things of Attica. Clear away your own. Clear away your own. From yourself, from your thoughts cast away instead of Procrustes and Sciron,[1] sadness, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, intemperance. But it is not possible to eject these things otherwise than by looking to God only, by fixing your affections on him only, by being consecrated to his commands. But if you choose any thing else, you will with sighs and groans be compelled to follow[2] what is stronger than yourself, always seeking tranquillity and never able to find it; for you seek tranquillity there where it is not, and you neglect to seek it where it is.
CHAPTER XVII.
how we must adapt preconceptions to particular cases.
What is the first business of him who philosophizes? To throw away self-conceit (οἴησις).[3] For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which he thinks that he knows. As to things then which ought to be done and ought not to be done, and good and bad, and beautiful and ugly, all of us talking of them at random go to the philosophers; and on these matters we praise, we censure, we accuse, we blame, we judge and determine about principles honourable and dishonourable. But why do we go to the philosophers? Because we wish to learn what we do not think that we know. And what is this? Theorems.[4] For we wish to learn what philosophers say as being something elegant and acute; and some wish to learn that
- ↑ Procrustes and Sciron, two robbers who infested Attica and were destroyed by Theseus, as Plutarch tells in his life of Theseus.
- ↑ Antoninus x. 28, "only to the rational animal is it given to follow voluntarily what happens; but simply to follow is a necessity imposed on all." Compare Seneca, Quaest. Nat. ii. 59.
- ↑ See ii. 11. 1, and iii. 14. 8.
- ↑ Theorems are defined by Cicero, de Fato, c. 6, 'Percepta appello quae dicuntur Graece θεωρήματα'.
