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Tyc. Quite so. Si. So sponging is an art? Tyc. Apparently. Si. Let me add that I have often known even good navigators and skilful drivers come to grief, resulting with the latter in bruises and with the former in death but no one will tell you of a sponger who ever made shipwreck.
No one will tell you that these sponge this way, and those that; there are no spongers with peculiar principles, to match those of Stoics and Epicureans, that I know of; they are all agreed; their conduct and their end alike harmonious. Sponging, I take it on this showing, is just Wisdom itself. Tyc.
Or if he is by any chance moved to wrath, there is nothing disagreeable or sullen about it; it entertains and amuses merely. As to pain, he has less of that to endure than anybody, one of his profession's recommendations and privileges being just that immunity. He has neither money, house, slave, wife, nor children those hostages to Fortune. He desires neither fame, wealth, nor beauty. Tyc.
Tyc. Out with it, then, as you know. Si. An art, as I once heard a wise man say, is a body of perceptions regularly employed for some useful purpose in human life. Tyc. And he was quite right. Si. So, if sponging has all these marks, it must be an art? Tyc. If, yes. Si.
And if you think I am not sane, put down my innocence of other professions to insanity, and let that be my sufficient excuse. My lady Insanity, they say, is unkind to her votaries in most respects; but at least she excuses their offences, which she makes herself responsible for, like a schoolmaster or tutor. Tyc. So sponging is an art, eh? Si. It is; and I profess it. Tyc. So you are a sponger?
Is said to have been appointed professor of rhetoric at Athens by Commodus purely on account of his mellifluous voice; cf. Section 19. Tychiades. Philocles Tyc. Philocles, what is it that makes most men so fond of a lie? Can you explain it? Their delight in romancing themselves is only equalled by the earnest attention with which they receive other people's efforts in the same direction. Phi.
Why, have you ever known any one with such a strong natural turn for lying? Tyc. Any number of them. Phi. Then I can only say they must be fools, if they really prefer evil to good. Tyc. Oh, that is not it. I could point you out plenty of men of first-rate ability, sensible enough in all other respects, who have somehow picked up this vice of romancing.
I could never have believed that he would lend his countenance to other people's lies, much less that he was capable of such things himself Tyc. My dear sir, you should have heard the stuff he told me; the way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too, solemnly staking the lives of his children on his veracity!
Take an instance: if a man who did not understand navigation took charge of a ship in a stormy sea, would he be safe? Tyc. Not he. Si. Why, now? Because he wants the art which would enable him to save his life? Tyc. Exactly. Si. It follows that, if sponging was the negative of art, the sponger would not save his life by its means? Tyc. Yes. Si. A man is saved by art, not by the absence of it?
Virtue and vice stamp not the outward flesh. So much the greater the sponger's art, which beats prophecy in the certainty of its conclusions upon problems so difficult. Next, there is the faculty of so directing your words and actions as to effect intimacy and convince your patron of your devotion: is that consistent with weak understanding or perception? Tyc. Certainly not. Si.
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