Book 2
1.2
A considerable one, I replied; but pray observe whether Xenophon himself, in his descriptions of Socrates’s and the Persian entertainments, hath not sufficiently explained them. But if you would have my thoughts,—first, men are pleased to be asked those questions to which they have an answer ready; such are those in which the persons asked have some skill and competent knowledge; for when the enquiry is above their reach, those that can return nothing are troubled, as if requested to give something beyond their power; and those that do answer, producing some crude and insufficient demonstration, must needs be very much concerned, and apt to blunder on the wrong. Now, if the answer not only is easy but hath something not common, it is more pleasing to them that make it; and this happens, when their knowledge is greater than that of the vulgar, as suppose they are well skilled in points of astrology or logic. For not only in action and serious matters, but also in discourse, every one hath a natural disposition to be pleased (as Euripides hath it) To seem far to outdo himself.Eurip. Antiope, Frag. 183.
