prejudice his position, for it is not considered disgraceful among
the Greeks.'*
I have always thought it unreasonable to condemn this
amusement, and unjust to refuse entrance into our large cities
to actors who are worth seeing, thus begrudging the populace
a public entertainment. Wise administrators take care to assemble
and unite their citizens, not only for the serious duties of
religion, but for sports and spectacles as well, to the enhancement
of good-fellowship and friendship among them. And no
more orderly amusements could be found for them than those
that take place with everyone present and beneath the eye of the
magistrate himself For my part, I should think it reasonable if
the magistrate and the prince were sometimes to give the
people a show at their own expense, out of paternal kindness
and affection, and if in populous cities there should be places
appointed and set apart for these spectacles - as a diversion from
worse actions performed in secret.
To return to my subject, there is nothing like tempting the
appetite and the interest; otherwise we shall produce only book-laden
asses. With strokes of the birch we put a pocketful of
learning into our pupils' keeping, But if it is to be of any use, it
should not merely be kept within. It should be indissolubly
wedded to the mind.
‘It is perhaps not without reason that we consider credulity and the readiness to be persuaded to be signs of simplicity and ignorance. For once I was taught, I think, that belief is like an impression made upon the mind, and that the softer and less resistant the mind, the easier it is to impress something upon it… The emptier a mind is, and the less counterpoise it has, the more easily it sinks under the weight of the first argument. That is why children, the common people, women and the sick are particularly apt to be led by the ears. But then, on the other hand, it is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd. I used to be like that once, and if I heard talk of ghosts walking, or prognostications of future events, of enchantments or sorceries, or some other tale that I could not swallow,