Lo! from that prison, which he purified by entering it and made more honorable than any senate house, Socrates cries out: “What madness is this, what instinct is this at war with gods and men that leads you to calumniate the virtues and by your wicked talk to profane holy things? If you are able, praise the good, if not, ignore them; but if you take pleasure in indulging in your foul abuse, assail you one another. For when you rage against heaven I do not say, ‘You are committing sacrilege,’ but ‘You are wasting your time.’ I once afforded Aristophanes [56] subject matter for his jokes, the whole company of comic poets has poured upon me their envenomed wit. Yet their very efforts to assail my virtue added to its luster; for if profits from being exposed and tested, and none understand better how great it is than those who have perceived its strength by attacking it. None know better the hardness of flint than those who strike it. I show myself like some lonely rock in the sea, which the waves never cease to beat upon from whatever quarter they have come, yet for all that they cannot move it from its base nor wear it away by their ceaseless attack through countless ages. Leap upon me, make your assault; I shall conquer you by enduring. Whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable expends its power to its own hurt. Accordingly, seek some soft and yielding object in which to stick your darts.”
But as for you, have you the leisure to search out others’ evils and to pass judgment upon anybody? “Why does this philosopher have such a spacious house?” “Why does this one dine so sumptuously?” you say. You look at the pimples of others when you yourselves are covered with a mass of sores. This is just as if someone who was devoured by a foul itch should mock at the moles [57] and the warts on bodies that are most beautiful. Taunt Plato [58] because he sought for money, Aristotle because he accepted it, Democritus because he disregarded it, Epicurus because he spent it; fling Alcibiades [59] and Phaedrus in my own teeth — though it will prove your happiest time when you are so fortunate as to copy my vices! Why do you not rather look about you at your own sins that rend you on every side, some assailing you from without, others raging in your very vitals. Human affairs — even if you have insufficient knowledge of your own position — have not yet reached the situation in which you may have such superfluity of spare time as to find leisure to wag your tongue in abusing your betters.