Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/73

 aversion—such a one has utterly excluded desire from himself, or else deferred it to another time, and feels aversion only toward the things which involve freedom of choice. For if he avoids anything that is not a matter of free choice, he knows that some time he will encounter something in spite of his aversion to it, and will come to grief. Now if it is virtue that holds out the promise thus to create happiness and calm and serenity, then assuredly progress toward virtue is progress toward each of these states of mind. For it is always true that whatsoever the goal toward which perfection in anything definitely leads, progress is an approach thereto.

How comes it, then, that we acknowledge virtue to be a thing of this sort, and yet seek progress and make a display of it in other things? What is the work of virtue? Serenity. Who, then, is making progress? The man who has read many treatises of Chrysippus? What, is virtue no more than this—to have gained a knowledge of Chrysippus? For if it is this, progress is confessedly nothing else than a knowledge of many of the works of Chrysippus. But now, while acknowledging that virtue produces one thing, we are declaring that the approach to virtue, which is progress, produces something else. "So-and-so," says someone, "is already able to read Chrysippus all by himself." It is fine headway, by the gods, that you are making, man! Great progress this! "Why do you mock him? And why do you try to divert him from the consciousness of his own shortcomings? Are you not willing to show him the 29