Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/135

 you have digested these principles, show us some change in your governing principle that is due to them; as the athletes show their shoulders as the results of their exercising and eating, and as those who have mastered the arts can show the results of their learning. The builder does not come forward and say, "Listen to me deliver a discourse about the art of building"; but he takes a contract for a house, builds it, and thereby proves that he possesses the art. Do something of the same sort yourself too; eat as a man, drink as a man, adorn yourself, marry, get children, be active as a citizen; endure revilings, bear with an unreasonable brother, father, son, neighbour, fellow-traveller. Show us that you can do these things, for us to see that in all truth you have learned something of the philosophers. No, but "Come and listen to me deliver my comments," you say. Go to! Look for people on whom to throw up! "Yes, but I will set forth to you the doctrines of Chrysippus as no one else can; his language I will analyse so as to make it perfectly clear; possibly I will throw in a bit of the vivacity of Antipater and Archedemus."

And then it's for this, is it, that the young men are to leave their fatherlands and their own parents,—to come and listen to you interpreting trifling phrases? Ought they not to be, when they return home, forbearing, ready to help one another, tranquil, with a mind at peace, possessed of some such provision for the journey of life, that, starting out with it, they will be able to bear well whatever happens, and to derive honour from it? And where did you get the ability to impart to them these things which you do not possess yourself? Why, from the first did 125