this burden would keep it bent and cowering.[1] But the fact is otherwise; for our mind expands the more, the more it is filled; and by the examples of old days, it may be seen, quite to the contrary, that men of competence in the handling of public matters, great captains, and eminent counsellors in state affairs, have been also very learned men.
And as to the philosophers, withdrawn from all public employment, they were, in truth, sometimes treated with contempt by the comic poets[2] of their day, (c) their opinions and their manners making them ridiculous. Would you make them judges of the merits of a law-suit, of a man’s acts? They are quite ready for it! they are even trying to find out whether there is life; whether there is motion; whether man is different from an ox; what it is to act and to suffer; what sort of animals the laws and justice are. Do they speak of the magistrate or to him? they do so with disrespectful and discourteous freedom. Do they hear a prince praised, or a king? to them he is a mere shepherd, lazy as a shepherd, occupied with milking and shearing his flock, but much more roughly than a shepherd. Do you think some man the greater for possessing two thousand acres of land? they scoff at that, accustomed to look upon the whole world as their possession. Do you boast of your nobility because you can reckon seven wealthy ancestors? they think slightingly of you, as having no conception of the universal image of nature, and of how many forbears each of us has had — rich, poor, kings, servants, Greeks, and barbarians; and if you are the fiftieth in descent from Hercules, they deem you absurd to attach value to that gift of fortune.[3] So the vulgar despised them as being ignorant of simple and most common things, and as presumptuous and insolent. But this Platonic description is far removed from what befits those whom we speak of.
(a) The ancient philosophers were condemned as being above common customs, as holding in contempt public doings, as having assumed a special and inimitable manner
