why do you mock the man? Why do you draw him away from the
perception of his own misfortunes? Will you not show him the effect of
virtue that he may learn where to look for improvement? Seek it there,
wretch, where your work lies. And where is your work? In desire and in
aversion, that you may not be disappointed in your desire, and that
you may not fall into that which you would avoid; in your pursuit
and avoiding, that you commit no error; in assent and suspension of
assent, that you be not deceived. The first things, and the most
necessary, are those which I have named. But if with trembling and
lamentation you seek not to fall into that which you avoid, tell me
how you are improving.

  Do you then show me your improvement in these things? If I were
talking to an athlete, I should say, "Show me your shoulders"; and
then he might say, "Here are my halteres." You and your halteres
look to that. I should reply, "I wish to see the effect of the
halteres." So, when you say: "Take the treatise on the active
powers, and see how I have studied it." I reply, "Slave, I am not
inquiring about this, but how you exercise pursuit and avoidance,
desire and aversion, how your design and purpose and prepare yourself,
whether conformably to nature or not. If conformably, give me evidence
of it, and I will say that you are making progress: but if not
conformably, be gone, and not only expound your books, but write
such books yourself; and what will you gain by it? Do you not know
that the whole book costs only five denarii? Does then the expounder
seem to be worth more than five denarii? Never, then, look for the
matter itself in one place, and progress toward it in another."

  Where then is progress? If any of you, withdrawing himself from
externals, turns to his own will to exercise it and to improve it by
labour, so as to make it conformable to nature, elevated, free,
unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; and if he has learned
that he who desires or avoids the things which are not in his power
can neither be faithful nor free, but of necessity he must change with
them and be tossed about with them as in a tempest, and of necessity
must subject himself to others who have the power to procure or
prevent what he desires or would avoid; finally, when he rises in
the morning, if he observes and keeps these rules, bathes as a man
of fidelity, eats as a modest man; in like manner, if in every
matter that occurs he works out his chief principles as the runner
does with reference to running, and the trainer of the voice with
reference to the voice- this is the man who truly makes progress,
and this is the man who has not traveled in vain. But if he has
strained his efforts to the practice of reading books, and labours
only at this, and has traveled for this, I tell him to return home
immediately, and not to neglect his affairs there; for this for
which he has traveled is nothing. But the other thing is something, to
study how a man can rid his life of lamentation and groaning, and
saying, "Woe to me," and "wretched that I am," and to rid it also of
misfortune and disappointment and to learn what death is, and exile,
and prison, and poison, that he may be able to say when he is in
fetters, "Dear Crito, if it is the will of the gods that it be so, let
it be so"; and not to say, "Wretched am I, an old man; have I kept
my gray hairs for this?" Who is it that speaks thus? Do you think that
I shall name some man of no repute and of low condition? Does not
Priam say this? Does not OEdipus say this? Nay, all kings say it!
For what else is tragedy than the perturbations of men who value
externals exhibited in this kind of poetry? But if a man must learn by
fiction that no external things which are independent of the will
concern us, for this? part I should like this fiction, by the aid of
which I should live happily and undisturbed. But you must consider for
yourselves what you wish.

  What then does Chrysippus teach us? The reply is, "to know that
these things are not false, from which happiness comes and
tranquillity arises. Take my books, and you will learn how true and
conformable to nature are the things which make me free from
perturbations." O great good fortune! O the great benefactor who
points out the way! To Triptolemus all men have erected temples and
altars, because he gave us food by cultivation; but to him who
discovered truth and brought it to light and communicated it to all,
not the truth which shows us how to live, but how to live well, who of
you for this reason has built an altar, or a temple, or has
dedicated a statue, or who worships God for this? Because the gods
have given the vine, or wheat, we sacrifice to them: but because
they have produced in the human mind that fruit by which they designed
to show us the truth which relates to happiness, shall we not thank
God for this?

  CHAPTER 5

  Against the academics

  If a man, said Epictetus, opposes evident truths, it is not easy
to find arguments by which we shall make him change his opinion. But
this does not arise either from the man's strength or the teacher's
weakness; for when the man, though he has been confuted, is hardened
like a stone, how shall we then be able to deal with him by argument?

  Now there are two kinds of hardening, one of the understanding,
the other of the sense of shame, when a man is resolved not to
assent to what is manifest nor to desist from contradictions. Most
of us are afraid of mortification of the body, and would contrive
all means to avoid such a thing, but we care not about the soul's
mortification. And indeed with regard to the soul, if a man be in such
a state as not to apprehend anything, or understand at all, we think
that he is in a bad condition: but if the sense of shame and modesty
are deadened, this we call even power.

  Do you comprehend that you are awake? "I do not," the man replies,