tage? How then ought I any longer to look to seek evil and good in externals? What happens? these doctrines are maintained here, but no man carries them away home; but immediately every one is at war with his slave, with his neighbours, with those who have sneered at him, with those who have ridiculed him. Good luck to Lesbius,[1] who daily proves that I know nothing.
CHAPTER XXI.
against those who readily come to the profession of sophists.
They who have taken up bare theorems (θεωρήματα) immediately wish to vomit them forth, as persons whose stomach is diseased do with food. First digest the thing, then do not vomit it up thus: if you do not digest it, the thing becomes truly an emetic, a crude food and unfit to eat. But after digestion show us some change in your ruling faculty, as athletes show in their shoulders by what they have been exercised and what they have eaten; as those who have taken up certain arts show by what they have learned. The carpenter does not come and say, Hear me talk about the carpenter's art; but having undertaken to build a house, he makes it, and proves that he knows the art. You also ought to do something of the kind; eat like a man, drink like a man, dress, marry, beget children, do the office of a citizen, endure abuse, bear with an unreasonable brother, bear with your father, bear with your son, neighbour, companion.[2] Show us these things that we may see that
- ↑ Some abusive fellow, known to some of the hearers of Epictetus. We ought perhaps to understand the words as if it were said, 'each of you ought to say to himself, Good luck to Lesbius etc.' Schweig.'s note.
- ↑ The practical teaching of the Stoics is contained in iii. c. 7, and it is good and wise. A modern writer says of modern practice: 'If we open our eyes and if we will honestly acknowledge to ourselves what we discover, we shall be compelled to confess that all the life and
