation being out of plumb, the lofty power which he builds upon it is correspondingly unstable. Now it is only when the builder’s square is itself faultless in line and angle, that it can make other things true to line by adjustment to, and comparison with, itself. So a ruler must begin by acquiring rule within himself. Let him set his own soul straight, and make his own character firm, and then begin adjusting his subjects thereto. You cannot set upright, when you are falling; teach, when you are ignorant; discipline, when unruly; command, when disobedient; govern, when ungoverned. And yet it is a common error to suppose that the chief blessing of authority [Sidenote: C] is to be above authority. To the King of Persia every one was a slave except his own wife, the very person whose master he ought to have been.
By whom, then, is the ruler to be ruled? By the _Law, Sovereign of mortals and immortals all_, as Pindar says; not a law written outwardly in books or on wooden tables, but a living law of reason in himself, abiding with him, watching him, and never leaving his soul destitute of guidance. The King of Persia kept one chamberlain whose special function was to enter in the morning and say to him: ‘Rise, Sire, and attend to matters which Great Oromazdes [Sidenote: D] meant for your concern.’ The ruler who has learned wisdom and self-control hears the same voice of exhortation from within. It was a saying of Polemo that love is ‘_serving the Gods in the care and protection of the young_‘. With more truth it might be said that a ruler serves God in the care and protection of men, by dispensing, or safeguarding, the blessings which God gives to mankind.
_See’st thou yon boundless sky and air aloft, How in soft arms it clasps the world about?_ From it descend the first principles of seeds in due kind; earth brings them forth; their growth is fostered by rains or winds or the warmth of moon and stars; while the sun brings everything [Sidenote: E] to beauty and tinctures all creation with that peculiar love-spell which is his.
But though the Gods may lavish these great boons and blessings, who can enjoy or use them rightly, if there be no law, justice, or ruler?
Justice is the end of law; law is the work of the ruler; and a ruler is an image of the God who orders all things. He needs no Pheidias or Polycleitus or Myro to fashion him, but brings himself into likeness with deity [Sidenote: F] by means of virtue, and so creates the fairest and most divine of effigies. In the heavens the sun and moon were set by God as His own beauteous image; and, in a state, the same shining embodiment is to be found in the ruler _Godfearing, who justice upholdeth_, —that is to say, when he holds, not a sceptre, but a mind which is the reason of God; not when he holds the thunderbolt or trident with which some represent themselves in statue or picture, rendering their folly odious to Heaven by such impossible assertion. For God visits with righteous wrath him who makes pretence of thunder or thunderbolt or darting sun-ray; but when a man studies to emulate His goodness, and to take [Sidenote: 781] a pattern by His virtue and benevolence, He delights in furthering him and bestowing a portion of His own righteousness, justice, truth, and mercy. Not fire or light, not the course of the sun, the risings and settings of the stars, everlastingness and immortality, are more divine that these attributes.
For it is not by reason of length of life that God is happy, but by reason of the virtue which rules. This is ‘divine’. ‘Noble’, however, is the virtue whose part it is only to obey.
When Alexander was in sore distress at killing Cleitus, Anaxarchus told him, by way of comfort, that Right and Justice were [Sidenote: B] but the ‘assessors’ of Zeus—making out that any act was right and lawful for a king. A false and pernicious salve for his repentance at his sin, this encouragement to repeat it! If we are to use such figures of speech, Right is no ‘assessor’ of Zeus, but He himself is Right and Justice, the oldest and most consummate Law. What the ancients tell and write and teach is that, without Justice, not even Zeus can properly rule.
According to Hesiod _A virgin is she_, the incorruptible partner of feeling, self-control, and beneficence.
[Sidenote: C] Hence are kings called ‘merciful’, for mercy best becomes those who are least afraid. A ruler’s fear should be of doing harm rather than of suffering it; for the former action is the cause of the latter, and this kind of fear on the part of a ruler is creditable to humanity. There is nothing ignoble in a fear for his subjects and of possible injury to them. Such rulers are like _Dogs that keep ward o’er the sheep in the farmstead, anxiously watching At sound of a fierce wild beast_— their anxiety being not for themselves, but for their charges.
Once when the Thebans had recklessly abandoned themselves [Sidenote: D] to feasting and carousal, Epaminondas went the round of the walls and the military posts all by himself, remarking that he was keeping sober and wakeful so that the rest might be drunk and asleep. When Cato, after the defeat at Utica, gave orders that every one else should be sent to sea, saw them on board, prayed that they might have a prosperous voyage, and then went back home and stabbed himself, it was a lesson on the text, ‘For whose sake should a ruler feel fear, and for what should he feel contempt?’ On the other hand, Clearchus, despot of Pontus, used at bedtime to crawl like a snake into a chest. [Sidenote: E] Similarly, Aristodemus of Argos crept into an upper room entered by a trap-door.
Over this he would put the couch upon which he passed the night with his mistress. Meanwhile her mother dragged away the ladder from below, bringing it back and putting it in place in the morning. How, think you, must he have shuddered at the theatre, at the Government offices, at the Senate-House, at the banquet, when he turned his own bedchamber into a prison? Yes, kings are afraid _for_ their subjects, despots are afraid _of_ them. It follows that, as they add to their power, they add to their alarms; the more people they rule, the more people they fear.
[Sidenote: F] It is an improbable and unworthy view to hold of God—as some philosophers do—that He exists as an element in matter to which all sorts of things may happen, and in entities which are subject to innumerable accidents, chances and changes. In reality He is stablished somewhere aloft ‘_on holy pedestal_’ (as Plato puts it) in the realm of nature uniform and constant, and there ‘_moves according to Nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end_‘. And as in heaven the sun, His beauteous counterfeit, shows itself as His reflection in a mirror to those who have the power to see Him through it, so, in the justice and reason which shine in a state, He sets up a likeness of that which is in Himself, and, by copying that likeness, men [Sidenote: 782] whom philosophy has gifted and chastened model themselves after the highest pattern.
This condition of mind nothing can implant except reason acquired from philosophy. Otherwise we are in the position of Alexander, when he went to see Diogenes at Corinth. In delight at his talent, and in admiration of his proud and lofty spirit, he exclaimed: ‘If I had not been Alexander, I would have been Diogenes.’ And what did this virtually mean? That he was vexed at his own high fortune, splendour, and [Sidenote: B] power, because they were an obstacle to the virtue for which he could find no time, and that he envied the cloak and the wallet, which made Diogenes as invincible and unassailable as he himself was made by armour and horses and spears. And yet by the practice of philosophy he might have secured the moral character of a Diogenes while retaining the position of an Alexander. Nay, he should have become all the more a Diogenes for being an Alexander, since his high fortune, so liable to be tossed by stormy winds, required ample ballast and a master hand at the helm.
In the case of private men without strength or standing, folly is so qualified by impotence that in the end no mischief is done. It is as with a bad dream, in which, though the mind is excited with passion, no harm results, inasmuch as it is unable to rise and act in accordance