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

BOOK I. iv.15-23some of the same kind yourself. And what willyougain thereby? Do you not know that the wholebook costs only five denarii ? Is the expounder of it,then, think you, worth more than five denarii ? Andso never look for your work in one place and yourprogress in another.Where, then, is progress ? If any man among you,withdrawing from external things, has turned hisattention to the question of his own moral purpose,cultivating and perfectingit so as to make it finallyharmonious with nature, elevated, free, unhindered,untrammelled, faithful, and honourable; and if hehas learned that he who craves or shuns the thingsthat are not under his control can be neitherfaithful nor free, but must himself of necessity bechanged and tossed to and fro with them, and mustend by subordinating himself to others, those,namely, who are able to procure or prevent thesethings that he craves or shuns and; if, finally, whenhe rises in the morning he proceeds to keep andobserve all this that he has learned ;if he bathes asa faithful man, eats as a self-respecting man,similarly, whatever the subject matter may be withwhich he has to deal, putting into practice hisas the runner does when heguiding principles,applies the principles of running, and the voicetrainerwhen he applies the principles of voicetraining,this is the man who in all truth is makingprogress, and the man who has not travelled atrandom is this one. But if he has striven merely toattain the state which he finds in his books andworks only at that, and has made that the goal ofhis travels, I bid him go home at once and notneglect his concerns there, since the goal to whichVOL, I. *>33