Discourses - Book III   

to your friends and kinsmen, to the elements: what there was in you of
fire goes to fire; of earth, to earth; of air, to air; of water to
water: no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyriphlegethon, but all
is full of Gods and Demons." When a man has such things to think on,
and sees the sun, the moon and stars, and enjoys earth and sea, he
is not solitary nor even helpless. "Well then, if some man should come
upon me when I am alone and murder me?" Fool, not murder you, but your
poor body.
What kind of solitude then remains? what want? why do we make
ourselves worse than children? and what do children do when they are
left alone? They take up shells and ashes, and they build something,
then pull it down, and build something else, and so they never want
the means of passing the time. Shall I, then, if you sail away, sit
down and weep, because I have been left alone and solitary? Shall I
then have no shells, no ashes? But children do what they do through
want of thought, and we through knowledge are unhappy.
Every great power is dangerous to beginners. You must then bear such
things as you are able, but conformably to nature: but not... Practice
sometimes a way of living like a man in health. Abstain from food,
drink water, abstain sometimes altogether from desire, in order that
you may some time desire consistently with reason; and if consistently
with reason, when you have anything good in you, you will desire well.
"Not so; but we wish to live like wise men immediately and to be
useful to men." Useful how? what are you doing? have you been useful
to yourself? "But, I suppose, you wish to exhort them." You exhort
them! You wish to be useful to them. Show to them in your own
example what kind of men philosophy makes, and don't trifle. When
you are eating, do good to those who eat with you; when you are
drinking, to those who are drinking with you; by yielding to all,
giving way, bearing with them, thus do them good, and do not spit on
them your phlegm.

CHAPTER 14

Certain miscellaneous matters

As bad tragic actors cannot sing alone, but in company with many: so
some persons cannot walk about alone. Man, if you are anything, both
walk alone and talk to yourself, and do not hide yourself in the
chorus. Examine a little at last, look around, stir yourself up,
that you may know who you are.
When a man drinks water, or does anything for the sake of
practice, whenever there is an opportunity he tells it to all: "I
drink water." Is it for this that you drink water, for the purpose
of drinking water? Man, if it is good for you to drink, drink; but
if not, you are acting ridiculously. But if it is good for you and you
do drink, say nothing about it to those who are displeased with
water-drinkers. What then, do you wish to please these very men?
Of things that are done some are done with a final purpose, some
according to occasion, others with a certain reference to