CHAPTER 15
That we ought to proceed with circumspection to everything
In every act consider what precedes and what follows, and then
proceed to the act. If you do not consider, you will at first begin
with spirit, since you have not thought at all of the things which
follow; but afterward, when some consequences have shown themselves,
you will basely desist. "I wish to conquer at the Olympic games." "And
I too, by the gods: for it is a fine thing." But consider here what
precedes and what follows; and then, if it is for your good, undertake
the thing. You must act according to rules, follow strict diet,
abstain from delicacies, exercise yourself by compulsion at fixed
times, in heat, in cold; drink no cold water, nor wine, when there
is opportunity of drinking it. In a word you must surrender yourself
to the trainer as you do to a physician. Next in the contest, you must
be covered with sand, sometimes dislocate a hand, sprain an ankle,
swallow a quantity of dust, be scourged with the whip; and after
undergoing all this, you must sometimes be conquered. After
reckoning all these things, if you have still an inclination, go to
the athletic practice. If you do not reckon them, observe you behave
like children who at one time you wi play as wrestlers, then as
gladiators, then blow a trumpet, then act a tragedy, when they have
seen and admired such things. So you also do: you are at one time a
wrestler, then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a rhetorician;
but with your whole soul you are nothing: like the ape, you imitate
all that you see; and always one thing after another pleases you,
but that which becomes familiar displeases you. For you have never
undertaken anything after consideration, nor after having explored the
whole matter and put it to a strict examination; but you have
undertaken it at hazard and with a cold desire. Thus some persons
having seen a philosopher and having heard one speak like Euphrates-
yet who can speak like him? wish to be philosophers themselves.
Man, consider first what the matter is, then your own nature also,
what it is able to bear. If you are a wrestler, look at your
shoulders, your thighs, your loins: for different men are naturally
formed for different things. Do you think that, if you do, you can
be a philosopher? Do you think that you can eat as you do now, drink
as you do now, and in the same way be angry and out of humour? You
must watch, labour, conquer certain desires, you must depart from your
kinsmen, be despised by your slave, laughed at by those who meet
you, in everything you must be in an inferior condition, as to
magisterial office, in honours, in courts of justice. When you have
considered all these things completely, then, if you think proper,
approach to philosophy, if you would gain in exchange for these things
freedom from perturbations, liberty, tranquillity. If you have not
considered these things, do not approach philosophy: do not act like
children, at one time a philosopher, then a tax collector, then a
rhetorician, then a procurator of Caesar These things are not
consistent. You must be one man either good or bad: you must either
labour at your own ruling faculty or at external things: you must
either labour at things within or at external things: that is, you
must either occupy the place of a philosopher or that of one of the
vulgar.
A person said to Rufus when Galba was murdered, "Is the world now
governed by Providence?" But Rufus replied, "Did I ever incidentally
form an argument from Galba that the world is governed by Providence?"
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