CHAPTER 25
To those who fall off from their purpose
Consider as to the things which you proposed to yourself at first,
which you have secured and which you have not; and how you are pleased
when you recall to memory the one and are pained about the other;
and if it is possible, recover the things wherein you failed. For we
must not shrink when we are engaged in the greatest combat, but we
must even take blows. For the combat before us is not in wrestling and
the Pancration, in which both the successful and the unsuccessful
may have the greatest merit, or may have little, and in truth may be
very fortunate or very unfortunate; but the combat is for good fortune
and happiness themselves. Well then, even if we have renounced the
contest in this matter, no man hinders us from renewing the combat
again, and we are not compelled to wait for another four years that
the games at Olympia may come again; but as soon as you have recovered
and restored yourself, and employ the same zeal, you may renew the
combat again; and if again you renounce it, you may again renew it;
and if you once gain the victory, you are like him who has never
renounced the combat. Only do not, through a habit of doing the same
thing, begin to do it with pleasure, and then like a bad athlete go
about after being conquered in all the circuit of the games like
quails who have run away.
"The sight of a beautiful young girl overpowers me. Well, have I not
been overpowered before? An inclination arises in me to find fault
with a person; for have I not found fault with him before?" You
speak to us as if you had come off free from harm, just as if a man
should say to his physician who forbids him to bathe, "Have I not
bathed before?" If, then, the physician can say to him, "Well, and
what, then, happened to you after the bath? Had you not a fever, had
you not a headache?" And when you found fault with a person lately,
did you not do the act of a malignant person, of a trifling babbler;
did you not cherish this habit in you by adding to it the
corresponding acts? And when you were overpowered by the young girl,
did you come off unharmed? Why, then, do you talk of what you did
before? You ought, I think, remembering what you did, as slaves
remember the blows which they have received, to abstain from the
same faults. But the one case is not like the other; for in the case
of slaves the pain causes the remembrance: but in the case of your
faults, what is the pain, what is the punishment; for when have you
been accustomed to fly from evil acts? Sufferings, then, of the trying
character are useful to us, whether we choose or not.
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