Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/56

34 how to manage the affairs of state, how to converse among men, how to bear office without touch and blame, unless they have learned first how to carry themselves one toward another?

Aristippus answered upon a time, when one said unto him, And are you, sir, everywhere? I should (quoth he, laughing merrily) cast away the fare for ferriage, which I pay unto the mariner, if I were everywhere. And why might not a man say likewise, If children be not the better for their teaching, the salary is lost which men bestow upon their masters and teachers. But we see that they taking them into their governance presently from their nurses, like as they did form their limbs and joints featly with their hands, do prepare and frame their manners accordingly, and set them in the right way to virtue. And to this purpose answered very wisely a Laconian schoolmaster to one who demanded of him, what good he did to the child of whom he had the charge? Marry (quoth he), I make him to take joy and pleasure in those things that be honest. And to say a truth, these teachers and governors instruct children to hold up their heads straight as they go in the street, and not to bear it forward: also, not to dip into sauce but with one finger: not to take bread or fish but with twain: to rub or scratch after this or that manner: and thus and thus to truss and hold up their clothes.

What shall we say then to him who would make us believe that the art of physic professeth to scour the morphew, or heal a whit-flaw: but not to cure a pleurisy, fever, or the phrensy? And what differeth he from them who hold that there be schools and rules to teach petties and little children how to be mannerly, and demean themselves in small matters, but as for great, important and absolute things, it must be nothing else but use and custom, or else mere chance and fortune that doth effect them? For like as he were ridiculous, and worthy to be laughed at, who should say that no man ought to lay hand upon the oar for to row but he that hath been prentice to it; but sit at the stem and guide the helm he may who was never taught it: even so, he who maintaineth that in some inferior arts there is required apprentissage, but for the attaining of virtue none at all, deserveth likewise to be mocked.

And verily, he should do contrary unto the Scythians: For they, as Herodotus writeth, use to put out the eyes of their slaves only to the end that being blind they might turn round about with their milk, and so stir and shake it. But he forsooth putteth the eye of reason into these base and inferior arts, which