Book 1
3
By means of this [animal] kindred some of us, deviating towards it, become like wolves, faithless, and crafty, and mischievous; others, like lions, wild and savage and untamed; but most of us foxes, and disgraceful even among brutes. For what else is a slanderous and ill-natured man but a fox, or something yet more wretched and mean? Watch and take heed, then, that you do not sink thus low.
Of progress.
4
He who is entering on a state of progress, having learned from the philosophers that good should be sought and evil shunned, and having learned, too, that prosperity and peace are no otherwise attainable by man than in not missing what he seeks, nor incurring what he shuns,—such a one totally extirpates and banishes all wayward desire, and shuns only those things over which he can have control. For if he should attempt to shun those things over which he has no control, he knows that he must sometimes incur that which he shuns, and be unhappy. Now if virtue promises happiness, prosperity, and peace, then progress in virtue is certainly progress in each of these. For to whatever point the perfection of anything absolutely brings us, progress is always an approach towards it.
4
How happens it, then, that when we confess virtue to be such, yet we seek, and make an ostentatious show of progress in other things! What is the business of virtue?
4
A life truly prosperous.
4
Who is in a state of progress, then? He who has best studied Chrysippus?Chrysippus was regarded as the highest authority among the later Stoics; but not one of his seven hundred volumes bas come down to posterity.—H. Why, does virtue consist in having read Chrysippus through? If so, progress is confessedly nothing else than understanding a great deal of Chrysippus; otherwise we confess virtue to consist in one thing, and declare progress, which is an approach to it, to be quite another thing.
