Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/115

 a child—now a philosopher, later on a tax-gatherer, then a rhetorician, then a procurator of Caesar. These things do not go together. You must be one person, either good or bad; you must labour to improve either your own governing principle or externals; you must work hard either on the inner man, or on things outside; that is, play the rôle of a philosopher, or else that of a layman.

When Galba was assassinated, someone said to Rufus, "Is the universe governed now by Providence?" But he replied, "Did I ever, even in passing, take the case of Galba as the basis for an argument that the universe is governed by Providence?" 



man who consorts frequently with one person or another either for conversation, or for banquets, or for social purposes in general, is compelled either to become like them himself, or else to bring them over to his own style of living; for if you put by the side of a live coal one that has gone out, either the dead coal will put the live one out, or the latter will kindle the former. Since the risk, then, is so great, we ought to enter cautiously into such social intercourse with the laymen, remembering that it is impossible for the man who brushes up against 105