BOOK IV. VII. 31-37
the corpse, speak with more discrimination, as the fact is, and do not try to terrify me. These things are terrifying to the children and the fools. But if a man who has once entered a philosopher's lecture does not know what he himself is, he deserves to be in a state of fear, and also to flatter those whom he used to flatter before;[1] if he has not yet learned that he is not flesh, nor bones, nor sinews, but that which employs these, that which both governs the impressions of the senses and understands them.
Oh yes, but statements like these make men despise the laws.—Quite the contrary, what statements other than these make the men who follow them more ready to obey the laws? Law is not simply anything that is in the power of a fool. And yet see how these statements make us behave properly even toward these fools, because they teach us to claim against such persons nothing in which they can surpass us. 35They teach us to give way when it comes to our paltry body, to give way when it comes to our property, to our children, parents, brothers, to retire from everything, let everything go; they except only our judgements, and it was the will of Zeus also that these should be each man's special possession. What do you mean by speaking of lawlessness and stupidity here? Where you are superior and stronger, there I give way to you; and again, where I am superior, you retire in favour of me. For I have made these matters my concern, and you have not. It is your concern how to live in marble halls,[2] and further, how slaves and freedmen are to
- ↑ That is, before he began to attend lectures in philosophy. But the text is highly uncertain.
- ↑ Strictly speaking, walls covered with a veneer of variegated marble.
