Be cautious also how you ask questions yourself, or ask too often; for that betrays somewhat of conceit and ostentation. But to wait civilly while another proposes his scruples argues a studious spiritand willingness that others should be informed, unless some sudden perturbation of mind require to be repressed or some distemper to be assuaged. For perhaps, as Heraclitus says, it is an ill thing to conceal even a man’s ignorance; it must be laid open, that the remedy may be applied. So also if anger or superstition or a violent quarrel with your domestics or the mad passion of love, — Which doth the very heart-strings move, That ne’er were stirred before, — excite any commotion in your mind, you are not, for fear of being galled by reproof, to fly to such as are treating.of other arguments: but you must frequent those places where your particular case is stating, and after lecture address yourself privately to the speaker for better information and fuller satisfaction therein. On the contrary, men commonly flatter themselves, and admire the philosopher so long as he discourses of indifferent things; but if he come home to themselves and deal freely with them about their real interests, this they think is beyond all enduring, or at best a needless piece of supererogation. For they naturally think that they ought to hear philosophy in the schools, like actors on the stage, while in matters out of the school they believe them to be no better men than themselves; and, to confess the truth, they have but reason to think so of many Sophists, who, having once left the desk and laid aside their books, in the serious concerns of human life are utterly insignificant and even more ignorant than the vulgar. But they do not know that even the austerity or raillery of real philosophers, their very nod or look, their smile or frown, and especially their admonitions directed to particular persons, are of weighty importance to such as can brook or attend to them.