Discourses - Book III   

paying the penalty for what you neglected, philosophy: you tremble,
you lie awake, you advise with all persons; and if your
deliberations are not likely to please all, you think that you have
deliberated ill. Then you fear hunger, as you suppose: but it is not
hunger that you fear, but you are afraid that you will not have a
cook, that you will not have another to purchase provisions for the
table, a third to take off your shoes, a fourth to dress you, others
to rub you, and to follow you, in order that in the bath, when you
have taken off your clothes and stretched yourself out like those
who are crucified you may be rubied on this side and on that, and then
the aliptes may say, "Change his position, present the side, take hold
of his head, show the shoulder"; and then when you have left the
bath and gone home, you may call out, "Does no one bring something
to eat?" And then, "Take away the tables, sponge them": you are afraid
of this, that you may not be able to lead the life of a sick man.
But learn the life of those who are in health, how slaves live, how
labourers, how those live who are genuine philosophers; how Socrates
lived, who had a wife and children; how Diogenes lived, and how
Cleanthes, who attended to the school and drew water. If you choose to
have these things, you will have them everywhere, and you will live in
full confidence. Confiding in what? In that alone in which a man can
confide, in that which is secure, in that which is not subject to
hindrance, in that which cannot be taken away, that is, in your own
will. And why have you made yourself so useless and good for nothing
that no man will choose to receive you into his house, no man to
take care of you? but if a utensil entire and useful were cast abroad,
every man who found it would take it up and think it a gain; but no
man will take you up, and every man will consider you a loss. So
cannot you discharge the office of a dog, or of a cock? Why then do
you choose to live any longer, when you are what you are?
Does any good man fear that he shall fall to have food? To the blind
it does not fall, to the lame it does not: shall it fall to a good
man? And to a good soldier there does not fail to one who gives him
pay, nor to a labourer, nor to a shoemaker: and to the good man
shall there be wanting such a person? Does God thus neglect the things
that He has established, His ministers, His witnesses, whom alone He
employs as examples to the uninstructed, both that He exists, and
administers well the whole, and does not neglect human affairs, and
that to a good man there is no evil either when he is living or when
he is dead? What, then, when He does not supply him with food? What
else does He do than like a good general He has given me the signal to
retreat? I obey, I follow, assenting to the words of the Commander,
praising, His acts: for I came when it pleased Him, and I will also go
away when it pleases Him; and while I lived, it was my duty to
praise God both by myself, and to each person severally and to many.
He does not supply me with many things, nor with abundance, He does
not will me to live luxuriously; for neither did He supply Hercules
who was his own son; but another was king of Argos and Mycenae, and
Hercules obeyed orders, and laboured, and was exercised. And
Eurystheus was what he was, neither kin, of Argos nor of Mycenae,