tiook 1.1 Afcws AND LEARNING Fi.ouRisrt TOGETHER. o3 



letters, the pre-eminence in which, he freely assigns to the 

 Grecians. 



&quot; Tu regere imperio populos, Romane memento : 

 Hae tibi erunt artes. Jn. vi. 851. 



And \ve also observe that Anytus, the accuser of Socrates, 

 charged him in his impeachment with destroying, in the 

 minds of young men, by his rhetorical arts, all authority and 

 reverence for the laws of the country. 11 



1. But these and the like imputations have rather a show 

 of gravity, than any just ground ; for experience shows that 

 learning and arms have flourished in the same persons and 

 ages. As to persons, there are no better instances than 

 Alexander and Caesar, the one Aristotle s scholar in philo 

 sophy, and the other Cicero s rival in eloquence ; and again, 

 Epaminondas and Xenophon, the one whereof first abated 

 the power of Sparta, and the other first paved the way 

 for subverting the Persian monarchy. This concurrence 

 of learning and arms, is yet more visible in times than 

 in persons, as an age exceeds a mar*. For in Egypt, 

 Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Home, the times most famous 

 for arms are likewise most admired for learning ; so 

 that the greatest authors and philosophers, the greatest 

 leaders and governors, have lived in the same ages. Nor 

 can it well be otherwise ; for as the fulness of human 

 strength, both in body and mind, comes nearly at an age ; 

 so arms and learning, one whereof corresponds to the body, 

 the other to the soul, have a near concurrence in point of 

 time. 



2. And that learning should rather prove detrimental 

 than serviceable in the art of government, seems very 

 improbable. It is wrong to trust the natural body to 

 empirics, who commonly have a few receipts whereon they 

 rely, but who know neither the causes of diseases, nor the 

 constitutions of patients, nor the danger of accidents, nor the 

 true methods of cure. And so it must needs be dangerous 

 to have the civil body of states managed by empirical states 

 men, unless well mixed with others who are grounded in learn 

 ing. On the contrary, it is almost without instance, that 

 any government was unprosperous under learned governors 



Plato, Apol. Soa 

 2 L, 



