XII

With regard to methods of procedure in the hunting-field, enough has been said.³⁵⁵ But there are many benefits which the enthusiastic sportsman may expect to derive from this pursuit.³⁵⁶ I speak of the health which will thereby accrue to the physical frame, the quickening of the eye and ear, the defiance of old age, and last, but not least, the warlike training which it ensures. To begin with, when some day he has to tramp along rough ways under arms, the heavy infantry soldier will not faint or flag—he will stand the toil from being long accustomed to the same experiences in capturing wild beasts. In the next place, men so trained will be capable of sleeping on hard couches, and prove brave guardians of the posts assigned them. In the actual encounter with the enemy, they will know at once how to attack and to carry out the word of command as it passes along the lines, because it was just so in the old hunting days that they captured the wild game. If posted in the van of battle, they will not desert their ranks, because endurance is engrained in them. In the rout of the enemy their footsteps will not falter nor fail: straight as an arrow they will follow the flying foe, on every kind of ground, through long habituation.³⁵⁷ Or if their own army encounter a reverse on wooded and precipitous ground beset with difficulties, these will be the men to save themselves with honour and to extricate their friends; since long acquaintance with the business of the chase has widened their intelligence.³⁵⁸

Nay, even under the worst of circumstances, when a whole mob of fellow-combatants³⁵⁹ has been put to flight, how often ere now has a handful³⁶⁰ of such men, by virtue of their bodily health³⁶¹ and courage, caught the victorious enemy roaming blindly in some intricacy of ground, renewed the fight, and routed him. Since so it must ever be; to those whose souls and bodies are in happy case success is near at hand.³⁶²

It was through knowledge that they owed success against their foes to such a training, that our own forefathers paid so careful a heed to the young.³⁶³ Though they had but a scant supply of fruits, it was an immemorial custom “not to hinder³⁶⁴ the hunter from hunting any of earth’s offspring”; and in addition, “not to hunt by night³⁶⁵ within many furlongs of the city,” in order that the adepts in that art might not rob the young lads of their game. They saw plainly that among the many pleasures to which youth is prone, this one alone is productive of the greatest blessings. In other words, it tends to make them sound of soul and upright, being trained in the real world of actual things³⁶⁶ [and, as was said before, our ancestors could not but perceive they owed their success in war to such instrumentality³⁶⁷]; and the chase alone deprives them of none of the other fair and noble pursuits that they may choose to cultivate, as do those other evil pleasures, which ought never to be learned. Of such stuff are good soldiers and good generals made.³⁶⁸ Naturally, those from whose souls and bodies the sweat of toil has washed all base and wanton thoughts, who have implanted in them a passion for manly virtue—these, I say, are the true nobles.³⁶⁹ Not theirs will it be to allow their city or its sacred soil to suffer wrong.

Some people tell us it is not right to indulge a taste for hunting, lest it lead to neglect of home concerns, not knowing that those who are benefactors of their country and their friends are in proportion all the more devoted to domestic duties. If lovers of the chase pre-eminently fit themselves to be useful to the fatherland, that is as much as to say they will not squander their private means; since with the state itself the domestic fortunes of each are saved or lost. The real fact is, these men are saviours, not of their own fortunes only, but of the private fortunes of the rest, of yours and mine. Yet there are not a few irrational people amongst these cavillers who, out of jealousy, would rather perish, thanks to their own baseness, than owe their lives to the virtue of their neighbours. So true is it that the mass of pleasures are but evil,³⁷⁰ to which men succumb, and thereby are incited to adopt the worse cause in speech and course in action.³⁷¹ And with what result?—from vain and empty arguments they contract emnities, and reap the fruit of evil deeds, diseases, losses, death—to the undoing of themselves, their children, and their friends.³⁷² Having their senses dulled to things evil, while more than commonly alive to pleasures, how shall these be turned to good account for the salvation of the state? Yet from these evils every one will easily hold aloof, if once enamoured of those joys whose brief I hold, since a chivalrous education teaches obedience to laws, and renders justice familiar to tongue and ear.³⁷³

In the one camp are those who, subjecting themselves ever to new toil and fresh instruction, have, at the cost of lessons and exercises painful to themselves, obtained to their several states salvation; and in the other are those who for the very irksomeness of the process choose not to be taught, but rather to pass away their days in pleasures unseasonable—nature’s abjects these.³⁷⁴ Not theirs is it to obey either laws or good instruction;³⁷⁵ nay, how should they, who never toil, discover what a good man ought to be?—in other words, wisdom and justice are alike beyond their power. Subject to indiscipline, they have many a fault to find with him who is well educated.

Through the instrumentality of such as these nothing can go well; whereas every blessing which mankind enjoys has been discovered by the efforts of the nobler sort. Nobler, I say, are those who choose to toil.³⁷⁶

And this has been proved conclusively by a notable example. If we look back to the men of old who sat at the feet of Cheiron—whose names I mentioned—we see that it was by dedicating the years of their youth to the chase³⁷⁷ that they learnt all their noble lore; and therefrom they attained to great renown, and are admired even to this day for their virtue—virtue who numbers all men as her lovers, as is very plain. Only because of the pains it costs to win her the greater number fall away; for the achievement of her is hid in obscurity; while the pains that cleave to her are manifest. Perchance, if only she were endowed with a visible bodily frame, men would less have neglected her, knowing that even as she is visible to them, so they also are not hid from her eyes. For is it not so that when a man moves in the presence of him whom he dearly loves,³⁷⁸ he rises to a height above himself, being incapable of aught base or foul in word or deed in sight of him?³⁷⁹ But fondly dreaming that the eye of virtue is closed to them, they are guilty of many a base thing and foul before her very face, who is hidden from their eyes. Yet she is present everywhere, being dowered with immortality; and those who are perfect in goodness³⁸⁰ she honours, but the wicked she thrusts aside from honour. If only men could know that she regards them, how eagerly would they rush to the embrace of toilful training and tribulation,³⁸¹ by which alone she is hardly taken; and so should they gain the mastery over her, and she should be laid captive at their feet.