Episode 10

We say also that the name is not a thing of permanence for any ofthem, and that nothing prevents the things now called round from beingcalled straight, and the straight things round; for those who makechanges and call things by opposite names, nothing will be lesspermanent (than a name). Again with regard to the definition, if it ismade up of names and verbal forms, the same remark holds that there isno sufficiently durable permanence in it. And there is no end to theinstances of the ambiguity from which each of the four suffers; butthe greatest of them is that which we mentioned a little earlier,that, whereas there are two things, that which has real being, andthat which is only a quality, when the soul is seeking to know, notthe quality, but the essence, each of the four, presenting to the soulby word and in act that which it is not seeking (i.e., the quality), athing open to refutation by the senses, being merely the thingpresented to the soul in each particular case whether by statementor the act of showing, fills, one may say, every man with puzzlementand perplexity.

Now in subjects in which, by reason of our defective education, wehave not been accustomed even to search for the truth, but aresatisfied with whatever images are presented to us, we are not held upto ridicule by one another, the questioned by questioners, who canpull to pieces and criticise the four things. But in subjects where wetry to compel a man to give a clear answer about the fifth, any one ofthose who are capable of overthrowing an antagonist gets the better ofus, and makes the man, who gives an exposition in speech or writing orin replies to questions, appear to most of his hearers to know nothingof the things on which he is attempting to write or speak; for theyare sometimes not aware that it is not the mind of the writer orspeaker which is proved to be at fault, but the defective nature ofeach of the four instruments. The process however of dealing withall of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, doesafter much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledgeof that which is well constituted. But if a man is ill-constitutedby nature (as the state of the soul is naturally in the majorityboth in its capacity for learning and in what is called moralcharacter)-or it may have become so by deterioration-not evenLynceus could endow such men with the power of sight.

In one word, the man who has no natural kinship with this mattercannot be made akin to it by quickness of learning or memory; for itcannot be engendered at all in natures which are foreign to it.

Therefore, if men are not by nature kinship allied to justice andall other things that are honourable, though they may be good atlearning and remembering other knowledge of various kinds-or if theyhave the kinship but are slow learners and have no memory-none ofall these will ever learn to the full the truth about virtue and vice.

For both must be learnt together; and together also must be learnt, bycomplete and long continued study, as I said at the beginning, thetrue and the false about all that has real being. After much effort,as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are broughtinto contact and friction one with another, in the course ofscrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question andanswer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forthunderstanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose effortsreach the furthest limits of human powers. Therefore every man ofworth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposingthem to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committingthem to writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this that, ifone sees written treatises composed by anyone, either the laws of alawgiver, or in any other form whatever, these are not for that manthe things of most worth, if he is a man of worth, but that histreasures are laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But ifthese things were worked at by him as things of real worth, andcommitted to writing, then surely, not gods, but men "havethemselves bereft him of his wits."Anyone who has followed this discourse and digression will know wellthat, if Dionysios or anyone else, great or small, has written atreatise on the highest matters and the first principles of things, hehas, so I say, neither heard nor learnt any sound teaching about thesubject of his treatise; otherwise, he would have had the samereverence for it, which I have, and would have shrunk from puttingit forth into a world of discord and uncomeliness. For he wrote it,not as an aid to memory-since there is no risk of forgetting it, ifa man's soul has once laid hold of it; for it is expressed in theshortest of statements-but if he wrote it at all, it was from a meancraving for honour, either putting it forth as his own invention, orto figure as a man possessed of culture, of which he was not worthy,if his heart was set on the credit of possessing it. If then Dionysiosgained this culture from the one lesson which he had from me, we mayperhaps grant him the possession of it, though how he acquiredit-God wot, as the Theban says; for I gave him the teaching, which Ihave described, on that one occasion and never again.

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