Book 4
1
This should be our study from morning till night beginning with the least and frailest things, as with earthenware, with glassware. Afterwards proceed to a suit of clothes, a dog, a horse, an estate; thence to yourself, body, members, children, wife, brothers. Look everywhere around you, and be able to detach yourself from these things. Correct your principles. Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not your own; nothing to grow to you that may give you agony when it is torn away. And say, when you are daily training yourself as you do here, not that you act the philosopher, which may be a presumptuous claim, but that you are asserting your freedom. For this is true freedom. This is the freedom that Diogenes gained from Antisthenes, and declared it was impossible that he should ever after be a slave to any one. Hence, when he was taken prisoner, how did he treat the pirates? Did he call any of them master? I do not mean the name, for I am not afraid of a word, but of the disposition from whence the word proceeds. How did he reprove them for feeding their prisoners ill? How was he sold? Did he seek a master? No, but a slave. And when he was sold, how did he converse with his lord? He immediately disputed with him whether he ought to be dressed or shaved in the manner he was; and how he ought to bring up his children. And where is the wonder? For if the same master had bought some one to instruct his children in gymnastic exercises, would he in those exercises have treated him as a servant or as a master? And so if he had bought a physician or an architect. In every department the skilful must necessarily be superior to the unskilful. What else, then, can he be but master, who possesses the universal knowledge of life? For who is master in a ship? The pilot. Why? Because whoever disobeys him is a loser. But a master can put me in chains. Can he do it, then, without being a loser? I think not, indeed. But because he must be a loser, he evidently must not do it; for no one acts unjustly without being a loser. And how does he suffer, who puts his own slave in chains? What think you? From the very fact of chaining him. This you yourself must grant, if you would hold to the doctrine that man is not naturally a wild, but a gentle, animal. For when is it that a vine is in a bad condition? When it is in a condition contrary to its nature. How is it with a cock? The same. It is therefore the same with a man also. What is his nature,—to bite and kick and throw into prison and cut off heads? No, but to do good, to assist, to indulge the wishes of others. Whether you will or not, then, he is in a bad condition whenever he acts unreasonably. And so was not Socrates in a bad condition? No, but his judges and accusers. Nor Helvidius, at Rome? No, but his murderer. How do you talk? Why, just as you do. You do not call that cock in a bad condition which is victorious, and yet wounded; but that which is conquered and comes off unhurt. Nor do you call a dog happy which neither hunts nor toils; but when you see him perspiring, and distressed, and panting with the chase. In what do we talk paradoxes? If we say that the evil of everything consists in what is contrary to its nature, is this a paradox? Do you not say it with regard to other things? Why, therefore, in the case of man alone, do you take a different view? But further, it is no paradox to say that by nature man is gentle and social and faithful. This is none. How then [is it a paradox to say] that, when he is whipped, or imprisoned, or beheaded, he is not hurt? If he suffers nobly, does he not come off even the better and a gainer? But he is the person hurt who suffers the most miserable and shameful evils; who, instead of a man, becomes a wolf, a viper, or a hornet.
