“It is yet tender, yet pure,” said the Gargettian; “years shall strengthen it—Oh! let them not sully it! See that luminary! lovely and glorious in the dawn, he gathers strength and beauty to his meridian, and passes in peace and grandeur to his rest. So do thou, my son. Open your ears and your eyes; know, and choose what is good; enter the path of virtue, and thou shalt follow it, for thou shalt find it sweet. Thorns are not in it, nor is it difficult or steep: like the garden you have now entered, all there is pleasure and repose.”
“Ah!” cried Theon, “how different is virtue in your mouth and in Zeno’s.”
“The doctrine of Zeno,” replied the sage, “is sublime: many great men shall come from his school; an amiable world, from mine. Zeno hath his eye on man, I—mine on men: none but philosophers can be stoics; Epicureans all may be.”
“But,” asked Theon, “is there more than one virtue?”
“No, but men clothe her differently; some in clouds and thunders; some in smiles and pleasures. Doctors, my son, quarrel more about words than things, and more about the means than the end. In the Portico, in the Lycæum, in the Academy, in the school of Pythagoras, in the Tub of Diogenes, the teacher points you to virtue; in the Garden he points you to happiness. Now open your eyes, my son, and examine the two Deities.—Say, are they not the same? virtue, is it not happiness? and is not happiness, virtue?”
“Is this, then, the secret of your doctrine?”
“No other.”
“But—but—where then is the dispute? Truly, as you have said, in words not things.”
“Yes, in a great measure, yet not altogether: We are all the wooers of virtue, but we are wooers of a different character.”
“And may she not then favor one, more than another?”