BOOK III. 19-23
act thus out of folly, and are we miserable out of wisdom?
[1] 20Great power is always dangerous for the beginner. We ought, therefore, to bear such things according to our power—nay, in accordance with nature . . .[2] but not for the consumptive. Practise at some one time a style of living like an invalid, that at some other time you may live like a healthy man. Take no food, drink only water; refrain at some one time altogether from desire, that at some other time you may exercise desire, and then with good reason. And if you do so with good reason, whenever you have some good in you, you will exercise your desire aright.[3] No, that's not our way, but we wish to live like wise men from the very start, and to help mankind. Help indeed! What are you about? Why, have you helped yourself? But you wish to help them progress. Why, have you made progress yourself? Do you wish to help them? Then show them, by your own example, the kind of men philosophy produces, and stop talking nonsense. As you eat, help those who are eating with you; as you drink, those who are drinking with you; by yielding to everybody, giving place, submitting—help men in this way, and don't bespatter them with your own sputum.[4]
- ↑ The change in subject-matter is so abrupt that something may perhaps have fallen out in some ancestor of S, or perhaps the next chapter-heading has become displaced by a few lines. Yet there are similarly abrupt transitions in III. 8, 7 and III. 15, 14.
- ↑ Something like "Give food (or wine) to the healthy man" (Reiske), or "Wrestling is very good for the healthy man" (Schenkl), has probably fallen out at this point.
- ↑ "It is one of the paradoxes of conduct that a man cannot will to do good until in a sense he has become good, but Epictetus would doubtless admit that the will must from the first have exercise." Matheson, I. 32.
- ↑ Referring, no doubt, to the sputtering of excessively ardent lecturers.
