Orations

⁵⁰ Now, if we were to speak gently to one of them, advancing, as follows, step by step in argument: “Tell me, my good sir, do you call dancing anything, and flute-playing?” “Certainly,” they would say. “What then of wisdom and being wise, which we venture to define as a knowledge of things divine and human?” This also they will admit. “Are then these accomplishments better than and superior to wisdom, or wisdom by far better than these?” “Better even than all things,” I know well that they will say.

Up to this point they are judicious. “Well, dancing and flute-playing require to be taught and learned, a process which takes time, and much toil in the sweat of the brow, and sometimes the payment of fees, and entreaties for initiation, and long absence from home, and all else which must be done and borne for the acquisition of experience: but as for wisdom, which is chief of all things, and holds in her embrace everything which is good, so that even God himself prefers this title to all the names which He is called; are we to suppose that it is a matter of such slight consequence, and so accessible, that we need but wish, and we would be wise?”

“It would be utter folly to do so.” If we, or any learned and prudent man, were to say this to them, and try by degrees to cleanse them from their error, it would be sowing upon rocks, and speaking to ears of men who will not hear: so far are they from being even wise enough to perceive their own ignorance. And we may rightly, in my opinion, apply to them the saying of Solomon: There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, a man wise in his own conceit; and a still greater evil is to charge with the instruction of others a man who is not even aware of his own ignorance.