Discourses: Book 4 4 : 4

What, then, is the reason for this? It is because we have never read for this purpose, we have never written for this purpose—in our actions, to treat in accordance with nature the sense-impressions which come to us; but we stop with having learned what is said, and with the ability to explain it to someone else, and with analysing the syllogism, and examining the hypothetical argument. That is why, where our heart is set, there also our impediment lies. Do you wish at any cost to have the things that are not under your control? Very well then, be hindered, be obstructed, fail. If we should read a treatise On Choice, not in order to know about the subject, but in order to make correct choices; a treatise On Desire and Aversion, in order that we may never fail in our desire nor fall into that which we are trying to avoid; a treatise On Duty, in order that we may remember our relations in society and do nothing irrationally or contrary to the principles of duty; we should not be vexed by being hindered in regard to what we have read, but we should find satisfaction in doing the deeds required by our mutual relations, and we should be reckoning, not the things which we have been accustomed hitherto to reckon: "To-day I have read so many lines, I have written so many," but, "To-day I made a choice in the way that the philosophers teach, I did not entertain desire, I avoided only those things that are in the sphere of the moral purpose, I was not overawed by So-and-so, I was not put out of countenance by So-and-so, I exercised my patience, my abstinence, my co-operation," and thus we should be giving thanks to God for those things for which we ought to give Him thanks. But as it is, we do not realize that we ourselves, though in a different fashion, grow like the multitude. Another man is afraid that he will not have an office; you are afraid that you will. Do not so, man! But just as you laugh at the man who is afraid he will not have an office, so also laugh at yourself. For it makes no difference whether a person is thirsty with fever, or is afraid of water like a man with the rabies. Or how can you any longer say with Socrates, "If so it please God, so be it"? Do you suppose that, if Socrates had yearned to spend his leisure in the Lyceum or the Academy, and to converse daily with the young men, he would have gone forth cheerfully on all the military expeditions in which he served? Would he not have wailed and groaned, "Wretched man that I am I here I am now in misery and misfortune, when I might be sunning myself in the Lyceum"? What, was this your function in life, to sun yourself? Was it not rather to be serene, to be unhampered, to be unhindered? And how would he have been Socrates any longer, if he had wailed like this? How would he have gone on to write paeans in prison?