What is the matter presented to us about which we are inquiring?  Pleasure (for example).  Subject it to the rule, throw it into the balance.  Ought the good to be such a thing that it is fit that we have confidence in it?  Yes.  And in which we ought to confide?  It ought to be.  Is it fit to trust to anything which is insecure?  No.  Is then pleasure anything secure?  No.  Take it then and throw it out of the scale, and drive it far away from the place of good things.  But if you are not sharp-sighted, and one balance is not enough for you, bring another.  Is it fit to be elated over what is good?  Yes.  Is it proper then to be elated over present pleasure?  See that you do not say that it is proper; but if you do, I shall then not think you worthy even of the balance.  Thus things are tested and weighed when the rules are ready.  And to philosophize is this, to examine and confirm the rules; and then to use them when they are known is the act of a wise and good man.

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Of disputation or discussion.—­What things a man must learn in order to be able to apply the art of disputation, has been accurately shown by our philosophers (the Stoics); but with respect to the proper use of the things, we are entirely without practice.  Only give to any of us, whom you please, an illiterate man to discuss with, and he cannot discover how to deal with the man.  But when he has moved the man a little, if he answers beside the purpose, he does not know how to treat him, but he then either abuses or ridicules him, and says, He is an illiterate man; it is not possible to do anything with him.  Now a guide, when he has found a man out of the road, leads him into the right way; he does not ridicule or abuse him and then leave him.  Do you also show the illiterate man the truth, and you will see that he follows.  But so long as you do not show him the truth, do not ridicule him, but rather feel your own incapacity.

Now this was the first and chief peculiarity of Socrates, never to be irritated in argument, never to utter anything abusive, anything insulting, but to bear with abusive persons and to put an end to the quarrel.  If you would know what great power he had in this way, read the Symposium of Xenophon, and you will see how many quarrels he put an end to.  Hence with good reason in the poets also this power is most highly praised: 

  Quickly with skill he settles great disputes. 
  Hesiod, Theogony, v. 87.

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On anxiety (solicitude).—­When I see a man anxious, I say, What does this man want?  If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he be anxious?  For this reason a lute player when he is singing by himself has no anxiety, but when he enters the theatre, he is anxious, even if he has a good voice and plays well on the lute; for he not only wishes to sing well, but also to obtain