f receiving instruction than the Younger
Dionysius? Did they hinder him from killing his best friend, Clitus, for
speaking to him with freedom, or from fancying himself a god because he
was adored by the wretched slaves he had vanquished? When I desired him
not to stand between me and the sun, I humbled his pride more, and
consequently did him more good, than Aristotle had done by all his formal
precepts.

_Plato_.--Yet he owed to those precepts that, notwithstanding his
excesses, he appeared not unworthy of the empire of the world. Had the
tutor of his youth gone with him into Asia and continued always at his
ear, the authority of that wise and virtuous man might have been able to
stop him, even in the riot of conquest, from giving way to those passions
which dishonoured his character.

_Diogenes_.--If he had gone into Asia, and had not flattered the king as
obsequiously as Haephestion, he would, like Callisthenes, whom he sent
thither as his deputy, have been put to death for high treason. The man
who will not flatter must live independent, as I did, and prefer a tub to
a palace.

_Plato_.--Do you pretend, Diogenes, that because you were never in a
court, you never flattered? How did you gain the affection of the people
of Athens but by soothing their ruling passion--the desire of hearing
their superiors abused? Your cynic railing was to them the most
acceptable flattery. This you well understood, and made your court to
the vulgar, always envious and malignant, by trying to lower all dignity
and confound all order. You made your court, I say, as servilely, and
with as much offence to virtue, as the basest flatterer ever did to the
most corrupted prince. But true philosophy will disdain to act either of
these parts. Neither in the assemblies of the people, nor in the
cabinets of kings, will she obtain favour by fomenting any bad
dispositions. If her endeavours to do good prove unsuccessful, she will
retire with honour, as an honest physician departs from the house of a
patient whose distemper he finds incurable, or who refuses to take the
remedies he prescribes. But if she succeeds--if, like the music of
Orpheus, her sweet persuasions can mitigate the ferocity of the multitude
and tame their minds to a due obedience of laws and reverence of
magistrates; or if she can form a Timoleon or a Numa Pompilius to the
government of a state--how meritorious is the work! One king--nay, one
minister or counsellor o