Moreover, you have never realised, I suppose, that virtue lies in action, in acting justly and wisely and bravely. While all of you (by “you” I mean the philosophers at the top) neglect these things, and are studying how to find and compose your wretched texts and syllogisms and problems. You spend most of your lives on this, and whoever wins in this race is your Conquering Hero. That, I fancy, is why you admire this teacher of yours, the old man, because he reduces his pupils to perplexity and knows how to question and quibble and cheat and throw into inextricable confusion. So you just throw away the fruit—which has to do with works—and busy yourselves with the husk, in your discussions throwing the leaves over each other. Isn’t that what you all do, Hermotimus, from dawn till dusk?

Yes, just that.

Then wouldn’t it be right to say that you forget the substance and hunt the shadow, or ignore the crawling serpent and hunt the slough? Yes, and that you are like a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle who thinks that he is doing essential and productive work, not knowing that although you bray your arms off, as they say, water is still water?

Now here let me ask you if, leaving aside his talk, you would care to be like your teacher. Would you care to be so irritable, so mean, so quarrelsome, yes, and so fond of pleasure, even if people don’t think it? Why don’t you speak, Hermotimus? Shall I tell you what I heard the other day from a very old man who spoke in defence of some philosophy or other? Quite a number of young men keep him company to learn his wisdom, and he was in a temper as he demanded payment from one of his pupils, saying that it was overdue and that the day had gone by: the debt ought to have been paid sixteen days before on the last day of the month, according to the agreement.