1. Men deliberate and dispute variously concerning virtue, whether
prudence and justice and the right ordering of one’s life can be
taught. Moreover, we marvel that the works of orators, shipmasters,
musicians, carpenters, and husbandmen are infinite in number, while
good men are only a name, and are talked of like centaurs, giants, and
the Cyclops, and that as for any virtuous action that is sincere and
unblamable, and manners that are without any touch and mixture of bad
passions and affections, they are not to be found; but if Nature of its
own accord should produce any thing good and excellent, so many things
of a foreign nature mix with it (just as wild and impure productions
with generous fruit) that the good is scarce discernible. Men learn
to sing, dance, and read, and to be skilful in husbandry and good
horsemanship; they learn how to put on their shoes and their garments;
they have those that teach them how to fill wine, and to dress and cook
their meat; and none of these things can be done as they ought, unless
they be instructed how to do them. And will ye say, O foolish men! that
the skill of ordering one’s life well (for the sake of which are all
the rest) is not to be taught, but to come of its own accord, without
reason and without art?
2. Why do we, by asserting that virtue is not to be taught, make it
a thing that does not at all exist? For if by its being learned it
is produced, he that hinders its being learned destroys it. And now,
as Plato[43] says, we never heard that because of a blunder in metre
in a lyric song, therefore one brother made war against another, nor
that it put friends at variance, nor that cities hereupon were at such
enmity that they did to one another and suffered one from another the
extremest injuries. Nor can any one tell us of a sedition raised in a
city about the right accenting or pronouncing of a word,—as whether
we are to say Τελχῖνας or Τέλχινας,—nor that a difference arose in
a family betwixt man and wife about the woof and the warp in cloth.
Yet none will go about to weave in a loom or to handle a book or a
harp, unless he has first been taught, though no great harm would
follow if he did, but only the fear of making himself ridiculous (for,
as Heraclitus says, it is a piece of discretion to conceal one’s
ignorance); and yet a man without instruction presumes himself able to
order a family, a wife, or a commonwealth, and to govern very well.
Diogenes, seeing a youth devouring his victuals too greedily, gave his
tutor a box on the ear, and that deservedly, as judging it the fault
of him that had not taught, not of him that had not learned better
manners. And what? is it necessary to begin to learn from a boy how to
eat and drink handsomely in company, as Aristophanes expresses it,—
Not to devour their meat in haste, nor giggle,
Nor awkwardly their feet across to wriggle,[44]
and yet are men fit to enter into the fellowship of a family, city,
married estate, private conversation, or public office, and to manage
it without blame, without any previous instruction concerning good
behavior in conversation?
When one asked Aristippus this question, What, are you everywhere?
he laughed and said, I throw away the fare of the waterman, if I am
everywhere. And why canst not thou also answer, that the salary given
to tutors is thrown away and lost, if none are the better for their
discipline and instruction. But, as nurses shape and form the body
of a child with their hands, so these masters, when the nurses have
done with them, first receive them into their charge, in order to the
forming of their manners and directing their steps into the first
tracks of virtue. To which purpose the Lacedaemonian, that was asked
what good he did to the child of whom he had the charge, answered well:
I make good and honest things pleasant to children. These masters also
teach them to bend down their heads as they go along, to touch salt
fish with one finger only, but fresh fish, bread, and flesh with two;
thus to scratch themselves, and thus to tuck up their garments.
3. Now he that says that the art of physic may be proper for a tetter
or a whitlow, but not to be made use of for a pleurisy, a fever, or
a frenzy, in what does he differ from him that should say that it
is fit there should be schools, and discourses, and precepts, to
teach trifling and childish things, but that all skill in greater
and more manly things comes from use without art and from accidental
opportunity? For as he would be ridiculous who should say, that one
who never learned to row ought not to lay hand on the oar, but that
he might guide the helm who was never taught it; so is he that gives
leave for men to be instructed in other arts, but not in virtue.
He seems to be quite contrary to the practice of the Scythians,
who, as Herodotus[45] tells us, put out their servants’ eyes, to
prevent them from running away; but he puts the eye of reason into
these base and slavish arts, and plucks it from virtue. But the
general Iphicrates—when Callias, the son of Chabrias, asked him,
What art thou? Art thou an archer or a targeteer, a trooper or a
foot-soldier?—answered well, I am none of all these, but one that
commands them all. He therefore would be ridiculous that should say
that the skill of drawing a bow, of handling arms, of throwing with
a sling, and of good horsemanship, might indeed be taught, but the
skill of commanding and leading an army came as it happened, one knew
not how. And would not he be still more ridiculous who should say that
prudence only could not be taught, without which all those arts are
useless and unprofitable? When she is the governess, ranking all things
in due place and order, every thing is assigned to become useful; for
instance, how ungraceful would a feast be, though all concerned were
skilful and enough practised in cookery, in dressing and serving up the
meat, and in filling the wine as they ought, if all things were not
well disposed and ordered among those that waited at the table?...