Kitap 4
1
For thus has been your practice from the first. Where am I? If I am in the school and there is an audience, I talk as the philosophers do; but if I am out of the school, then away with this stuff that belongs only to scholars and fools. This man is accused by the testimony of a philosopher, his friend; this philosopher turns parasite; another hires himself out for money; a third does that in the very senate. When one is not governed by appearances, then his principles speak for themselves. You are a poor cold lump of prejudice, consisting of mere phrases, on which you hang as by a hair. You should preserve yourself firm and practical, remembering that you are to deal with real things. In what manner do you hear,—I will not say that your child is dead, for how could you possibly bear that?—but that your oil is spilled, your wine consumed? Would that some one, while you are bawling, would only say this: Philosopher, you talk quite otherwise when in the schools. Why do you deceive us? Why, when you are a worm, do you call yourself a man? I should be glad to be near one of these philosophers while he is revelling in debauchery, that I might see how he demeans himself, and what sayings he utters; whether he remembers the title he bears and the discourses which he hears, or speaks, or reads.
