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

BOOK II. xvn. 24-30to wealth your aversion and your desire :you willfail to get what you wish, and you will fall into whatyou would avoid. Give them to health ; you willcome to grief; so also if you give them to offices,honours, country, friends, children, in short to anythingthat lies outside the domain of moral purpose.But give them to Zeus and the other gods ; entrustthem to their keeping, let them exercise the control ;let your desire and your aversion he ranged on theirsicfe and how can you be troubled any longer ?But if you show envy, wretched man, and pity, andjealousy, and timidity, and never let awithout bewailing yourself and the gods,day passhow canyou continue to say that you have been educated ?What kind of education, man, do you mean ? Becauseyou have worked on syllogisms, and arguments withequivocal premisses ? Will you not unlearn all this,if that be possible, and begin at the beginning,realizing that hitherto you have not even touchedthe matter ;and for the future, beginning at thispoint, add to your foundations that which comesnext in order provision that nothing shall be thatyou do not wish, and that nothing shall fail to bethat you do wish ?Give me but one young man who has come toschool with this purpose in view, who has become