e who had right notions
about the gods was entitled to think quite as highly of himself." And
Zeno, observing that Theophrastus was admired for the number of his
pupils,[264] said, "His choir is, I admit, larger than mine, but mine
is more harmonious."

Sec. VII. Whenever then, by thus comparing the advantages of virtue with
external things, you get rid of envies and jealousies and those things
which fret and depress the minds of many who are novices in philosophy,
this also is a great indication of your progress in virtue. Another and
no slight indication is a change in the style of your discourses. For
generally speaking all novices in philosophy adopt most such as tend to
their own glorification; some, like birds, in their levity and ambition
soaring to the height and brightness of physical things; others like
young puppies, as Plato[265] says, rejoicing in tearing and biting,
betake themselves to strifes and questions and sophisms; but most
plunging themselves into dialectics immediately store themselves for
sophistry; and some collect sentences[266] and histories and go about
(as Anacharsis said he saw the Greeks used money for no other purpose
but to count it up), merely piling up and comparing them, but making no
practical use of them. Applicable here is that saying of Antiphanes,
which someone applied to Plato's pupils. Antiphanes said playfully that
in a certain city words were frozen directly they were spoken, owing to
the great cold, and were thawed again in the summer, so that one could
then hear what had been said in the winter. So he said of the words
which were spoken by Plato to young men, that most of them only
understood them late in life when they were become old men. And this is
the condition people are in in respect to all philosophy, until the
judgement gets into a sound and healthy state, and begins to adapt
itself to those things which can produce character and greatness of
mind, and to seek discourses whose footsteps turn inwards rather than
outwards, to borrow the language of AEsop.[267] For as Sophocles said he
had first toned down the pompous style of AEschylus, then his harsh and
over-artificial method, and had in the third place changed his manner
of diction, a most important point and one that is most intimately
connected with the character, so those who go in for philosophy, when
they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as
deal with character and emotion, are beg