inning to make genuine and
modest progress in virtue.

Sec. VIII. Furthermore, take care, in reading the writings of philosophers
or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than
things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by
what is serviceable and solid and useful. And also, in studying poems or
history, let nothing escape you of what is said to the point, which is
likely either to correct the character or to calm the passions. For as
Simonides says the bee hovers among the flowers "making the yellow
honey,"[268] while others value and pluck flowers only for their beauty
and fragrance, so of all that read poems for pleasure and amusement he
alone that finds and gathers what is valuable seems capable of knowledge
from his acquaintance with and friendship for what is noble and
good.[269] For those who study Plato and Xenophon only for their style,
and cull out only what is pure and Attic, and as it were the dew and the
bloom, do they not resemble people who love drugs for their smell and
colour, but care not for them as anodynes or purges, and are not aware
of those properties? Whereas those who have more proficiency can derive
benefit not from discourses only, but from sights and actions, and cull
what is good and useful, as is recorded of AEschylus and other similar
kind of men. As to AEschylus, when he was watching a contest in boxing at
the Isthmus, and the whole theatre cried out upon one of the boxers
being beaten, he nudged with his elbow Ion of Chios, and said, "Do you
observe the power of training? The beaten man holds his peace, while the
spectators cry out." And Brasidas having caught hold of a mouse among
some figs, being bitten by it let it go, and said to himself, "Hercules,
there is no creature so small or weak that it will not fight for its
life!" And Diogenes, seeing a lad drinking water out of the palm of his
hand, threw away the cup which he kept in his wallet. So much does
attention and assiduous practice make people perceptive and receptive of
what contributes to virtue from any source. And this is the case still
more with those who mix discourses with actions, who not only, to use
the language of Thucydides,[270] "exercise themselves in the presence of
danger," but also in regard to pleasures and strifes, and judgements,
and advocateships, and magistrateships make a display of their opinions,
or rather form their opinions by their practice. For we can no