Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/213

 yearn for nurses and the breast, and does the weeping of poor silly women move you and make you effeminate? And so will you never get over being an infant? Don't you know that, when a person acts like a child, the older he is the more ridiculous he is?

In Athens did you see nobody when you went to his house?—Yes, the man I wanted to see.—Here also make up your mind to see this man, and you will see the man you want; only do not go humbly, not with desire or aversion, and all will be well with you. But this result is not to be found by mere going, nor by standing at gates, but in one's judgements within. When you have contemned things external and outside the province of your moral purpose, and have come to regard none of them as your own, but only the being right in judgement, in thinking, in choosing, in desiring, in avoiding,—where is there any longer room for flattery, where for an abject spirit? Why any longer yearn for the quiet you enjoyed there, or your familiar haunts? Wait a little while and you will find the places here familiar in their turn. And then, if you are so ignoble in spirit, weep and wail again when you leave these too!

How, then, shall I become affectionate?—As a man of noble spirit, as one who is fortunate; for it is against all reason to be abject, or broken in spirit, or to depend on something other than yourself, or even to blame either God or man. I would have you become affectionate in such a way as to maintain at the same time all these rules; if, however, by virtue of this natural affection, whatever it is you call by that name, you are going to be a 203