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ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
But some things are to be read so that they may not be unknown, others indeed so that they may not be unheard of, because sometimes we believe a thing we have not heard of to be of greater worth, and a thing is more easily esteemed whose fruit is recognized. You can now see how necessary to you is this humility, that you may hold no knowledge cheap and may gladly learn from all. Likewise it is also expedient for you that, when you have begun to know something, you should not despise others. Now this vice of swelling befalls certain men from this, that they inspect their own knowledge too diligently, and when they have seemed to themselves to be something, they think that others, whom they have not known, neither are nor could become such.
Hence too it boils over, that certain triflers now, boasting from I know not what source, accuse the earlier fathers of simplicity, and believe that wisdom was born with them and will die with them. In the divine words, they say, the manner of speaking is so simple that in them there is no need to hear masters, and each one can sufficiently penetrate the secrets of truth by his own talent. They wrinkle their noses and twist their lips in mockery at the readers of divinity, and do not understand that they do injury to God, whose words they proclaim to be simple indeed by a beautiful term, but insipid by a depraved sense. It is not my counsel to imitate men of this sort.
For a good reader ought to be humble and meek, wholly estranged from vain cares and from the enticements of pleasures, diligent and zealous, so that he may gladly learn from all, never presume upon his own knowledge, flee the authors of perverse dogma as if they were poisons, learn to handle a matter long before he judges it, seek not to seem learned but to be so, love the sayings of the wise once understood, and ever study to hold them before his eyes as the mirror of his own countenance. And if perhaps certain more obscure things have not admitted his understanding, let him not at once burst forth into reproach, so as to believe nothing good except what he himself has been able to understand. This is the humility of the discipline of readers. On the zeal of inquiring.
The zeal for inquiry belongs to practice, in which the reader needs encouragement rather than instruction. For whoever is willing to examine diligently what the ancients endured for the love of wisdom, and how memorable were the monuments of their virtue which they left to posterity, will see his own diligence to be inferior to theirs. Some trampled honors underfoot, some cast away riches, some rejoiced when they received injuries, some scorned punishments; some, abandoning the company of men and penetrating the remotest recesses and secret places of the desert, dedicated themselves to philosophy alone, that they might be more free for contemplation, in that they had subjected their mind to none of those desires which are wont to hinder the path of virtue.
The philosopher Parmenides is said to have sat for fifteen years upon a rock in Egypt. And Prometheus, on account of his immoderate eagerness for meditation, is reported to have been exposed to the vulture on Mount Caucasus. For because they knew that the true good lay hidden not in the esteem of men but in a pure conscience, and that those were no longer men who, cleaving to perishable things, did not recognize their own good, therefore they showed by the very distance of their places how far they differed from the rest in mind and understanding, lest one dwelling should hold those whom one and the same purpose did not unite. A certain man said to a philosopher: 「Do you not see that men mock you?」 And he replied: 「They mock me, and the asses mock them.」
Consider, if you can, how greatly he valued being praised by those by whom he did not even fear to be reproached. Of another it is read again that after all the studies of the disciplines and the refinements of the arts he descended to the work of a potter. And when the disciples of yet another extolled their master with praises, among other things they gloried that he was not even without skill in shoemaking. This diligence, then, I should wish to be present in our readers, that wisdom might never grow old in them. Abishag the Shunammite alone warmed the aged David, because the love of wisdom does not abandon its lover even when the body withers. Almost all the powers of the body are altered in old men, and while wisdom alone grows, the rest decline.
For the old age of those who have furnished their youth with honorable deeds becomes more learned with age, more grave through practice, wiser with the passage of time, and reaps the sweetest fruits of its former studies. Whence also that wise man of Greece, Themistocles, when, after fulfilling one hundred and seven years, he saw himself about to die, is reported to have said that he grieved to depart from life just when he had begun to be wise. Plato died while writing in his eighty-first year. Socrates filled up ninety-nine years in the toil, labor, and pain of teaching and writing. I pass over the other philosophers, Pythagoras, Democritus, Xenocrates, Zeno, and Cleanthes, who, already of great age, flourished in the studies of wisdom.
