Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/457

 that caused you to let your beard grow long? that wrote as it was dying: "We are spending what is our last and at the same time a happy day?" Was it the flesh or the moral purpose? Come, do you confess that you have something superior to the flesh, and you are not insane, either? Are you, in all truth, so blind and deaf?

Well, what then? Does a man despise his other faculties? Far from it! Does a man say there is no use or advancement save in the faculty of moral purpose? Far from it! That is unintelligent, impious, ungrateful towards God. Nay, he is but assigning its true value to each thing. For there is some use in an ass, but not as much as there is in an ox; there is use also in a dog, but not as much as there is in a slave; there is use also in a slave, but not as much as there is in your fellow-citizens; there is use also in these, but not as much as there is in the magistrates. Yet because some things are superior we ought not to despise the use which the others give. There is a certain value also in the faculty of eloquence, but it is not as great as that of the faculty of moral purpose. When, therefore, I say this, let no one suppose that I am bidding you neglect speech, any more than I bid you neglect eyes, or ears, or hands, or feet, or dress, or shoes. But if you ask me, "What, then, is the highest of 413