you. For you
have never undertaken anything after consideration, nor after having
explored the whole matter and put it to a strict examination; but you
have undertaken it at hazard and with a cold desire. Thus some persons
having seen a philosopher and having heard one speak like Euphrates--and
yet who can speak like him?--wish to be philosophers themselves.

Man, consider first what the matter is (which you propose to do), then
your own nature also, what it is able to bear. If you are a wrestler,
look at your shoulders, your thighs, your loins: for different men are
naturally formed for different things. Do you think that, if you do
(what you are doing daily), you can be a philosopher? Do you think that
you can eat as you do now, drink as you do now, and in the same way be
angry and out of humor? You must watch, labor, conquer certain desires,
you must depart from your kinsmen, be despised by your slaves, laughed
at by those who meet you, in everything you must be in an inferior
condition, as to magisterial office, in honors, in courts of justice.
When you have considered all these things completely, then, if you think
proper, approach to philosophy, if you would gain in exchange for these
things freedom from perturbations, liberty, tranquillity. If you have
not considered these things, do not approach philosophy: do not act like
children, at one time a philosopher, then a tax collector, then a
rhetorician, then a procurator (officer) of Caesar. These things are not
consistent. You must be one man either good or bad; you must either
labor at your own ruling faculty or at external things; you must either
labor at things within or at external things; that is, you must either
occupy the place of a philosopher or that of one of the vulgar.

A person said to Rufus when Galba was murdered: Is the world now
governed by Providence? But Rufus replied: Did I ever incidentally form
an argument from Galba that the world is governed by Providence?

* * * * *

THAT WE OUGHT WITH CAUTION TO ENTER INTO FAMILIAR INTERCOURSE WITH
MEN.--If a man has frequent intercourse with others either for talk, or
drinking together, or generally for social purposes, he must either
become like them, or change them to his own fashion. For if a man places
a piece of quenched charcoal close to a piece that is burning, either
the quenched charcoal will quench the other, or the burning charcoal
will light that which is qu