CHAPTER I Public discourses require much labour and study
CHAPTER I
Public discourses require much labour and study
449. I have sufficiently shown how much experience a teacher must have in contests for the truth. And I have besides something else to mention as the cause of ten thousand perils; or rather, I would not say it is the cause, but those who know not how to use it aright. Yet this very thing is the promoter of salvation and of many benefits, when it finds zealous and good men as its dispensers. What then is it? The great labour which should be expended upon public discourses to the people.
450. For, in the first place, the greater part of those who are placed under them, will not have regard to those who speak, as really teachers, but mistaking the position of disciples, they assume that of the lookers-on who are seated at worldly spectacles. And just as the multitude is there divided, and some attach themselves to this man and others to that; so also here, are they divided, and some follow one, and some another, hearing what is spoken in favour or in hate.
451. This is not the only annoyance; but there is another not inferior to it. For if it happens that any speaker should in his discourses interweave any thing which has been composed by others, he suffers more reproaches than those who plunder our possessions. And frequently when he has taken nothing from anybody, but is only suspected, he suffers the same as those who have been convicted. And why do I mention things composed by others? he cannot perpetually use his own productions.
452. The majority are wont to listen, not for profit, but for amusement, like those who sit in judgment on actors and musicians. Hence that ability to speak which we so lately repudiated, becomes more desirable here than to the very sophists when summoned to contend with one another.