Discourses - Book II   

he not given to you endurance? has he not given to you magnanimity?
has he not given to you manliness? When you have such hands, do you
look for one who shall wipe your you st nose? But we neither study
these things nor care for them. Give me a man who cares how he shall
do anything, not for the obtaining of a thing but who cares about
his own energy. What man, when he is walking about, cares for his
own energy? who, when he is deliberating, cares about his own
deliberation, and not about obtaining that about which he deliberates?
And if he succeeds, he is elated and says, "How well we have
deliberated; did I not tell you, brother, that it is impossible,
when we have thought about anything, that it should not turn out
thus?" But if the thing should turn out otherwise, the wretched man is
humbled; he knows not even what to say about what has taken place. Who
among us for the sake of this matter has consulted a seer? Who among
us as to his actions has not slept in indifference? Who? Give to me
one that I may see the man whom I have long been looking for, who is
truly noble and ingenuous, whether young or old; name him.
Why then are we still surprised, if we are well practiced in
thinking about matters, but in our acts are low, without decency,
worthless, cowardly, impatient of labour, altogether bad? For we do
not care about things, nor do we study them. But if we had feared
not death or banishment, but fear itself, we should have studied not
to fall into those things which appear to us evils. Now in the
school we are irritable and wordy; and if any little question arises
about any of these things, we are able to examine them fully. But drag
us to practice, and you will find us miserably shipwrecked. Let some
disturbing appearance come on us, and you will know what we have
been studying and in what we have been exercising ourselves.
Consequently, through want of discipline, we are always adding
something to the appearance and representing things to be greater than
what they are. For instance as to myself, when I am on a voyage and
look down on the deep sea, or look round on it and see no land, I am
out of my mind and imagine that I must drink up all this water if I am
wrecked, and it does not occur to me that three pints are enough. What
then disturbs me? The sea? No, but my opinion. Again, when an
earthquake shall happen, I imagine that the city is going to fall on
me; is not one little stone enough to knock my brains out?
What then are the things which are heavy on us and disturb us?
What else than opinions? What else than opinions lies heavy upon him
who goes away and leaves his companions and friends and places and
habits of life? Now little children, for instance, when they cry on
the nurse leaving them for a short time, forget their sorrow if they
receive a small cake. Do you choose then that we should compare you to
little children? No, by Zeus, for I do not wish to be pacified by a
small cake, but by right opinions. And what are these? Such as a man
ought to study all day, and not to be affected by anything that is not
his own, neither by companion nor place nor gymnasia, and not even
by his own body, but to remember the law and to have it before his
eyes. And what is the divine law? To keep a man's own, not to claim
that which belongs to others, but to use what is given, and when it is