BOOK III. IX. 7-12
if it is unsound? Whom have you ever visited for this purpose? What time have you set yourself, what period of your life? Review the periods of your life, all to yourself, if you are ashamed to do so before me. When you were a boy were you in the habit of examining your judgements? Did you not habitually do what you then did just as you do everything now? And when you grew to be a youth and were attending the lectures of the rhetoricians, and were yourself practising, what did you fancy that you yet lacked? And when you were a young man and began to take part in politics, and to plead cases yourself, and to have a good reputation, who any longer seemed in your eyes to be your equal? Would you under any circumstances have submitted to be put through an examination on the charge that you had wretched judgements? 10Very well then, what do you wish me to say to you?—Help me in this affair.—I have no precepts to offer for this; and you too, if you came to me for this purpose, have not come to me as to a philosopher, but as to a vegetable-dealer, as to a cobbler.—To what end, then, do philosophers have precepts to offer?—To this end, that whatever happen, our governing principle shall be, and abide to the end, in accord with nature. Do you regard that as a trifle?—No; it is of the utmost moment.—What then? Does this require only a little time, and is it possible to acquire it on a passing visit? Acquire it, then, if you can!
Then you will say, "When I met Epictetus it was like meeting a stone, a statue." Yes, for you took a look at me, and nothing more. The person who meets a man as a man is one who learns to
