“‘You are most assuredly making splendid progress, my friend,’ he tells him.
“Progress indeed! why do you make game of him? Why do you lead him astray from the consciousness of his misfortunes? Will you not show him what the effect of moral perfection is, that he may learn where to look for progress towards it?
“Look for progress, my poor friend, in the direction of the effect which you have to produce. And what is the effect which you have to produce? Never to be disappointed of the object of your desire, and never to encounter the object of your undesire: never to miss the mark in your endeavours to do and not to do: never to be deceived in your assent and suspension of assent. The first of these is the primary and most necessary point: for if it is with trembling and reluctance that you seek to avoid falling into evil, how can you be said to be making progress?
“It is in these respects, then, that I ask you to show me your progress. If I were to say to an athlete, ‘Show me your muscles,’ and he were to say, ‘See here are my dumb-bells,’ I should reply, ‘Begone with your dumb-bells! What I want to see is, not them, but their effect.’ (And yet that is just what you do:) ‘Take the treatise On Effort’ (you say), ‘and examine me in it.’ Slave! that is not what I want to know; but rather how you endeavour to do or not to do—how you desire to have and not to have—how you form your plans and purposes and preparations for action—whether you do all this in harmony with nature or not. If you do so in accordance with nature, show me that you do so, and I will say that you are making progress; but if not, begone, and do not merely interpret books, but write similar ones yourself besides. And what will you gain by it? Don’t you know that the whole book costs five shillings, and do you think the man who interprets the book is worth more than the book itself costs?
“Never, then, look for the effect (of philosophy) in one place, and progress towards that effect in another.
“Where, then, is progress to be looked for? If any one of you, giving up his allegiance to things outside him, has devoted himself entirely to his will—to cultivating and elaborating it so as to make it at last in harmony with nature, lofty, free, unthwarted, unhindered, conscientious, self-respectful: if he has learned that one who longs for or shuns what is not in his power can neither be conscientious nor free, but must be carried along with the changes and gusts of things—must be at the mercy of those who can produce or prevent them: if, moreover, from the moment when he rises in the morning he keeps watch and guard over these qualities of his soul—bathes like a man of honour, eats like a man who respects himself—through all the varying incidents of each successive hour working out his one great purpose, as a runner makes all things help his running, and a singing-master his teaching:—this man is making progress in very truth—this man is one who has not left home in vain.
“But if, on the other hand, he is wholly bent upon and labours at what is found in books, and has left home with a view to acquiring that, I tell him to go home again at once, and not neglect whatever business he may have there: for the object which has brought him away from home is a worthless one. This only (is worth anything), to study to banish from one’s life sorrows and lamentations and ‘Alas!’ and ‘Wretched me!’ and misfortune and failure—and to learn what death really is, and exile and imprisonment and the hemlock-draught, so as to be able to say in the prison, ‘My dear Crito, if so it please the gods, so let it be.’”
This new or revived conception of philosophy as the science of human conduct, as having for its purpose the actual reformation of mankind, had already led to the view that in the present state of human nature the study and practice of it required special kinds of effort. It was not only the science but also the art of life.[239] It formed, as such, no exception to the rule that all arts require systematic and habitual training. Just as the training of the muscles which is necessary to perfect bodily development is effected by giving them one by one an artificial and for the time an exaggerated exercise, so the training of the moral powers was effected, not by reading the rules and committing them to memory, but by giving them a similarly artificial and exaggerated exercise. A kind of moral gymnastic was necessary. The aim of it was to bring the passions under the control of reason, and to bring the will into harmony with the will of God.
(1) This special discipline of life was designated by the term which was in use for bodily training, askesis (ἄσκησις).[240] It is frequently used in this relation in Philo. He distinguishes three elements in the process of attaining goodness—nature, learning, discipline.[241] He distinguishes those who discipline themselves in wisdom by means of actual works, from those who have only a literary and intellectual knowledge of it.[242] He holds that the greatest and most numerous blessings that a man can have come from the gymnastic of moral efforts.[243] Its elements are “reading, meditation, reformation, the memory of noble ideals, self-restraint, the active practice of duties:”[244] in another passage he adds to these prayer, and the recognition of the indifference of things that are indifferent.[245] In the second century, when the idea of moral reformation had taken a stronger hold, this moral discipline was evidently carried out under systematic rules. It was not left to a student’s option. He must undergo hardships, drinking water rather than wine, sleeping on the ground rather than on a bed; and sometimes even subjecting himself to austerities, being scourged and bound with chains. There was sometimes no ostentation of endurance. Marcus Aurelius says that he owed it to Rusticus that he did not show off with a striking display either his acts of benevolence or his moral exercises.[246] “If you drink water,” says Epictetus in his Student’s Manual,[247] “don’t take every opportunity of saying, I drink water.... And if you resolve to exercise yourself in toil and hardship, do it for yourself alone, and not for the world outside. Don’t embrace statues (in public, to cool yourself); but if ever your thirst become extreme, fill your mouth with cold water and put it out again—and tell no one.” Epictetus himself preferred that men should be disciplined, not by bodily hardships, but by the voluntary repression of desire. The true “ascetic” is he who disciplines himself against all the suggestions of evil desire:[248] “an object of desire comes into sight: wait, poor soul; do not straightway be carried off your feet by it: consider, the contest is great, the task is divine; it is for kingship, for freedom, for calm, for undisturbedness. Think of God: call Him to be your helper and to stand by your side, as sailors call upon Castor and Pollux in a storm: for yours is a storm, the greatest of all storms, the storm of strong suggestions that sweep reason away.” In a similar way Lucian’s friend Nigrinus condemns those who endeavour to fashion young men to virtue by great bodily hardships rather than by a mingled discipline of body and mind: and Lucian himself says that he knew of some who had died under the excessive strain.[249]