en he hears
the praises of others, he cannot help laughing from the bottom of
his soul at their pretensions; and this also gives him a ridiculous
appearance. A king or tyrant appears to him to be a kind of swine-herd
or cow-herd, milking away at an animal who is much more troublesome and
dangerous than cows or sheep; like the cow-herd, he has no time to be
educated, and the pen in which he keeps his flock in the mountains is
surrounded by a wall. When he hears of large landed properties of ten
thousand acres or more, he thinks of the whole earth; or if he is
told of the antiquity of a family, he remembers that every one has had
myriads of progenitors, rich and poor, Greeks and barbarians, kings
and slaves. And he who boasts of his descent from Amphitryon in the
twenty-fifth generation, may, if he pleases, add as many more, and
double that again, and our philosopher only laughs at his inability to
do a larger sum. Such is the man at whom the vulgar scoff; he seems to
them as if he could not mind his feet. 'That is very true, Socrates.'
But when he tries to draw the quick-witted lawyer out of his pleas and
rejoinders to the contemplation of absolute justice or injustice in
their own nature, or from the popular praises of wealthy kings to the
view of happiness and misery in themselves, or to the reasons why a man
should seek after the one and avoid the other, then the situation is
reversed; the little wretch turns giddy, and is ready to fall over the
precipice; his utterance becomes thick, and he makes himself ridiculous,
not to servant-maids, but to every man of liberal education. Such are
the two pictures: the one of the philosopher and gentleman, who may be
excused for not having learned how to make a bed, or cook up flatteries;
the other, a serviceable knave, who hardly knows how to wear his
cloak,--still less can he awaken harmonious thoughts or hymn virtue's
praises.

'If the world, Socrates, were as ready to receive your words as I am,
there would be greater peace and less evil among mankind.'

Evil, Theodorus, must ever remain in this world to be the antagonist of
good, out of the way of the gods in heaven. Wherefore also we should fly
away from ourselves to them; and to fly to them is to become like them;
and to become like them is to become holy, just and true. But many
live in the old wives' fable of appearances; they think that you should
follow virtue in order that you may seem to be good. And yet the truth