Ch. 25
To those who fall off (desist) from their purpose.
CONSIDER as to the things which you proposed to yourself at
first, which you have secured, and which you have not; and
how you are pleased when you recall to memory the one,
and are pained about the other; and if it is possible, recover
the things wherein you failed. For we must not shrink
when we are engaged in the greatest combat, but we must
even take blows.596 For the combat before us is not in wrestling and the Pancration, in which both the successful and
the unsuccessful may have the greatest merit, or may have
little, and in truth may be very fortunate or very unfortunate; but the combat is for good fortune and happiness
themselves. Well then, even if we have renounced the
contest in this matter (for good fortune and happiness), no
man hinders us from renewing the combat again, and we
are not compelled to wait for another four years that the
games at Olympia may come again597 ; but as soon as you
have recovered and restored yourself, and employ the
same zeal, you may renew the combat again; and if again
you renounce it, you may again renew it; and if you once
gain the victory, you are like him who has never renounced
the combat. Only do not through a habit of doing the
same thing (renouncing the combat) begin to do it with
pleasure, and then like a bad athlete go about after being
conquered in all the circuit of the games like quails who
have run away.598
The sight of a beautiful young girl overpowers me. Well,
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have I not been overpowered before? An inclination arises
in me to find fault with a person; for have I not found fault
with him before? You speak to us as if you had come off
(from these things) free from harm, just as if a man should
say to his physician who forbids him to bathe, Have I not
bathed before? If then the physician can say to him, Well,
and what then happened to you after the bath? Had you
not a fever, had you not a headache? And when you found
fault with a person lately, did you not do the act of a
malignant person, of a trifling babbler; did you not cherish
this habit in you by adding to it the corresponding acts?
And when you were overpowered by the young girl, did
you come off unharmed? Why then do you talk of what you
did before? You ought, I think, remembering what you
did, as slaves remember the blows which they have received,
to abstain from the same faults. But the one case is not
like the other; for in the case of slaves the pain causes the
remembrance: but in the case of your faults, what is the
pain, what is the punishment; for when have you been
accustomed to fly from evil acts?599 Sufferings then of the
trying character are useful to us, whether we choose
or not.
[p. 289]