Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/373

Rh imprint in our hearts a certain passion like to hunger and thirst when it is taken from us, if we will profit in good earnest and perceive our own progress and amendment; whether it be that marriage, riches, some friendship, expedition or warfare come between, that may drive him away and make separation, for the greater that the fruit is which he gathered by philosophy, so much the more will the grief be to leave and forgo it. To this first sign of progress in philosophy may be added another of great antiquity out of Hesiodus; which if it be not the very same, certes, it cometh near unto it, and this he describeth after this sort, namely, when a man findeth the way no more difficult, rough, and craggy, nor exceeding steep and upright, but easy, plain, with a gentle descent, as being indeed laid even and smooth by exercise, and wherein now there begins light clearly to appear and shine out of darkness, instead of doubts, ambiguities, errors, and those repentances and changes of mind incident unto those who first betake themselves to the study of philosophy; after the manner of them who, having left behind them a land which they know well enough, are troubled whiles they cannot descry and discover that for which they set sail and bend their course; for even so it is with these persons who, when they have abandoned these common and familiar studies whereto they were inured before they came, to learn, apprehend, and enjoy better, oftentimes in the very middle of their course are carried round about and driven to return back again the same way they came. Like as it is reported of Sexius, a noble man of Rome, who having given over the honourable offices and magistracies in the city, for love of philosophy, afterwards finding himself much troubled in that study, and not able at the beginning to brook and digest the reasons and discourses thereof, was so perplexed that he went very near to have thrown himself into the sea out of a galley.

The semblable example we read in histories of Diogenes the Sinopian, when he first went to the study and profession of philosophy: for when about the same time it chanced that the Athenians celebrated a public solemnity with great feasting and sumptuous fare, with theatrical plays and pastimes, meeting in companies and assemblies to make merry one with another, with revels and dances all night long, himself in an odd corner of the market-place lay lapped round in his clothes, purposing to take a, nap and sleep; where and when he fell into certain fantastical imaginations which did not a little turn and trouble his brains, yea, and break his heart, discoursing thus in his head: That he