BOOK I.] OBJECTIONS TO LEARNED MEN REFUTED. 39 



very depraved dispositions, have, in conformity with fcho 

 adage, " Abire studia in mores," a moral influence upon men's 

 lives. For my part I cannot find that any disgrace to learn- 

 ing can proceed from the habits of learned men, inherent in 

 them as learned, miless peradventure that may be a fault 

 which was attributed to Demosthenes, Cicero, the second Cato, 

 and many others, that seeing the times they read of more 

 pure than their own, pushed their servility too far in the 

 reformation of manners, and to seek to impose, by austere 

 precepts, the laws of ancient asceticism upon dissolute times. 

 Yet even antiquity should have forewarned them of this 

 excess ; for Solon, upon being asked if he had given his citi- 

 zens the best laws, replied, " The best they were capable of 

 receiving." 1 And Plato, finding that he had fallen upon 

 corrupt times, refused to take part in the administration ot 

 the commonwealth, saying that a man should treat his coun- 

 try with the same forbearance as his parents, and recall her 

 from a wrong course, net by violence or contest, but by 

 entreaty and persu£Lsion.™ Caesar's counsellor administers the 

 same caveat in the words, "Non ad vetera instituta revocamu? 

 quae jampridem corruptis moribus ludibrio sunt."^ Cicero 

 points out the same error in the second Cato, when writing 

 to his friend Atticus : — " Cato optime sentit sed nocet 

 interdum Reipublicoe j loquitur enim tanquam in Republica 

 Platonis, non tanquam in fsece Romuli."^ The same orator 

 like^vise excuses and blames the philosophers for being too 

 exact in their precepts. These preceptors, said he, have 

 stretched the lines and limits of duties beyond their natural 

 boundaries, thinking that we might safely reform when we 

 had reached the highest point of perfection.? And yet him- 

 self stumbled over the same stone, so that he might have 

 Baid, " Monitis sum minor ipse meis." 4 



3. Another fault laid to the charge of learned men, and 

 arising from the nature of their studies, is, " That they 

 esteem the preservation, good, and honour of their country 

 before their own fortunes or safeties." Demosthenes said 

 well to the Athenians, " My counsels are not such as tend to 



' Plutarch, Solon. '^ Epist. Z. iii. 331 ; and cf. Ep. T. iii. 316. 



" Sallust, Cat. Conspiracy. " Cicero to Atticus, epis. ii. 1. 



P Oratio pro L. Mursena, xxxi. 65. 

 « " I am unequal to ray teaching."— Ovid, Ars Araandi, n. 548. 



