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55. This art, however, when it is learnt, is not to be used so
much for ascertaining the meaning as for setting forth the meaning when
it is ascertained. But the art previously spoken of, which deals with
inferences, and definitions, and divisions, is of the greatest
assistance in the discovery of the meaning, provided only that men do
not fall into the error of supposing that when they have learnt these
things they have learnt the true secret of a happy life. Still, it
sometimes happens that men find less difficulty in attaining the ob ject
for the sake of which these sciences are learnt, than in going through
the very intricate and thorny discipline of such rules. It is just as
if a man wishing to give rules for walking should warn you not to lift
the hinder foot before you set down the front one, and then should
describe minutely the way you ought to move the hinges of the joints and
knees. For what he says is true, and one cannot walk in any other
way; but men find it easier to walk by executing these movements than
to attend to them while they are going through them, or to understand
when they are told about them. Those, on the other hand, who cannot
walk, care still less about such directions, as they cannot prove them
by making trial of them. And in the same way a clever man often sees
that an inference is unsound more quickly than he apprehends the rules
for it. A dull man, on the other hand, does not see the
unsoundness, but much less does he grasp the rules. And in regard to
all these laws, we derive more pleasure from them as exhibitions of
truth, than assistance in arguing or forming opinions, except perhaps
that they put the intellect in better training. We must take care,
however that they do not at the same time make it more inclined to
mischief or vanity, that is to say, that they do not give those who
have learnt them an inclination to lead people astray by plausible
speech and catching questions, or make them think that they have
attained some great thing that gives them an advantage over the good and
innocent.
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