Volume 1 - Discourses - Books I - II - College of Stoic Philosophers

BOOK II. ix. 22-x. 5so huge a burden ! It is as though a man who wasunable to raise ten pounds wanted to lift the stoneof Aias. 1CHAPTER XHow is it possible to discover a mans duties fromthe designations which he bears ?CONSIDER who you are. To begin with, a Man;that is, one who has no quality more sovereign thanmoral choice,, but keeps everything else subordinateto it, and this moral choice itself free from slaveryand subjection. Consider, therefore, what thosethings are from which you are separated by virtueof the faculty of reason. You are separated fromw T ild beasts, you are separated from sheep. Inaddition toa part of it,this you are a citizen of the world,, andnot one of the parts destined for service,but one of 2primary importance ; for you possess thefaculty of understanding the divine administrationof the world, and of reasoning upon the consequencesthereof. What, then, is the profession ofa citizen ? To trea tnothing as a matter of privateprofit, not to plan about anything as though he werea detached unit, but to act like the foot or the hand,which, if they had the faculty of reason and understoodthe constitution of nature, would never exercisechoice or desire in any other way but by referenceto the whole. Hence the philosophers well saythat if the good and excellent man knew what wasgoing to happen, lie would help on the pi'ocesses ofdisease and death and maiming, because he wouldrealize that this allotment comes from the orderly275T 2