Book 4
11
What then? does any man (that is, do I) require you to ornament yourself? Far from it; except to ornament that which we really are by nature, the rational faculty, the opinions, the actions; but as to the body only so far as purity, only so far as not to give offence. But if you are told that you ought not to wear garments dyed with purple, go and daub your cloak with muck or tear it.This is the literal translation: but it means, will you go, etc., tear it? But how shall I have a neat cloak? Man, you have water; wash it. Here is a youth worthy of being loved,The youth, probably, means the scholar, who neglects neatness; and the old man, the tutor, that gives him no precept or example of it. Mrs. Carter. here is an old man worthy of loving and being loved in return, a fit person for a man to intrust to him a son’s instruction, to whom daughters and young men shall come, if opportunity shall so happen, that the teacher shall deliver his lessons to them on a dunghill.The Greek is λέγῃ τὰς σχόλας. Cicero uses the Latin scholas habere, to hold philosophical disputations. Tusc. Disp. E 4. Upton. Let this not be so: every deviation comes from something which is in man’s nature; but this (deviation) is near being something not in man’s nature.
On attention
