Book 3
23
Did not you, the other day, praise a man contrary to your own opinion? Did not you flatter a certain senator? Yet would you wish your own children to be like him? Heaven forbid! Why then did you praise and cajole him? He is an ingenuous young man, and attentive to discourses. How so? He admires me. Now indeed you have produced your proof.
23
After all, what do you think? Do not these very people secretly despise you? When a man conscious of no good action or intention finds some philosopher saying, You are a great genius, and of a frank and candid disposition, what do you think he says, but, This man has some need of me? Pray tell me what mark of a great genius he has shown. You see he has long conversed with you, has heard your discourses, has attended your lectures. Has he turned his attention to himself? Has he perceived his own faults? Has he thrown off his conceit? Does he seek an instructor? Yes, he does. An instructor how to live? No, fool, but how to talk; for it is upon this account that he admires you. Hear what he says: This man writes with very great art, and much more finely than Dion. That is quite another thing. Does he say, This is a modest, faithful, calm person? But if he said this too, I would ask him, if be is faithful, what it is to be faithful? And if he could not tell, I would add, First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
