quently tried to rub it out; at last in
his anger he threw his sponge (just as it was, full of colours) at the
picture, and this very wonderfully produced exactly the effect he
desired. This is the only fortunate accident in art that history
records. Artificers everywhere use rules and weights and measures, that
none of their work may be done at random and anyhow. And indeed the arts
may be considered as wisdom on a small scale, or rather as emanations
from and fragments of wisdom scattered about among the necessities of
life; as the fire of Prometheus is riddled to have been divided and
scattered about in all quarters of the world. For thus small particles
and fragments of wisdom, breaking up as it were and getting divided into
pieces, have formed into order.

Sec. V. It is strange then that the arts do not require fortune to attain
to their ends, and yet that the most important and complete of all the
arts, the sum total of man's glory and merit, should be so completely
powerless. Why, there is a kind of wisdom even in the tightening or
slackening of chords, which people call music, and in the dressing of
food, which we call the art of cooking, and in cleaning clothes, which
we call the art of the fuller, and we teach boys how to put on their
shoes and clothes generally, and to take their meat in the right hand
and their bread in the left, since none of these things come by fortune,
but require attention and care. And are we to suppose that the most
important things which make so much for happiness do not call for
wisdom, and have nothing to do with reason and forethought? Why, no one
ever yet wetted earth with water and then left it, thinking it would
become bricks by fortune and spontaneously, or procured wool and
leather, and sat down and prayed Fortune that it might become clothes
and shoes; nor does anyone getting together much gold and silver and a
quantity of slaves, and living in a spacious hall with many doors, and
making a display of costly couches and tables, believe that these things
will constitute his happiness, and give him a painless happy life secure
from changes, unless he be wise also. A certain person asked the general
Iphicrates in a scolding way who he was, as he seemed neither a
heavy-armed soldier, nor a bowman, nor a targeteer, and he replied, "I
am the person who rule and make use of all these."

Sec. VI. So wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor
health, nor strength,