What in his house is well or ill-designed,his house being his own body. You shall see manyspectators at that play where their charges are defrayed out of the public stock, as they do at Athens. Now among all the liberal arts, medicine not only contains so neat and large a field of pleasure as to give place to none, but she pays plentifully the charges of those who delight in the study of her by giving them health and safety; so that it ought not to be called transgressing the bounds of a philosopher to dispute about those things which relate to health, but rather, all bounds being laid aside, we ought to pursue our studies in the same common field, and so enjoy both the pleasure and the profit of them. MOSCHIO. But to pass by Glaucus, who with his pretended gravity would be thought to be so perfect as not to stand in need of philosophy,—do you, if you please, run through the whole discourse, and first, those things which you say were not so exactly handled and which Glaucus carped at.
2
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MOSCHIO. And you, Zeuxippus, diverted Glaucus the
physician from entering into a philosophical discourse with
you yesterday.
ZEUXIPPUS. I did not hinder him in the least, friend
Moschio, it was he that would not discourse in philosophy.
But I feared and avoided giving so contentious a man any
opportunity of discourse; for though in physic the man
has (as Homer1 expresses it) an excellency before most of
his profession, yet in philosophy he is not altogether so
candid, but indeed so rude in all his disputations, that he
is hardly to be borne with, flying (as it were) at us open
mouthed. So that it is neither an easy nor indeed a just
thing, that we should bear those confusions in terms he
makes, when we are disputing about a wholesome diet.
Besides, he maintains that the bounds of philosophy and
medicine are as distinct as those of the Mysians and Phrygians. And taking hold of some of those things we were
discoursing of, perhaps not with all exactness, yet not
without some profit, he made scurrilous reflections on
them.
MOSCHIO. But I am ready, Zeuxippus, to hear those
and the other things you shall discourse of, with a great
deal of pleasure.
[p. 252]
ZEUXIPPUS. You have naturally a philosophical genius,
Moschio, and are troubled to see a philosopher have no
kindness for the study of medicine. You are uneasy that
he should think it concerns him more to study geometry,
logic, and music, than to be desirous to understand
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 1.
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