Book 1
25
Thus Demetrius said to Nero: You sentence me to death; and Nature you. If I prize my body first, I have surrendered myself as a slave; if my estate, the same; for I at once betray where I am vulnerable. Just as when a reptile pulls in his head, I bid you strike that part of him which he guards; and be you assured, that wherever you show a desire to guard yourself. there your master will attack you. Remember but this, and whom will you any longer flatter or fear?
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But I want to sit where the senators do.
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Do not you see, that by this you incommode and torment yourself?
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Why, how else shall I see the show in the Amphitheatre advantageously?
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Do not insist on seeing it, O man! and you will not be incommoded. Why do you vex yourself? Or wait a little while; and when the show is over, go sit in the senators’ places and sun yourself. For remember, that this holds universally,—we incommode and torment ourselves; that is, our own preconceived notions do it for us. What is it to be reviled, for instance? Stand by a stone and revile it, and what will you get by it? If you, therefore, would listen only as a stone, what would your reviler gain? But if the reviler has the weakness of the reviled for a vantage-ground, then he carries his point.
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Strip him [bids the tyrant]. What mean you by him? Take my clothes, strip them, at your pleasure. I meant only to insult you. Much good may it do you.
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These things were the study of Socrates; and by these means he always preserved the same countenance. Yet we had rather exercise and study anything, than how to become unrestrained and free. But the philosophers talk paradoxes. And are there not paradoxes in other arts? What is more paradoxical than to prick any one’s eye, that he may see? Should one tell this to one ignorant of surgery, would not he laugh at him? What wonder then, if in philosophy also many truths appear paradoxes to the ignorant?
What the rule of life is.
