er taught to live well, like Socrates; for, in his
whole life, he was an example of untainted probity; and in his discourses
he spoke of virtue and of all the duties of man in a manner that made him
admired of all his hearers. And I know too very well that Critias and
Alcibiades lived very virtuously as long as they frequented him; not that
they were afraid of him, but because they thought it most conducive to
their designs to live so at that time.

Many who pretend to philosophy will here object, that a virtuous person
is always virtuous, and that when a man has once come to be good and
temperate, he will never afterwards become wicked nor dissolute; because
habitudes that can be acquired, when once they are so, can never more be
effaced from the mind. But I am not of this opinion; for as they who use
no bodily exercises are awkward and unwieldy in the actions of the body,
so they who exercise not their minds are incapable of the noble actions
of the mind, and have not courage enough to undertake anything worthy of
praise, nor command enough over themselves to abstain from things that
are forbid. For this reason, parents, though they be well enough assured
of the good natural disposition of their children, fail not to forbid
them the conversation of the vicious, because it is the ruin of worthy
dispositions, whereas the conversation of good men is a continual
meditation of virtue. Thus a poet says,

"By those whom we frequent, we're ever led:
Example is a law by all obeyed.
Thus with the good, we are to good inclined,
But vicious company corrupts the mind."

And another in like manner:

"Virtue and vice in the same man are found,
And now they gain, and now they lose their ground."

And, in my opinion, they are in the right: for when I consider that they
who have learned verses by heart forget them unless they repeat them
often, so I believe that they who neglect the reasonings of philosophers,
insensibly lose the remembrance of them; and when they have let these
excellent notions slip out of their minds, they at the same time lose the
idea of the things that supported in the soul the love of temperance;
and, having forgot those things, what wonder is it if at length they
forget temperance likewise?

I observe, besides, that men who abandon themselves to the debauches of
wine or women find it more difficult to apply themselves to things that
are profitable, and to abstain from what is hurtfu