A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

§ 68. Julian the Apostate 367I think true culture consists not in proficiency in words andspeech, but in a condition of mind which has sound intentionsand right opinions concerning good and evil, the honorable andthe base. Whoever, therefore, thinks one thing and teaches thoseabout him another appears to be as wanting in culture as in honor.If in trifles there is a difference between thought and speech, it isnevertheless an evil in some way to be endured; but if in importantmatters any one thinks one thing and teaches in opposition towhat he thinks, this is the trick of charlatans, the act not of goodmen, but of those who are thoroughly depraved, especially in [335]the case of those who teach what they regard as most worthless,deceiving and enticing by flattery into evil those whom they wishto use for their own purposes. All those who undertake to teachanything should be upright in life and not cherish in their mindsideas which are in opposition to those commonly received; mostof all I think that such they ought to be who converse with theyoung on learning, or who explain the writings of the ancients,whether they are teachers of eloquence or of rhetoric, and stillmore if they are sophists. For they aim to be not merely teachersof words but of morals as well, and claim instruction in politicalscience as belonging to their field. Whether this be true, I willleave undetermined. But praising them as those who thus strivefor fine professions, I would praise them still more if they neitherlied nor contradicted themselves, thinking one thing and teachingtheir pupils another. Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Herodotus,Thucydides, Isocrates, and Lysias were indebted to the godsfor all their science. Did they not think that they were underthe protection of Hermes and of the Muses? It seems to me,therefore, absurd that those who explain their writings shoulddespise the gods they honored. But when I think it is absurd, Ido not say that, on account of their pupils, they should alter theiropinions; but I give them the choice, either not to teach what theydo not hold as good, or, if they prefer to teach, first to convincetheir pupils that Homer, Hesiod, or any of those whom they