BOOK III. II. 6-12
and sophisms like The Liar.[1]—Of course, he says, even when a man is engaged in subjects of this kind he has to preserve his freedom from deception.—But what kind of a man ought to engage in them?—Only the one who is already good and excellent.—Do you, then, fall short in this? Have you already attained perfection in the other subjects? Are you proof against deception in handling small change? If you see a pretty wench, do you resist the sense-impression? If your neighbour receives an inheritance, do you not feel a twinge of envy? And is security of judgement now the only thing in which you fall short? Wretch, even while you are studying these very topics you tremble and are worried for fear someone despises you, and you ask whether anybody is saying anything about you. 10And if someone should come and say, "A discussion arising as to who was the best of the philosophers, someone who was there said that So-and-so was the only real philosopher," immediately your poor little one-inch soul shoots up a yard high.[2] But if another party to the discussion says, "Nonsense, it's a waste of time to listen to So-and-so. Why, what does he know? He has the rudiments, but nothing else," you are beside yourself, you grow pale, immediately you shout, "I'll show him who I am, that I am a great philosopher!" Yet we see what a man is by just such conduct. Why do you wish to show it by anything else? Do you not know that Diogenes[3] showed one of the sophists thus, pointing out his middle finger at him,[4] and then when the man was furious with rage, remarked, "That's So-and-so; I've pointed him out to you." For a man is not some-
- ↑ i.e., if a man says he is lying, is he really lying, or telling the truth? See II. 17, 34, and note. Ψευδομένους is used without the article, as in II. 21, 17.
- ↑ Literally, "from a finger's breadth (.7 in.) to two cubits."
- ↑ See Diogenes Laertius, 6. 34, who says that Demosthenes was the man thus pointed at.
- ↑ Regarded in antiquity as an insulting gesture.
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