the company or so much as be seen to give a civil salute to a
person of quality. For how unreasonable would it be to enforce a
well-disposed young gentleman, and one who needs the direction of a
wise governor, to such complaints as these: "Would that I might
become from a Pericles or a Cato to a cobbler like Simon or a
grammarian like Dionysius, that I might like them talk with such a
man as Socrates, and sit by him."

So far, I am sure, was Aristo of Chios from being of their humor,
that when he was censured for exposing and prostituting the dignity
of philosophy by his freedom to all comers, he answered, that he
could wish that Nature had given understanding to wild beasts, that
they too might be capable of being his hearers. Shall we then deny
that privilege to men of interest and power, which this good man
would have communicated (if it had been possible) to the brute
beasts? But these men have taken a false notion of philosophy,
they make it much like the art of statuary, whose business it is to
carve out a lifeless image in the most exact figure and proportion,
and then to raise it upon its pedestal, where it is to continue
forever. The true philosophy is of a quite different nature; it is
a spring and principle of motion wherever it comes; it makes men
active and industrious, it sets every wheel and faculty a-going, it
stores our minds with axioms and rules by which to make a sound
judgment, it determines the will to the choice of what is honorable
and just; and it wings all our faculties to the swiftest
prosecution of it. It is accompanied with an elevation and
nobleness of mind, joined with a coolness and sweetness of
behavior, and backed with a becoming assurance and inflexible
resolution. And from this diffusiveness of the nature of good it
follows, that the best and most accomplished men are inclined to