BOOK III. XX. 16-XXI. 3
Not so you; but, "Watch out that you don't get ill; it's bad." Just as if someone said, "Watch out that you never get the impression that three are four; it's bad." Man, how do you mean "bad"? If I get the right idea of it, how is it going to hurt me any more? Will it not rather even do me good? If, then, I get the right idea about poverty, or disease, or not holding office, am I not satisfied? Will they not be helpful to me? How, then, would you have me seek any longer amongst externals for things evil and things good?
But what? These things go thus far,[1] but nobody takes them home with him; nay, as soon as we leave here, there is war on with our slave attendant, our neighbours, those that mock, and those that laugh at us. Blessed be Lesbius,[2] because he convicts me every day of knowing nothing!
CHAPTER XXI
To those who enter light-heartedly upon the profession of lecturing
Those who have learned the principles and nothing else are eager to throw them up immediately,[3] just as persons with a weak stomach throw up their food. First digest your principles,[† 1] and then you will surely not throw them up this way. Otherwise they are mere vomit, foul stuff and unfit to eat. But after
- ↑ That is, no farther than the class room.
- ↑ Presumably some scoffer or irritating person known to the audience.
- ↑ Compare Schiller:"Was sie gestern gelernt, das wollen sie heute schon lehren;
Ach, was haben die Herrn doch für ein kurzes Gedärm."
- ↑ ἀκάθαρτον Wolf: καθαρόν S. But possibly the reading can be retained (with Schegk) in the sense: "What was clean food becomes mere vomit and unfit to eat."
