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men. In that case, however, who could rival the dealers and booksellers for learning, who possess and sell so many books? But if you care to look into the matter, you will see that they are not much superior to you in that point; they are barbarous of speech and obtuse in mind like you—just what one would expect people to be who have no conception of what is good and bad. Yet you have only two or three books which they themselves have sold you, while they handle books night and day. What good, then, does it do you to buy them—unless you think that even the book-cases are learned because they contain so many of the works of the ancients!

Answer me this question, if you will—or better, as you are unable to answer, nod or shake your head in reply. If aman who did not know how to play the flute should buy the instrument of Timotheus or that of Ismenias,^[1] for which Ismenias paid seven talents in Corinth, would that make him able to play, or would it do him no good to own it since he did not know how to use it as a musician would? You did well to shake your head. Even if he obtained the flute of Marsyas or Olympus, he could not play without previous instruction. And what if a man should get the bow of Heracles without being a Philoctetes so as to be able to draw it and shoot straight? What do you think about him? That he would make any showing worthy of an archer? You shake your head at this, too. So, of course, with a man who does not know how to steer, and one who has not practised riding; if the one should take the helm of a fine vessel, finely constructed in every detail both for beauty and for seaworthiness, and the other should