How long
will you then still defer thinking yourself worthy of the
best things, and in no matter transgressing the distinctive
reason?1 Have you accepted the theorems (rules), which
it was your duty to agree to, and have you agreed to
them? what teacher then do you still expect that you
defer to him the correction of yourself? You are no longer
a youth, but already a full-grown man. If then you are
negligent and slothful, and are continually making procrastination after procrastination, and proposal (intention)
after proposal, and fixing day after day, after which you
will attend to yourself, you will not know that you are
not making improvement, but you will continue ignorant
(uninstructed) both while you live and till you die. Immediately then think it right to live as a full-grown man,
and one who is making proficiency, and let every thing
which appears to you to be the best be to you a law which
must not be transgressed. And if any thing laborious, or
pleasant or glorious or inglorious be presented to you,
remember that now is the contest, now are the Olympic
games, and they cannot be deferred; and that it depends
on one defeat and one giving way that progress is either
lost or maintained. Socrates in this way became perfect,
in all things improving himself, attending to nothing
except to reason. But you, though you are not yet a
Socrates, ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates.
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1 τὸν διαιροῦντα λόγον. 'Eam partitioned rationis intelligo, qua initio dixit, Quaedam in potestate nostra esse, quaedam non esse.' Wolf
The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments. Epictetus. George Long. translator. London. George Bell and Sons. 1890.
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