BOOK II. XXI. 13-19
when he comes back home!' I did want, at one time, I suppose, to learn everything before going back home, but that requires a great deal of hard work, and nobody sends me anything, and at Nicopolis they have rotten accommodations at the baths, and my lodgings are bad, and the school here is bad."
15And then people say: "Nobody gets any good from going to school." Well, who goes to school—who, I repeat—with the expectation of being cured? Who with the expectation of submitting his own judgements for purification? Who with the expectation of coming to a realization of what judgements he needs? Why, then, are you surprised, if you carry back home from your school precisely the judgements you bring to it? For you do not come with the expectation of laying them aside, or of correcting them, or of getting others in exchange for them. Not at all, nor anything like it. Look rather to this at least—whether you are getting what you came for. You want to be able to speak fluently about philosophic principles. Well, are you not becoming more of an idle babbler? Do not these petty philosophic principles supply you with material for making exhibitions? Do you not resolve syllogisms, and arguments with equivocal premisses? Do you not examine the assumptions in The Liar[1] syllogism, and in hypothetical syllogisms? Why, then, are you still vexed, if you are getting what you came for? "Yes, but if my child or my brother dies, or if I must die, or be tortured, what good will such things do me?" But was it really for this that you came? Is it really for this that you sit by my side? Did you ever really light your lamp, or work late at
- ↑ See II. 17, 34, and note.
