not desire to remain in Corinth; and, in a word, desire nothing than
that which God wills. And who shall hinder you? who shall compel
you? No man shall compel you any more than he shall compel Zeus.
When you have such a guide, and your wishes and desires are the same
as his, why do you fear disappointment? Give up your desire to
wealth and your aversion to poverty, and you will be disappointed in
the one, you will fall into the other. Well, give them up to health,
and you will be unfortunate: give them up to magistracies, honours,
country, friends, children, in a word to any of the things which are
not in man's power. But give them up to Zeus and to the rest of the
gods; surrender them to the gods, let the gods govern, let your desire
and aversion be ranged on the side of the gods, and wherein will you
be any longer unhappy? But if, lazy wretch, you envy, and complain,
and are jealous, and fear, and never cease for a single day
complaining both of yourself and of the gods, why do you still speak
of being educated? What kind of an education, man? Do you mean that
you have been employed about sophistical syllogisms? Will you not,
if it is possible, unlearn all these things and begin from the
beginning, and see at the same time that hitherto you have not even
touched the matter; and then, commencing from this foundation, will
you not build up all that comes after, so that nothing, may happen
which you do not choose, and nothing shall fail to happen which you do
choose?
Give me one young man who has come to the school with this
intention, who is become a champion for this matter and says, "I
give up everything else, and it is enough for me if "t shall ever be
in my power to pass my life free from hindrance and free from trouble,
and to stretch out my neck to all things like a free man, and to
look up to heaven as a friend of God, and fear nothing that can
happen." Let any of you point out such a man that I may "Come, young
man, into the possession of that which is your own, it is your destiny
to adorn philosophy: yours are these possessions, yours these books,
yours these discourses." Then when he shall have laboured sufficiently
and exercised himself in this of the matter, let him come to me
again and say, "I desire to be free from passion and free from
perturbation; and I wish as a pious man and a philosopher and a
diligent person to know what is my duty to the gods, what to my
parents, what to my brothers, what to my country, what to
strangers." Come also to the second matter: this also is yours. "But I
have now sufficiently studied the second part also, and I would gladly
be secure and unshaken, and not only when I am awake, but also when
I am asleep, and when I am filled with wine, and when I am
melancholy." Man, you are a god, you have great designs.
"No: but I wish to understand what Chrysippus says in his treatise
of the Pseudomenos." Will you not hang yourself, wretch, with such
your intention? And what good will it do you? You will read the
whole with sorrow, and you will speak to others trembling, Thus you
also do. "Do you wish me, brother, to read to you, and you to me?"
"You write excellently, my man; and you also excellently in the
style of Xenophon, and you in the style of Plato, and you in the style