any solidity show the greatest amount of assurance in their appearance
and walk, and a face full of haughtiness and contempt that looks down on
everybody, but when they begin to grow full and get some fruit from
study they lay aside their proud and vain[277] bearing. And just as in
vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are
full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves
becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard
and threadbare cloak,[278] and transfer their training to the mind, and
are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in
their intercourse with everybody else; and they do not as before
eagerly snatch at the name and reputation of philosopher, nor do they
write themselves down as such, but even if he were addressed by that
title by anyone else, an ingenuous young man would say, smiling and
blushing, "I am not a god: why do you liken me to the immortals?"[279]
For as AEschylus says,

"I never can mistake the burning eye
Of the young woman that has once known man,"[280]

so to the young man who has tasted of true progress in philosophy the
following lines of Sappho are applicable, "My tongue cleaves to the roof
of my month, and a fire courses all over my lean body," and his eye will
be gentle and mild, and you would desire to hear him speak. For as those
who are initiated come together at first with confusion and noise and
jostle one another, but when the mysteries are being performed and
exhibited, they give their attention with awe and silence, so also at
the commencement of philosophy you will see round its doors much
confusion and assurance and prating, some rudely and violently jostling
their way to reputation, but he who once enters in, and sees the great
light, as when shrines are open to view, assumes another air and is
silent and awe-struck, and in humility and decorum follows reason as if
she were a god. And the playful remark of Menedemus seems to suit these
very well. He said that the majority of those who went to school at
Athens became first wise, and then philosophers, after that orators, and
as time went on became ordinary kind of people, the more they had to do
with learning, so much the more laying aside their pride and high
estimate of themselves.

Sec. XI. Of people that need the help of the physician some, if their tooth
ache or even finger smart, run at once to the doctor, others if th