n our active the love of glory, and confines and abases our nature
to a poor narrow thing, and that not cleanly neither, to wit, the
content the mind receives by the body, as if it were capable of no
higher good than the escape of evil.

END OF ONE--------

THAT A PHILOSOPHER OUGHT CHIEFLY TO CONVERSE WITH GREAT MEN.

The resolution which you have taken to enter into the friendship
and familiarity of Sorcanus, that by the frequent opportunities of
conversing with him you may cultivate and improve a soil which gives
such early promises of a plentiful harvest, is an undertaking which will
not only oblige his relations and friends, but rebound very much to the
advantage of the public; and (notwithstanding the peevish censures of
some morose or ignorant people) it is so far from being an argument
of an aspiring vainglorious temper, that it shows you to be a lover of
virtue and good manners, and a zealous promoter of the common interest
of mankind.

They themselves are rather to be accused of an indirect but more
vehement sort of ambition, who would not upon any terms be found in
the company or so much as be seen to give a civil salute to a person
of quality. For how unreasonable would it be to enforce a well-disposed
young gentleman, and one who needs the direction of a wise governor, to
such complaints as these: "Would that I might become from a Pericles or
a Cato to a cobbler like Simon or a grammarian like Dionysius, that I
might like them talk with such a man as Socrates, and sit by him."

So far, I am sure, was Aristo of Chios from being of their humor,
that when he was censured for exposing and prostituting the dignity of
philosophy by his freedom to all comers, he answered, that he could wish
that Nature had given understanding to wild beasts, that they too might
be capable of being his hearers. Shall we then deny that privilege to
men of interest and power, which this good man would have communicated
(if it had been possible) to the brute beasts? But these men have
taken a false notion of philosophy, they make it much like the art of
statuary, whose business it is to carve out a lifeless image in the most
exact figure and proportion, and then to raise it upon its pedestal,
where it is to continue forever. The true philosophy is of a quite
different nature; it is a spring and principle of motion wherever it
comes; it makes men active and industrious, it sets every wheel and
faculty a-going, it stores our