BOOK III. XVI. 11-XVII. 2
our own countries, because old habits distract us and do not allow a beginning to be made of another custom, and we cannot bear to have men meet us and say, "Look, So-and-so is philosophizing, although he is this sort of a person or that." Thus also physicians send away to a different region and a different climate those who are suffering from chronic disorders, and that is well. Do you also introduce different habits; fix your ideas, exercise yourselves in them. But no, you go from the class-room to a show, a gladiatorial combat, a gymnasium-colonnade,[1] a circus; and then you come back here from these places, and you go back there again from here, and remain the same persons all the time.[2] 15And so you acquire no fine habit; you pay no regard or attention to your own self; you do not observe: "How do I deal with the external impressions which befall me? In accordance with nature, or contrary to it? How shall I respond to these impressions? As I should, or as I should not? Do I declare to the things which lie outside the sphere of my moral purpose that they mean nothing to me?" Why, if you have not yet acquired this state of mind, flee from your former habits, flee from the laymen, if you would begin to be somebody some time.
CHAPTER XVII
Of Providence
Whenever you find fault with Providence, only consider and you will recognize that what happens is in accordance with reason. "Yes," you say,
- ↑ Where the athletes exercised in winter, or in bad weather.
- ↑ Cf. " . . . But evermore came out by the same door where in I went."—Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald), 27.
