Courtier, which we here take adjectivally, and which should not always be confused with a man of the court ; it is this epithet which is applied to that type of person which the bad luck of kings and people has placed between kings and truth, to prevent it from getting to them, even when they are expressly charged with making it known to them: the idiotic tyrant listens and loves this sort of person; the skilled tyrant used them and disdains them; the king who knows how to be a king, chases them away and punishes them, and thus demonstrates the truth; because truth is only hidden from those who do not sincerely seek it. I have said that courtier and man of the court should not always be confused, above all when courtier is an adjective; because I do not pretend, in this article, to satirise those who are called by duty or necessity to the person of the princes: it is therefore desirable that a distinction should be made between the two expressions; however, it is perhaps excusable that they are sometimes confused, because nature often mixes them up; but some examples will prove that one can be a man of the court without being a courtier ; witness M de Montausier, who wished so much to resemble Molière's misanthrope, and who did indeed resemble him quite a bit. For the rest, it is much easier to be a misanthrope at the court, when one is not a courtier , than to simply be a spectator and a philosopher; misanthropy is even sometimes a way of succeeding at court, but philosophy is almost always out of place and ill at ease. Aristotle ended up discontented with Alexander, Plato, at the court of Dionysus, reproached himself for having excused in his old age the caprices of a young tyrant, and Diogenes reproached Aristippus for wearing the costume of a courtier under the cloak of a philosopher. In vain this same Aristippus, who prostrated himself at the feet of Dionysus, because, he said, he had his ears in his feet, sought to excuse himself for dwelling at the court, saying that philosophers ought to go there more than other places, just as doctors mainly go to the houses of the ill: one could have replied that when the sickness is incurable and contagious, the doctor risks only catching it himself. Nonetheless (to rule nothing out) it is perhaps necessary for philosophers to go to court, just as in the republic of letters there are teachers of Arabic, to teach a language which almost no one studies, and which they are themselves in danger of forgetting, if they do not recall it through regular exercise.