Ch. 4
Of progress.
He who is entering on a state of progress, having learned from the philosophers that good
should be sought and evil shunned, and having learned,
too, that prosperity and peace are no otherwise at-
tainable by man than in not missing what he seeks,
nor incurring what he shuns, - such a one totally extirpates and banishes all wayward desire, and shuns
only those things over which he can have control.
For if he should attempt to shun those things over
which he has no control, he knows that he must
sometimes incur that which he shuns, and be unhappy. Now if virtue promises happiness, prosperity,
and peace, then progress in virtue is certainly progress in each of these. For to whatever point the
perfection of anything absolutely brings us, progress
is always an approach towards it.
How happens it, then, that when we confess virtue
to be such, yet we seek, and make an ostentatious
show of progress in other things ! What is the business of virtue?
A life truly prosperous.
Who is in a state of progress, then? He who has
best studied Chrysippus?14 Why, does virtue consist
in having read Chrysippus through? If so, progress
is confessedly nothing else than understanding a great
deal of Chrysippus; otherwise we confess virtue to
consist in one thing, and declare progress, which is
an approach to it, to be quite another thing.
This person, they say, is already able to understand
Chrysippus, by himself. "Certainly, sir, you have
made a vast improvement!" What improvement?
Why do you delude him? Why do you withdraw
him from a sense of his real needs? Why do not you
show him the real function of virtue, that he may
know where to seek progress? Seek it there, O unfortunate, where your work lies. And where does
your work lie? In learning what to seek and what
to shun, that you may neither be disappointed of the
one nor incur the other; in practising how to pursue
and how to avoid, that you may not be liable to fail;
in practising intellectual assent and doubt, that you
may not be liable to be deceived. These are the first
and most necessary things. But if you merely seek, in
trembling and lamentation, to keep away all possible
ills, what real progress have you made?
Show me then your progress in this point. As if I
should say to a wrestler, Show me your muscle; and
he should answer me, " See my dumb-bells." Your
dumb-bells are your own affair; I desire to see the
effect of them.
"Take the treatise on the active powers, and see
how thoroughly I have perused it."
I do not inquire into this, O slavish man, but how
you exert those powers, how you manage your desires and aversions, your intentions and purposes, how
you meet events, -whether in accordance with nature's laws or contrary to them. If in accordance,
give me evidence of that, and I will say you improve;
if the contrary, you may go your way, and not only
comment on these treatises, but write such yourself;
and yet what service will it do you? Do not you
know that the whole volume is sold for five denarii?
Does he who comments upon it, then, value himself
at more than that sum? Never make your life to lie
in one thing and yet seek progress in another.
Where is progress, then?
If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals,
turns to his own will, to train, and perfect, and render
it conformable to nature, - noble, free, unrestrained,
unhindered, faithful, humble ; - if he has learned, too,
that whoever desires or shuns things beyond his own
power can neither be faithful nor free, but must necessarily take his chance with them, must necessarily
too be subject to others, to such as can procure or
prevent what he desires or shuns; if, rising in the
morning, he observes and keeps to these rules; bathes
regularly, eats frugally, and to every subject of action
applies the same fixed principles,-if a racer to racing, if an orator to oratory,-this is he who truly
makes progress; this is he who has not labored in
vain. But if he is wholly intent on reading books,
and has labored that point only, and travelled for
that, I bid him go home immediately and do his
daily duties; since that which he sought is nothing.
The only real thing is to study how to rid life of
lamentation, and complaint, and Alas ! and I am undone, and misfortune, and failure; and to learn what
death, what exile, what a prison, what poison is; that
he may be able to say in a prison, like Socrates, "My
dear Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be; "
and not, "Wretched old man, have I kept my gray
hairs for this!" [Do you ask] who speaks thus?
Do you think I quote some mean and despicable person? Is it not Priam who says it? Is it not Oedipus?
Nay, how many kings say it? For what else is
tragedy but the dramatized sufferings of men, bewildered by an admiration of externals? If one were to
be taught by fictions that things beyond our will are
nothing to us, I should rejoice in such a fiction, by
which I might live prosperous and serene. But what
your own aims are, it is your business to consider.
Of what service, then, is Chrysippus to us?
To teach you that those things are not false on
which true prosperity and peace depend. "Take my
books, and you will see how true and conformable to
nature those things are which give me peace." How
great a happiness ! And how great the benefactor
who shows the way! To Triptolemus15 all men have
raised temples and altars, because he gave us a milder
kind of food ; but to him who has discovered and
brought to light and communicated the truth to all, -
the means, not merely of living, but of living well, -
who among you ever raised an altar or a temple, or
dedicated a statue; or who worships God in his name?
We offer sacrifices in memory of those who have given
us corn and the vine; and shall we not give thanks
to God for those who have nurtured such fruit in
the human breast, - even the truth which makes us
blessed?