CHAPTER XXVII.
that a man should be one man.
1. In every work you will take in hand mark well what must go before and what must follow, and so proceed. For else you shall at first set out eagerly, as not regarding what is to follow; but in the end, if any difficulties have arisen, you will leave it off with shame.
2. So you wish to conquer in the Olympic games? And I, too, by the Gods; and a fine thing it would be. But mark the prefaces and the consequences, and then set to work. You must go under discipline, eat by rule, abstain from dainties, exercise yourself at the appointed hour, in heat or cold, whether you will or no, drink nothing cold, nor wine at will; in a word, you must give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician. Then in the contest itself there is the digging race,[1] and you are like enough to dislocate your wrist, or turn your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, to be soundly drubbed, and after all these things to be defeated.
3. If, having considered these things, you are still in the mind to enter for the contest, then do so. But without consideration you will turn from one thing to another like a child, who now plays the wrestler, now the gladiator, now sounds the trumpet, then declaims like an actor; and so you, too, will be first an athlete, then a gladiator, then an orator, then a philosopher, and nothing with your whole soul; but as an ape you will mimic everything you see, and be charmed with one thing after another. For you approached nothing with consideration nor regularity, but rashly, and with a cold desire.
4. And thus some men, having seen a philosopher, and heard discourse like that of Euphrates[2] (yet who indeed can say that any discourse is like his?), desire that they also may become philosophers.
5. But, O man! consider first what it is you are about to do, and then inquire of your own nature whether you can carry it out. Will you be a pentathlos,[3] or a wrestler? Then, scan your arms and thighs; try your loins. For different men are made for different ends.
6. Think you, you can be a sage, and continue to eat and drink and be wrathful and take offense just as you were wont? Nay, but you must watch and labor, and withdraw yourself from your household, and be despised by any serving boy, and be ridiculed by your neighbors, and take the lower place everywhere, in honors, in authority, in courts of justice, in dealings of every kind.[4]
7. Consider these things—whether you are willing at such a price to gain peace, freedom, and an untroubled spirit. And if not, then attempt it not, nor, like a child, play now the philosopher, then the tax-gatherer, then the orator, then the Procurator of Cæsar. For these things agree not among themselves; and, good or bad, it behooves you to be one man. You should be perfecting either your own ruling faculty, or your outward well-being; spending your art either on the life within or the life without; that is to say, you must hold your place either among the sages or the vulgar.
End of Book II.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
obligations.
1. Obligations are universally defined by the bonds of relation. Is such a man your father? Then it is implied that you are to take care of him, to give place to him in all things, to bear his rebukes, his chastisement. But if he be a bad father? Were you then related by any law of Nature to a good father? Nay, but simply to a father. Your brother does you wrong. Then guard your own place towards him, nor scrutinize what he is doing, but what you may do to keep your will in accord with Nature. For none other shall hurt you, if yourself choose it not, but you shall be hurt then when you conceive yourself to be so.
2. Thus shall you discover your obligations from the offices of a neighbor, a citizen, a general, if you will accustom yourself to watch the relationships.