BOOK IV. I. 115-121
He called none of them master, did he? And I am not referring to the name! it is not the word that I fear, but the emotion, which produces the word. How he censures them because they gave bad food to their captives! How he behaved when he was sold! Did he look for a master? No, but for a slave. And how he behaved toward his master after he had been sold! He began immediately to argue with him, telling him that he ought not to dress that way, or have his hair cut that way, and about his sons, how they ought to live. And what is there strange about that? Why, if he had bought a gymnastic trainer, would he have employed him as a servant, or as a master, in the exercises of the palaestra? And if he had bought a physician, or a master-builder, the same would have been true. And thus in every subject-matter, it is quite unavoidable that the man of skill should be superior to the man without skill. In general, therefore, whoever possesses the science of how to live, how can he help but be the master? For who is master in a ship?—The helmsman.—Why? Because the man who disobeys him is punished.—But my master is able to give me a sound flogging.—He cannot do so with impunity, can he?—So I thought.—But because he cannot do so with impunity, therefore he has no authority to do it; no man can do wrong with impunity.—120And what is the punishment that befalls the man who has put his own slave in chains, when he felt like it?—The putting of him in chains; this is something which you will admit yourself, if you wish to maintain the proposition that man is not a wild beast but a tame animal.[1] For when is a vine faring badly? When it is acting contrary to its own
- ↑ The phrase is from Plato, Sophistes, 222 B. See also IV. 5. 10.
