Plutarch Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus 8

[8] Observe, then, not only when you are perusing the writings of philosophers and listening to their discourses, whether you do not give more attention to the mere language than to the subject matter, and whether you are not more on the alert for passages which involve something difficult and odd rather than for those which convey something useful, substantial, and beneficial; moreover, when you are busying yourself with poems and history, you must watch yourself to see whether anything escapes you among the ideas which are suitably expressed and tend to improvement of character or alleviation of emotion. For as Simonides ¹ says of the bee that it flits among the flowers, while the rest of the world contents itself with their colour and fragrance, getting nothing else from them, so, while the rest of the world ranges amid poems for the sake of pleasure or diversion, if a man, through his own initiative, finds and collects something worth while, it is reasonable to expect that he at last, from force of habit and fondness for what is beautiful and appropriate, has made himself capable of appreciating it. In the case, for example, of persons who make use of Plato and Xenophon for their language, and gather therefrom nothing else but the purity of the Attic style, like dew and bloom, what can you say of them, save that they are the sort of persons that content themselves with the sweet odour and bouquet of medicines, but have no desire for their sedative and purgative virtues, nor the power to discern them ? But those who are making still more and more progress are always able to derive benefit, not only from what is said, but also from what is seen and done, and to gather what is appropriate and useful therefrom. Examples are found in the stories told of Aeschylus and of others like him. Aeschylus at the Isthmian games was watching a boxing-match, and when one of the men was hit the crowd in the theatre burst into a roar. Aeschylus nudged Ion of Chios, and said, You see what a thing training is; the man who is hit says nothing; it is the spectators who shout. ² Brasidas caught a mouse among some dried figs, got bitten, and let it go; thereupon he said to himself, Heavens, there is nothing so small or weak that it will not save its life if it has courage to defend itself. ³ Diogenes ⁴ at the first sight of a man drinking from his hands took his cup from his wallet and threw it away. Thus attention and intense application makes persons perceptive and receptive of anything that conduces to virtue, from whatever source it come. This is more apt to be the case if they combine theory with practice, not only, as Thucydides ⁵ said, carrying on their practice amid dangers, but also when confronted by pleasures or contentions, and when busy over lawsuits and pleadings at court and the conduct of public offices, thus, as it were, giving themselves a demonstration of their convictions, or rather arriving at their convictions by putting them to a practical test; whereas, those who are still studying, and busily looking to see what they can get from philosophy which they can straightway haul out for display in the Forum, or at a gathering of young men, or at an evening party at Court, ought not to be thought to practise philosophy any more than apothecaries are to be thought to practise medicine; or rather, a charlatan of this sort does not differ at all from the bird described by Homer, ⁶ for whatever he gets he proffers through the mouth to his pupils as to an unfledged brood, if he does not devote to his own advantage, or assimilate at all, anything of what he receives.