Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/45

Rh pass through life calmly and with little danger, even when the powers of the will are very weak, and hardly ever exercised. Life with them is fortunately a series of habits, generally good, or at least not bad. This is the condition of many men and women. They are good or seem to be good, because they are not tried above their power; but if a temptation should suddenly surprise them when they are not prepared for it, they are conquered and they fall. Even a man, who has trained himself to the exercise of his rational faculties and has for a long time passed a blameless life, may in a moment when his vigilance is relaxed, when he is off his guard, be defeated by the enemy whom he always carries about with him.

The difference between a man, who has within him the principles of reason and him who has not, appears from a story told by Gellius (xix. 1):—We were sailing, he says, from Cassiopa to Brundisium when a violent storm came on. In the ship there was a Stoic philosopher, a man of good repute. He who told the story says that he kept his eyes on the philosopher to see how he behaved under the circumstances. The philosopher did not weep and bewail like the rest, but his complexion and apparent perturbation did not much differ from those of the other passengers. When the danger was over, a wealthy Greek from Asia, went up to the Stoic, and in an insulting manner said, How is this, philosopher? when we were in danger, you were afraid and grew pale; but I was neither afraid nor was I pale. The philosopher after a little hesitation said, If I seemed to be a little afraid in so violent a tempest, you are not worthy to hear the reason of it. However he told the man a story about Aristippus, who on a like occasion was questioned by a man like this Greek; and so the philosopher got rid of the impertinent fellow. When they