before answer was made, divers of the army conferred familiarly with Falinus; and amongst the rest Xenophon happened to say, “Why, Falinus, we have now but these two things left, our arms and our virtue; and if we yield up our arms, how shall we make use of our virtue?” Whereto Falinus, smiling on him, said, “If I be not deceived, young gentleman, you are an Athenian, and I believe you study philosophy, and it is pretty that you say; but you are much abused if you think your virtue can withstand the king’s power.”  Here was the scorn; the wonder followed:  which was that this young scholar or philosopher, after all the captains were murdered in parley by treason, conducted those ten thousand foot, through the heart of all the king’s high countries, from Babylon to Graecia in safety, in despite of all the king’s forces, to the astonishment of the world, and the encouragement of the Grecians in times succeeding to make invasion upon the kings of Persia, as was after purposed by Jason the Thessalian, attempted by Agesilaus the Spartan, and achieved by Alexander the Macedonian, all upon the ground of the act of that young scholar.

VIII. (1) To proceed now from imperial and military virtue to moral and private virtue; first, it is an assured truth, which is contained in the verses:-

“Scilicet ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros.”

It taketh away the wildness and barbarism and fierceness of men’s minds; but indeed the accent had need be upon fideliter; for a little superficial learning doth rather work a contrary effect.  It taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the mind, and to accept of nothing but examined and tried.  It taketh away vain admiration of anything, which is the root of all weakness.  For all things are admired, either because they are new, or because they are great.  For novelty, no man that wadeth in learning or contemplation thoroughly but will find that printed in his heart, Nil novi super terram.  Neither can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain, and adviseth well of the motion.  And for magnitude, as Alexander the Great, after that he was used to great armies, and the great conquests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, of some fights and services there, which were commonly for a passage or a fort, or some walled town at the most, he said:  —­“It seemed to him that he was advertised of the battles of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of.”  So certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls except) will not seem much other than an ant-hill, whereas some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little