Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/361

 become no lighter? Can it be that I am so dull? And yet, indeed, in everything else that I have wanted I was not found to be unusually dull, but I learned my letters rapidly, and how to wrestle, and do my geometry, and analyse syllogisms. Can it be, then, that reason has not convinced me? Why, indeed, there is nothing to which I have so given my approval from the very first, or so preferred, and now I read about these matters, and hear them, and write about them. Down to this moment we have not found a stronger argument than this. What is it, then, that I yet lack? Can it be that the contrary judgements have not all been put away? Can it be that the thoughts themselves are unexercised and unaccustomed to face the facts, and, like old pieces of armour that have been stowed away, are covered with rust, and can no longer be fitted to me? Yet in wrestling, or in writing, or in reading, I am not satisfied with mere learning, but I turn over and over the arguments presented to me, and fashion new ones, and likewise syllogisms with equivocal premisses. However, the necessary principles, those which enable a man, if he sets forth from them, to get rid of grief, fear, passion, hindrance, and become free, these I do not exercise, nor do I take the practice that is appropriate for them. After all that, am I concerned with what everyone else will say about me, whether I shall appear important or happy in their eyes?"

O miserable man, will you not see what you are saying about yourself? What sort of a person are you in your own eyes? What sort of a person in thinking, in desiring, in avoiding; what sort of a person in choice, preparation, design, and the other