Let us, therefore, employ that short time in necessary instruction.

Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics; they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be amended: take the plain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and then rightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one of Boccaccio's novels; a child from nurse is much more capable of them, than of learning to read or to write.

Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood, as well as for the decrepit age of men.
I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great disciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the elements of geometry; as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valour, prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear; and with this ammunition, sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no more than thirty thousand foot, four thousand horse, and but forty-two thousand crowns, to subjugate the empire of the whole earth.

For the other acts and sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed commended their excellence and charm, and had them in very great honour and esteem, but not ravished with them to that degree as to be tempted to affect the practice of them In his own person: "Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque, Finem ammo certum, miserisque viatica canis." ["Young men and old men, derive hence a certain end to the mind, and stores for miserable grey hairs."-- Persius, v.

64.] Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus,--[Diogenes Laertius, x.