17. It is in the company of those who are acquainted with truth, that you loosen the bonds of your worldly errors; just as darkness is dispelled by light, and the night recedes from before the advancing of the day.
18. Make it the duty of your whole life, to argue with the learned, concerning such like topics, as “what am I,” and what are these visible objects; what is life and what this living soul, and how and whence they come into existence.
19. The world is seen to be full of animal life, and I find my egoism is lost in it; the truth of all this is learnt in a moment in the society of the learned, therefore betake thyself to the company of those luminaries of truth.
20. Resort one by one to all those that are wiser than thee in the knowledge of truth, and by investigation into their different doctrines, the spectre of your controversy (i.e. error), will disappear for ever. (Because the maxim says, “as many heads so many minds, and as many mouths so many verdicts”, therefore examine them all and glean the truth).
21. As the spectre of controversy rises before the learned, in the manner of an apparition appearing before boys; so the error of egoism rises before them, in their attempt to maintain their respective arguments.
22. Let therefore the diligent inquirer after truth, attend separately to the teaching of every professor of particular doctrines; and then taking them together, let him consider in his own mind, the purport of their several preachings.
23. Let him weigh well in his own mind, the meanings of their several sayings, for the sharpening of his own reasoning, and accept the doctrine which is free from the flights of imagination and all earthly views.
24. Having sharpened your understanding by associating with the wise, do you cut short the growth of the plant of your ignorance by degrees, and by little and little (lit.—bit by bit).
25. I tell you to do so, because I know it is possible to you to do so; we tell you boys, accordingly as we have well known anything, and never speak what is improper or impracticable to you.
26. As the gathering or dispersion of the clouds in the sky, and the rising and sinking of the breakers in the sea, is no gain or loss to either, so the attainment or bereavement of any good whatever, is of no concern to the unconcerned sage or saint.