Discourses - Book II   

prison, or pain of the body, or banishment, or disgrace? What else
is there? Is there any vice or anything which partakes of vice? What
then did you use to say of these things? "What have you to do with me,
man? my own evils are enough for me." And you say right. Your own
evils are enough for you, your baseness, your cowardice, your boasting
which you showed when you sat in the school. Why did you decorate
yourself with what belonged to others? Why did you call yourself a
Stoic?
Observe yourselves thus in your actions, and you will find to what
sect you belong. You will find that most of you are Epicureans, a
few Peripatetics, and those feeble. For wherein will you show that you
really consider virtue equal to everything else or even superior?
But show me a Stoic, if you can. Where or how? But you can show me
an endless number who utter small arguments of the Stoics. For do
the same persons repeat the Epicurean opinions any worse? And the
Peripatetic, do they not handle them also with equal accuracy? who
then is a Stoic? As we call a statue Phidiac which is fashioned
according to the art of Phidias; so show me a man who is fashioned
according to the doctrines which he utters. Show me a man who is
sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, in exile and
happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him: I desire, by the gods, to
see a Stoic. You cannot show me one fashioned so; but show me at least
one who is forming, who has shown a tendency to be a Stoic. Do me this
favor: do not grudge an old man seeing a sight which I have not seen
yet. Do you think that you must show me the Zeus of Phidias or the
Athena, a work of ivory and gold? Let any of you show me a human
soul ready to think as God does, and not to blame either God or man,
ready not to be disappointed about anything, not to consider himself
damaged by anything, not to be angry, not to be envious, not to be
jealous; and why should I not say it direct? desirous from a man to
become a god, and in this poor mortal body thinking of his
fellowship with Zeus. Show me the man. But you cannot. Why then do you
delude yourselves and cheat others? and why do you put on a guise
which does not belong to you, and walk about being thieves and
pilferers of these names and things which do not belong to you?
And now I am your teacher, and you are instructed in my school.
And I have this purpose, to make you free from restraint,
compulsion, hindrance, to make you free, prosperous, happy, looking to
God in everything small and great. And you are here to learn and
practice these things. Why, then, do you not finish the work, if you
also have such a purpose as you ought to have, and if I, in addition
to the purpose, also have such qualification as I ought to have?
What is that which is wanting? When I see an artificer and material by
him, I expect the work. Here, then, is the artificer, here the
material; what is it that we want? Is not the thing, one that can be
taught? It is. Is it not then in our power? The only thing of all that
is in our power. Neither wealth is in our power, nor health, nor
reputation, nor in a word anything else except the right use of
appearances. This is by nature free from restraint, this alone is free
from impediment. Why then do you not finish the work? Tell me the