The effects of philosophy, however, are different according to the
difference of inclinations in men. If indeed it lights on one who
loves a dull and inactive sort of life, that makes himself the
centre and the little conveniences of life the circumference of all
his thoughts, such a one does contract the sphere of her activity,
so that having only made easy and comfortable the life of a single
person, it fails and dies with him; but when it finds a man of a
ruling genius, one fitted for conversation and able to grapple with
the difficulties of public business, if it once possess him with
principles of honesty, honor, and religion, it takes a compendious
method, by doing good to one, to oblige a great part of mankind.
Such was the effect of the intercourse of Anaxagoras with Pericles,
of Plato with Dion, and of Pythagoras with the principal statesmen
of all Italy. Cato himself took a voyage, when he had the concern
of an expedition lying upon him, to see and hear Athenodorus;
and Scipio sent for Panaetius, when he was commissioned by the
senate "to take a survey alike of the habits of men good and bad,"
("Odyssey," xvii. 487.) as Posidonius says. Now what a pretty sort
of return would it have been in Panaetius to send word back,--"If
indeed you were in a private capacity, John a Nokes or John a
Stiles, that had a mind to get into some obscure corner or cell, to
state cases and resolve syllogisms, I should very gladly have
accepted your invitation; but now, because you are the son of
Paulus AEmilius who was twice consul, and grandson of that Scipio
who was surnamed from his conquest of Hannibal and Africa, I cannot
with honor hold any conversation with you!"

The objections which they bring from the two kinds of discourse,
one of which is mental, the other like the gift of Mercury
expressed in words or interpretative of the former, are so