woman and to sleep with her: to this is added jealousy, fear of
being deprived of the thing which you love, indecent words, indecent
thoughts, unseemly acts.
"And what do I lose?" you will say. My man, you were modest, and you
are so no longer. Have you lost nothing? In place of Chrysippus and
Zeno you read Aristides and Evenus; have you lost nothing? In place of
Socrates and Diogenes, you admire him who is able to corrupt and
seduce most women. You wish to appear handsome and try to make
yourself so, though you are not. You like to display splendid
clothes that you may attract women; and if you find any fine oil,
yon imagine that you are happy. But formerly you did not think of
any such thing, but only where there should be decent talk, a worthy
man, and a generous conception. Therefore you slept like a man, walked
forth like a man, wore a manly dress, and used to talk in a way
becoming a good man; then do you say to me, "I have lost nothing?"
So do men lose nothing more than coin? Is not modesty lost? Is not
decent behavior lost? is it that he who has lost these things has
sustained no loss? Perhaps you think that not one of these things is a
loss. But there was a time when you reckoned this the only loss and
damage, and you were anxious that no man should disturb you from these
words and actions.
Observe, you are disturbed from these good words and actions by
nobody but by yourself. Fight with yourself, restore yourself to
decency, to modesty, to liberty. If any man ever told you this about
me, that a person forces me to be an adulterer, to wear such a dress
as yours, to perfume myself with oils, would you not have gone and
with your own hand have killed the man who thus calumniated me? Now
will you not help yourself? and how much easier is this help? There is
no need to kill any man, nor to put him in chains, nor to treat him
with contumely, nor to enter the Forum, but it is only necessary for
you to speak to yourself who will be the most easily persuaded, with
whom no man has more power of persuasion than yourself. First of
all, condemn what you are doing, and then, when you have condemned it,
do not despair of yourself, and be not in the condition of those men
of mean spirit, who, when they have once given in, surrender
themselves completely and are carried away as if by a torrent. But see
what the trainers of boys do. Has the boy fallen? "Rise," they say,
"wrestle again till you are made strong." Do you also do something
of the same kind: for be well assured that nothing is more tractable
than the human soul. You must exercise the will, and the thing is
done, it is set right: as on the other hand, only fall a-nodding,
and the thing is lost: for from within comes ruin and from within
comes help. "Then what good do I gain?" And what greater good do you
seek than this? From a shameless man you will become a modest man,
from a disorderly you will become an orderly man, from a faithless you
will become a faithful man, from a man of unbridled habits a sober
man. If you seek anything more than this, go on doing what you are
doing: not even a God can now help you.

CHAPTER 10