nhappy. Now if virtue promises
good fortune and tranquillity and happiness, certainly also the progress
towards virtue is progress towards each of these things. For it is
always true that to whatever point the perfecting of anything leads us,
progress is an approach towards this point.

How then do we admit that virtue is such as I have said, and yet seek
progress in other things and make a display of it? What is the product
of virtue? Tranquillity. Who then makes improvement? Is it he who has
read many books of Chrysippus? But does virtue consist in having
understood Chrysippus? If this is so, progress is clearly nothing else
than knowing a great deal of Chrysippus. But now we admit that virtue
produces one thing, and we declare that approaching near to it is
another thing, namely, progress or improvement. Such a person, says one,
is already able to read Chrysippus by himself. Indeed, sir, you are
making great progress. What kind of progress? But why do you mock the
man? Why do you draw him away from the perception of his own
misfortunes? Will you not show him the effect of virtue that he may
learn where to look for improvement? Seek it there, wretch, where your
work lies. And where is your work? In desire and in aversion, that you
may not be disappointed in your desire, and that you may not fall into
that which you would avoid; in your pursuit and avoiding, that you
commit no error; in assent and suspension of assent, that you be not
deceived. The first things, and the most necessary are those which I
have named. But if with trembling and lamentation you seek not to fall
into that which you avoid, tell me how you are improving.

Do you then show me your improvement in these things? If I were talking
to an athlete, I should say, Show me your shoulders; and then he might
say, Here are my Halteres. You and your Halteres look to that. I should
reply, I wish to see the effect of the Halteres. So, when you say: Take
the treatise on the active powers ([Greek: hormea]), and see how I have
studied it, I reply: Slave, I am not inquiring about this, but how you
exercise pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and
purpose and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not. If
conformably, give me evidence of it, and I will say that you are making
progress; but if not conformably, be gone, and not only expound your
books, but write such books yourself; and what will you gain by it? Do
you not know that