Chapter VI.—Further Distinctions, and Crowning Glory, of the Pallium.

“‘With speech,’ says (my antagonist), ‘you have tried to persuade me,—a most sage medicament.’  But, albeit utterance be mute—impeded by infancy or else checked by bashfulness, for life is content with an even tongueless philosophy—my very cut is eloquent.  A philosopher, in fact, is heard so long as he is seen.  My very sight puts vices to the blush.  Who suffers not, when he sees his own rival?  Who can bear to gaze ocularly at him at whom mentally he cannot?  Grand is the benefit conferred by the Mantle, at the thought whereof moral improbity absolutely blushes.  Let philosophy now see to the question of her own profitableness; for she is not the only associate whom I boast.  Other scientific arts of public utility I boast.  From my store are clothed the first teacher of the forms of letters, the first explainer of their sounds, the first trainer in the rudiments of arithmetic, the grammarian, the rhetorician, the sophist, the medical man, the poet, the musical timebeater, the astrologer, and the birdgazer.  All that is liberal in studies is covered by my four angles.  ‘True; but all these rank lower than Roman knights’  Well; but your gladiatorial trainers, and all their ignominious following, are conducted into the arena in togas.  This, no doubt, will be the indignity implied in ‘From gown to Mantle!’”  Well, so speaks the Mantle.  But I confer on it likewise a fellowship with a divine sect and discipline.  Joy, Mantle, and exult!  A better philosophy has now deigned to honour thee, ever since thou hast begun to be a Christian’s vesture!

CAPUT VI.

Sermone, inquit, me suasisti, medicamine sapientissimo. Verum, et si eloquium quiescat aut infantia subductum aut verecundia retentum, nam et elinguis philosophia vita contenta est, ipse habitus 1049B sonat. Sic denique auditur philosophus, dum videtur. De occursu meo vitia suffundo. Quis 1050A non aemulum suum cum videt, patitur? Quis oculis in eum potest, in quem mentibus non potest? Grande pallii beneficium est, sub cujus recogitatu improbi mores vel erubescunt. Viderit nunc philosophia quid prosit: nec enim sola mecum est. Habeo et alias artes in publico utiles. De meo vestiuntur et primus informator literatum, et primus edomator vocis, et primus numerorum arenarius, et grammaticus, et rhetor, et sophista, et medicus, et poeta, et qui musicam pulsat, et qui stellarem conjectat, et qui volaticam spectat. Omnis liberalitas studiorum quatuor meis angulis tegitur. Plane post romanos equites, verum et accendones, et omnis gladiorum ignominia togata producitur. Haec nimirum indignitas erit, a toga ad pallium, sed ista pallium loquitur. At ego jam illi etiam divinae sectae ac disciplinae commercium confero. Gaude, pallium, et 1050B exulta, melior jam te philosophia dignata est, ex quo christianum vestire coepisti.