BOOK III. XVI. 3-11
the person who is covered with soot to keep from getting some soot on himself. For what are you going to do if he talks about gladiators, or horses, or athletes, or, worse still, about people: "So-and-so is bad, So-and-so is good; this was well done, this ill"; or again, if he scoffs, or jeers, or shows an ugly disposition? 5Has any of you the capacity of the expert lyre-player when he takes up his lyre, which enables him, the instant he touches the strings, to recognize the ones which are off pitch, and to tune the instrument? Or the power that Socrates had, which enabled him in every kind of social intercourse to bring over to his own side those who were in his company? How could you have? But you must necessarily be converted by the laymen.
Why, then, are they stronger than you are? Because their rotten talk is based on judgements, but your fine talk comes merely from your lips; that's why what you say is languid and dead, and why a man may well feel nausea when he hears your exhortations and your miserable "virtue," which you babble to and fro. And thus the laymen get the better of you; for everywhere judgement is strong, judgement is invincible. Therefore, until these fine ideas of yours are firmly fixed within you, and you have acquired some power which will guarantee you security, my advice to you is to be cautious about joining issue with the laymen; otherwise whatever you write down in the lecture-room will melt away by day like wax in the sun.[1] 10Retire, then, to some spot or other far away from the sun, so long as the ideas which you have are waxen. It is for this reason that the philosophers advise us to leave even
- ↑ Such lecture-notes were written on wax tablets.
