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Now in all cases it is useful also to seek after the cause of each thing that is said. Cato, for example, used, even as a child, to do whatever the attendant in charge of him ordered, yet he also demanded to know the ground and reason for the order. And so the poets are not to be obeyed as though they were our keepers or law-givers, unless their subject matter be reasonable; and this it will be if it be good, but if it be vile, it will be seen to be vacuous and vain. But most people are sharp in demanding the reasons for trivial things like the following, and insist on knowing in what sense they are intended: Never ought the ladle atop of the bowl to be rested While the bout is on, Hesiod, Works and Days, 744. and Whoso from his car can reach the car of another Let him thrust with his spear.Homer, Il. iv. 306. But in far weightier matters they take things on faith without testing them at all, such, for example, as these: A man, though bold, is made a slave whene’er He learns his mother’s or his sire’s disgrace,Euripides, Hippolytus, 424; cited also by Plutarch in Moralia, 1 C. and Who prospers not must be of humble mind.Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 957. And yet these sentiments affect our characters and disorder our lives, by engendering in us mean judgements and ignoble opinions, unless from habit we can say in answer to each of them, Why must the man who has ’ not prospered be of humble mind,’ and why must he not rather rise up against Fortune, and make himself exalted and not humbled? And why, though I be the son of a bad and foolish father, yet if I myself am good and sensible, is it unbecoming for me to take pride in my good qualities, and why should I be dejected and humble on account of my father’s crassness? For he who thus meets and resists, and refuses to entrust himself broadside on to every breath of doctrine, as to a wind, but believes in the correctness of the saying that a fool is wont to be agog at every word that’s said A dictum of Heracleitus. It is again quoted by Plutarch, Moralia, 41 A; cf. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 95. will thrust aside a good deal of what is not true or profitable therein. This, then, will take away all danger of harm from the perusal of poetry.
