Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/425

 you not wash yourself somewhere some time in such manner as you choose? Will you not wash off the dirt from your body? Will you not come clean that those with whom you keep company may have pleasure in being with you? But do you go with us even into the temples in such a state, where it is not permitted to spit or blow the nose, being a heap of spittle and of snot?

What then? does any man (that is, do I) require you to ornament yourself? Far from it; except to ornament that which we really are by nature, the rational faculty, the opinions, the actions; but as to the body only so far as purity, only so far as not to give offence. But if you are told that you ought not to wear garments dyed with purple, go and daub your cloak with muck or tear it. But how shall I have a neat cloak? Man, you have water; wash it. Here is a youth worthy of being loved, here is an old man worthy of loving and being loved in return, a fit person for a man to intrust to him a son's instruction, to whom daughters and young men shall come, if opportunity shall so happen, that the teacher shall deliver his lessons to them on a dunghill. Let this not be so: every deviation comes from something which is in man's nature; but this (deviation) is near being something not in man's nature.

