Discourses - Book III   

from the greatest to the least." "You are a calf; when a lion shall
appear, do your proper business: if you do not, you will suffer." "You
are a bull: advance and fight, for this is your business, and
becomes you, and you can do it." "You can lead the army against
Illium; be Agamemnon." "You can fight in single combat against Hector:
be Achilles." But if Thersites came forward and claimed the command,
he would either not have obtained it; or, if he did obtain it, he
would have disgraced himself before many witnesses.
Do you also think about the matter carefully: it is not what it
seems to you. "I wear a cloak now and I shall wear it then: I sleep
hard now, and I shall sleep hard then: I will take in addition a
little bag now and a staff, and I will go about and begin to beg and
to abuse those whom I meet; and if I see any man plucking the hair out
of his body, I will rebuke him, or if he has dressed his hair, or if
he walks about in purple." If you imagine the thing to be such as
this, keep far away from it: do not approach it: it is not at all
for you. But if you imagine it to be what it is, and do not think
yourself to be unfit for it, consider what a great thing you
undertake.
In the first place in the things which relate to yourself, you
must not be in any respect like what you do now: you must not blame
God or man: you must take away desire altogether, you must transfer
avoidance only to the things which are within the power of the will:
you must not feel anger nor resentment nor envy nor pity; a girl
must not appear handsome to you, nor must you love a little
reputation, nor be pleased with a boy or a cake. For you ought to know
that the rest of men throw walls around them and houses and darkness
when they do any such things, and they have many means of concealment.
A man shuts the door, he sets somebody before the chamber: if a person
comes, say that he is out, he is not at leisure. But the Cynic instead
of all these things must use modesty as his protection: if he does
not, he will he indecent in his nakedness and under the open sky. This
is his house, his door: this is the slave before his bedchamber:
this is his darkness. For he ought not to wish to hide anything that
he does: and if he does, he is gone, he has lost the character of a
Cynic, of a man who lives under the open sky, of a free man: he has
begun to fear some external thing, he has begun to have need of
concealment, nor can he get concealment when he chooses. For where
shall he hide himself and how? And if by chance this public instructor
shall be detected, this pedagogue, what kind of things will he be
compelled to suffer? when then a man fears these things, is it
possible for him to be bold with his whole soul to superintend men? It
cannot be: it is impossible.
In the first place, then, you must make your ruling faculty pure,
and this mode of life also. "Now, to me the matter to work on is my
understanding, as wood is to the carpenter, as hides to the shoemaker;
and my business is the right use of appearances. But the body is
nothing to me: the parts of it are nothing to me. Death? Let it come
when it chooses, either death of the whole or of a part. Fly, you say.
And whither; can any man eject me out of the world? He cannot. But