Discourses - Book IV   

an honourable and good man? To have many pupils? By no means. They
will look to this matter who are earnest about it. But was it his
business to examine carefully difficult theorems? Others will look
after these matters also. In what, then, was he, and who was he and
whom did he wish to be? He was in that wherein there was hurt and
advantage. "If any man can damage me," he says, "I am doing nothing:
if I am waiting for another man to do me good, I am nothing. If I
anguish for anything, and it does not happen, I am unfortunate." To
such a contest he invited every man, and I do not think that he
would have declined the contest with any one. What do you suppose? was
it by proclaiming and saying, "I am such a man?" Far from it, but by
being such a man. For further, this is the character of a fool and a
boaster to say, "I am free from passions and disturbance: do not be
ignorant, my friends, that while you are uneasy and disturbed about
things of no value, I alone am free from all perturbation." So is it
not enough for you to feel no pain, unless you make this proclamation:
"Come together all who are suffering gout, pains in the head, fever,
ye who are lame, blind, and observe that I am sound from every
ailment." This is empty and disagreeable to hear, unless like
Aesculapius you are able to show immediately by what kind of treatment
they also shall be immediately free from disease, and unless you
show your own health as an example.
For such is the Cynic who is honoured with the sceptre and the
diadem of Zeus, and says, "That you may see, O men, that you seek
happiness and tranquillity not where it is, but where it is not,
behold I am sent to you by God as an example. I who have neither
property nor house, nor wife nor children, nor even a bed, nor coat
nor household utensil; and see how healthy I am: try me, and if you
see that I am free from perturbations, hear the remedies and how I
have been cured." This is both philanthropic and noble. But see
whose work it is, the work of Zeus, or of him whom He may judge worthy
of this service, that he may never exhibit anything to the many, by
which he shall make of no effect his own testimony, whereby he gives
testimony to virtue, and bears evidence against external things:

His beauteous face pales his cheeks
He wipes a tear.

And not this only, but he neither desires nor seeks anything, nor
man nor place nor amusement, as children seek the vintage or holidays;
always fortified by modesty as others are fortified by walls and doors
and doorkeepers.
But now, being only moved to philosophy, as those who have a bad
stomach are moved to some kinds of food which they soon loathe,
straightway toward the sceptre and to the royal power. They let the
hair grow, they assume the cloak, they show the shoulder bare, they
quarrel with those whom they meet; and if they see a man in a thick
winter coat, they quarrel with him. Man, first exercise yourself in
winter weather: see your movements that they are not those of a man
with a bad stomach or those of a longing woman. First strive that it