Meanwhile, in listening to admonition and reproof, the pupil must be neither insensible nor unmanly. There are some who bear the philosopher’s reproaches with an easy-going indifference, laughing under the correction and applauding the corrector, just as parasites applaud in sheer impudence and recklessness when they are abused by those who keep them. The shamelessness which such persons display is no proper or genuine proof of courage. When a jibe containing no insult, and uttered in |D| a playful and tactful way, is borne cheerfully and without annoyance, it shows neither a want of spirit nor a want of breeding. On the contrary, it is exactly what a gentleman of the true Spartan style would do. But it is different when admonition takes in hand the correction of character by means of a stinging remedy in the shape of rational reproof. If a young man does not cower under the lesson and feel his soul burning with shame, till he breaks into a sweat and is ready to faint; if, on the contrary, he is unperturbed, gives a broad grin of self-depreciation, and refuses to take the matter seriously, then he is an extremely vulgar creature beyond all sense of shame, a constant habituation to misconduct having made his soul no more capable of a bruise than a thick callus in the flesh.
These form the one class. Youths of the opposite disposition, |E| if a single hard word is said to them, turn deserters from philosophy and run away without a glance behind them. While nature has given them, in the shape of modesty, an excellent start towards moral salvation, they are so squeamish and timid that they throw their chance away. Unable to put up with reproof or to accept correction with spirit, they turn away to listen to the soft and agreeable utterances of some time-server or sophist, who charms them with melodious phrases as useless and futile as they are pleasing. If a man runs away from the surgeon after the operation and objects to be bandaged, he is submitting to the pain of the treatment but refusing to put up with its benefit. So when a lesson has lanced and probed his |F| folly, if he will not permit it to close and dress the wound, he is abandoning philosophy after feeling the sting and the pain but before deriving any advantage therefrom.
Euripides says that the wound of Telephus was
Soothed by the filings ground from the same spear.
It is no less true that the sting implanted by philosophy in |47| a youth of parts is cured by the same reasoning that caused the wound. While, therefore, it is right that the subject of reproof should feel some pain from the sting, he must not be crushed or dispirited, but, after undergoing the first discomposing rites of purification, he should look for some sweet and splendid revelation to follow the distress and confusion of the moment. For though the reproof may appear to be unjust, the proper course is to endure it with all patience until the speaker concludes. Then he may be met by a plea in self-defence, and by |B| a request to reserve for some real fault all the vigorous candour which he has shown in the present instance.
To proceed to the next consideration. In reading and writing, playing the lyre, or wrestling, the first lessons are very harassing, laborious, and unsure; but, as we advance step by step, it is much as in dealing with mankind. By dint of frequent and familiar acquaintance we find that it all becomes pleasant and manageable, and every word or action easy. It is the same with philosophy. No doubt the language and matter, as first met with, contain something both hard and strange. But we must not take fright at the rudiments and prove so timid and spiritless |C| as to abandon the study. On the contrary, our duty is to grapple with every question, to persevere, to be resolved on making progress, and then to wait for that familiarity which converts all right action into a pleasure. It will not be long before it arrives, casting upon the study a flood of light, and inspiring an ardent passion for excellence. To be without such passion and to put up with the ordinary type of life because one is driven from philosophy by a lack of mettle, is to be a miserable or cowardly creature.
We may also expect that at first the argumentation will prove somewhat difficult for young and inexperienced students to understand. For the most part, however, the obscurity and want of comprehension are due to themselves. Opposite dispositions |D| lead to the same mistake. Thus one class, through bashfulness and a desire to spare the teacher, will shrink from putting questions and making sure of the argument, and will ostensibly assent as if they quite understood. The others, led by misplaced ambition and meaningless rivalry to make a show of cleverness and quickness, pretend to have mastered a thing before they take it in, and so will not take it in at all. The consequence is that when the former—the modest and silent kind—go home, they will worry themselves with their perplexities, and in the end they will be driven perforce to trouble the speaker by harking back with their questions at a later date, when they will feel still more ashamed. Meanwhile the bold and ambitious kind will be perpetually cloaking their ignorance and hiding the fact that it haunts them.
Let us then thrust aside all this pretentious silliness, and march |E| on towards learning. Let our business be to get an intelligent grasp upon valuable instruction. And let us put up with the laughter of those who are thought to be clever. Remember how Cleanthes and Xenocrates, though to all appearance slower than their fellow-pupils, refused to give up or run away from their studies. On the contrary, they were the first to joke at their own expense, comparing themselves to a narrow-necked bottle or a brass tablet, inasmuch as, though slow at taking their instruction in, they were safe and sure at retaining it. Not only must we, as Phocylides puts it,
Oft-times be baulked of our hope while seeking to come unto goodness;
we must also ‘oft-times’ be laughed at, and bear with scoffing |F| and jeering, meanwhile putting all our heart and energy into winning the struggle against our ignorance.