I come to the poets, Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, Stesichorus, who, being far advanced in years, sang I know not what swan-like song, sweeter than usual, as death drew near. Sophocles, when, after extreme old age and neglect of his household affairs, he was accused of madness by his sons, recited to the judge the tale of Oedipus, which he had recently written, and gave such a proof of wisdom in his now broken age that he turned the severity of the tribunal into the applause of a theater. Nor is it wonderful, since even Cato the Censor, the most eloquent of the Roman race, did not blush nor despair, when already an old man, to learn Greek letters. Surely Homer relates that from the tongue of Nestor, already aged and almost decrepit, speech flowed sweeter than honey.
Mark, then, how greatly those loved wisdom whom not even decrepit age could call away from its pursuit. This great love of wisdom, then, this great abundance of prudence in the aged, is fittingly gathered also from the interpretation of that aforesaid name itself. For Abishag is interpreted as 「my father is superfluous,」 or 「the roaring of my father,」 by which it is shown that the thunder of divine speech most abundantly, and beyond the human voice, dwells in the aged. For the word 「superfluous」 in this place signifies fullness, not redundancy. Moreover, Shunammite is in our language called 「scarlet,」 which can quite fittingly signify the fervor of wisdom. Concerning the four remaining precepts.
The four that follow are so arranged alternately that one always pertains to discipline, the other to practice. Concerning rest. Rest of life, whether interior, that the mind should not wander through unlawful desires, or exterior, that leisure and opportunity may be available for honorable and useful studies—both pertain to discipline. Concerning scrutiny. But scrutiny, that is, meditation, pertains to practice. Now scrutiny seems to be contained under the zeal for inquiry; and if this is true, it is repeated superfluously, since it was counted in the earlier part. But it must be known that there is this difference between these two: that the zeal for inquiry signifies the perseverance of effort, while scrutiny signifies the diligence of meditation.
Labor and love accomplish the work; care and watchfulness give birth to counsel. In labor it lies that you act, in love that you bring to completion. In care it lies that you provide, in watchfulness that you attend. These are the four attendants who carry the litter of Philology, because they exercise the mind over which wisdom presides. For the chair of Philology is the seat of wisdom, which is said to be borne with these set beneath it, since by exercising itself in these it is advanced. Whence beautifully the young men are said to hold the litter at the front because of their strength, namely 'philos' and 'kophos,' that is, love and labor, because they accomplish the work without; from behind, the maidens, namely 'philemia' and 'agrimnia,' which is interpreted care and watchfulness, because within, in secret, they give birth to counsel.
There are some who think that by the chair of Philology the human body is signified, over which the rational soul presides, which four servants carry, that is, the four elements compose; of which the two upper, namely fire and air, are masculine in act and in name, while the two lower, namely earth and water, are feminine. Concerning frugality. He also wished to persuade poverty to readers, that is, not to pursue superfluous things, which pertains especially to discipline. For a fat belly, as is said, does not beget a fine intellect. But what will the scholars of our time be able to answer to this, who not only despise to follow frugality in their studies, but even strive to appear wealthier than they are?
And now each one no longer boasts of what he has learned, but of what he has spent. But perhaps it is because they are unwilling to imitate their masters, of whom I find nothing that I might say worthily enough. Concerning exile. Finally, a foreign land is set forth, which also itself exercises a man. The whole world is an exile to those who philosophize, because nevertheless, as a certain one says: 「By I know not what sweetness one's native soil draws all men, and does not allow them to be unmindful of itself.」 It is a great beginning of virtue that the mind, gradually trained, should first learn to exchange these visible and transitory things, that afterward it may even be able to forsake them. He is still delicate to whom his fatherland is sweet; but he is already strong to whom every soil is a fatherland;
but he is perfect to whom the whole world is an exile. The first has fixed his love on the world, the second has scattered it, the third has extinguished it. I from boyhood have been an exile, and I know with what sorrow the mind sometimes leaves the cramped floor of a poor hut, and with what freedom it afterward looks down upon marble dwellings and paneled ceilings.