hearers came together rather coldly, and did not give you applause,
you went away humbled. Lately again when you had been praised, you
went about and said to all, "What did you think of me?" "Wonderful,
master, I swear by all that is dear to me." "But how did I treat of
that particular matter?" "Which?" "The passage in which I described
Pan and the nymphs?" "Excellently." Then do you tell me that in desire
and in aversion you are acting according to nature? Begone; try to
persuade somebody else. Did you not praise a certain person contrary
to your opinion? and did you not flatter a certain person who was
the son of a senator? Would you wish your own children to be such
persons? "I hope not." Why then did you praise and flatter him? "He is
an ingenuous youth and listens well to discourses." How is this? "He
admires me." You have stated your proof. Then what do you think? do
not these very people secretly despise you? When, then, a man who is
conscious that he has neither done any good nor ever thinks of it,
finds a philosopher who says, "You have a great natural talent, and
you have a candid and good disposition," what else do you think that
he says except this, "This man has some need of me?" Or tell me what
act that indicates a, great mind has he shown? Observe; he has been in
your company a long time; he has listened to your discourses, he has
heard you reading; has he become more modest? has he been turned to
reflect on himself? has he perceived in what a bad state he is? has he
cast away self-conceit? does he look for a person to teach him? "He
does." A man who will teach him to live? No, fool, but how to talk;
for it is for this that he admires you also. Listen and hear what he
says: "This man writes with perfect art, much better than Dion."
This is altogether another thing. Does he say, "This man is modest,
faithful, free from perturbations?" and even if he did say it, I
should say to him, "Since this man is faithful, tell me what this
faithful man is." And if he could not tell me, I should add this,
"First understand what you say, then speak."
You, then, who are in a wretched plight and gaping after applause
and counting your auditors, do you intend to be useful to others?
"To-day many more attended my discourse." "Yes, many; we suppose
five hundred." "That is nothing; suppose that there were a
thousand." "Dion never had so many hearers." "How could he?" "And they
understand what is said beautifully." "What is fine, master, can
move even a stone." See, these are the words of a philosopher. This is
the disposition of a man who will do good to others; here is a man who
has listened to discourses, who has read what is written about
Socrates as Socratic, not as the compositions of Lysias and Isocrates.
"I have often wondered by what arguments." Not so, but "by what
argument": this is more exact than that. What, have you read the words
at all in a different way from that in which you read little odes? For
if you read them as you ought, you would not have been attending to
such matters, but you would rather have been looking to these words:
"Anytus and Meletus are able to kill me, but they cannot harm me": and
"I am always of such a disposition as to pay regard to nothing of my
own except to the reason which on inquiry seems to me the best." Hence
who ever heard Socrates say, "I know something and I teach"; but he