season: you think that you are something, a fool among fools: you will be caught by the frost, and rather you have been frost-bitten in the root below, but your upper parts still blossom a little, and for this reason you think that you are still alive and flourishing. Allow us to ripen in the natural way: why do you bare (expose) us? why do you force us? we are not yet able to bear the air. Let the root grow, then acquire the first joint, then the second, and then the third in this way then the fruit will naturally force itself out,[1] even if I do not choose. For who that is pregnant and filled with such great principles does not also perceive his own powers and move towards the corresponding acts? A bull is not ignorant of his own nature and his powers, when a wild beast shows itself, nor does he wait for one to urge him on; nor a dog when he sees a wild animal. But if I have the powers of a good man, shall I wait for you to prepare me for my own (proper) acts? At present I have them not, believe me. Why then do you wish me to be withered up before the time, as you have been withered up?
CHAPTER IX.
to a person who had been changed to a character of shamelessness.[2]
When you see another man in the possession of power (magistracy), set against this the fact that you have not the want (desire) of power; when you see another rich, see what you possess in place of riches: for if you possess nothing in place of them, you are miserable; but if you have not the want of riches, know that you possess more than this man possesses and what is worth much more. Another man possesses a handsome woman (wife): you
