me at the knowledge
of his own deficiency, yet rejoicing in hope and desire, and full of
impulses that will not let him rest, is, as Simonides says,

"Like sucking foal running by side of dam,"[291]

being desirous all but to coalesce with the good man. For it is a
special sign of true progress in virtue to love and admire the
disposition of those whose deeds we emulate, and to resemble them with a
goodwill that ever assigns due honour and praise to them. But whoever
is steeped in contentiousness and envy against his betters, let him know
that he may be pricked on by a jealous desire for glory or power, but
that he neither honours nor admires virtue.

Sec. XV. Whenever, then, we begin so much to love good men that we deem
happy, "not only," as Plato[292] says, "the temperate man himself, but
also the man who hears the words that flow from his wise lips," and
even admire and are pleased with his figure and walk and look and smile,
and desire to adapt ourselves to his model and to stick closely to him,
then may we think that we are making genuine progress. Still more will
this be the case, if we admire the good not only in prosperity, but like
lovers who admire even the lispings and paleness of those in their
flower,[293] as the tears and dejection of Panthea in her grief and
affliction won the affections of Araspes,[294] so we fear neither the
exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of
Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but think virtue worthy our
love even under such trials, and join her, ever chanting that line of
Euripides,

"Unto the noble everything is good."[295]

For the enthusiasm that can go so far as not to be discouraged at the
sure prospect of trouble, but admires and emulates what is good even so,
could never be turned away from what is noble by anybody. Such men ever,
whether they have some business to transact, or have taken upon them
some office, or are in some critical conjuncture, put before their eyes
the example of noble men, and consider what Plato would have done on the
occasion, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus
would have dealt; that so, adjusting and re-modelling themselves, as it
were, at their mirrors, they may correct any ignoble expression, and
repress any ignoble passion. For as those that have learnt the names of
the Idaean Dactyli[296] make use of them to banish their fear by quietly
repeating them over, so the bearing in