Book 4
11
It was in the quality of a young man who loved beauty, that Polemo was touched by the discourses of Xenocrates. For he entered with some incentives to the study of beauty, though he sought in the wrong place. And, indeed, Nature has not made the very brutes dirty which live with man. Does a horse wallow in the mire; or a good dog? But swine, and dirty geese, and worms, and spiders, which are banished to the greatest distance from human society. Will you, then, who are a man, choose not to be even one of the animals that are conversant with man; but rather a worm or a spider? Will you not bathe sometimes, be it in whatever manner you please? Will you never use water to wash yourself? Will you not come clean, that they who converse with you may have some pleasure in you? But will you accompany us, in your uncleanness, even to the temples, where all unclean ways are forbidden?
