But this restriction who can approve, which would interdict the wise man from taking any share in the government beyond such as the occasion and necessity may compel him to?
As if any greater necessity could possibly happen to any man than happened to me.

In which, how could I have acted if I had not been consul at the time?
and how could I have been a consul unless I had maintained that course of life from my childhood which raised me from the order of knights, in which I was born, to the very highest station?
You cannot produce _extempore_, and just when you please, the power of assisting a commonwealth, although it may be severely pressed by dangers, unless you have attained the position which enables you legally to do so.

And what most surprises me in the discourses of learned men, is to hear those persons who confess themselves incapable of steering the vessel of the State in smooth seas (which, indeed, they never learned, and never cared to know) profess themselves ready to assume the helm amidst the fiercest tempests.

For those men are accustomed to say openly, and indeed to boast greatly, that they have never learned, and have never taken the least pains to explain, the principles of either establishing or maintaining a commonwealth; and they look on this practical science as one which belongs not to men of learning and wisdom, but to those who have made it their especial study.

How, then, can it be reasonable for such men to promise their assistance to the State, when they shall be compelled to it by necessity, while they are ignorant how to govern the republic when no necessity presses upon it, which is a much more easy task?
Indeed, though it were true that the wise man loves not to thrust himself of his own accord into the administration of public affairs, but that if circumstances oblige him to it, then he does not refuse the office, yet I think that this science of civil legislation should in no wise be neglected by the philosopher, because all resources ought to be ready to his hand, which he knows not how soon he may be called on to use.
VII.