r who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false
display. But he who is really making progress in virtue imitates
Hippocrates, who confessed publicly and put into black and white that he
had made a mistake about the sutures of the skull,[282] for he will
think it monstrous, if that great man declared his mistake, that others
might not fall into the same error, and yet he himself for his own
deliverance from vice cannot bear to be shown he is in the wrong, and to
confess his stupidity and ignorance. Moreover the sayings of Bion and
Pyrrho will test not so much one's progress as a greater and more
perfect habit of virtue. Bion maintained that his friends might think
they had made progress, when they could listen as patiently to abuse as
to such language as the following, "Stranger, you look not like a bad or
foolish person,"[283] "Health and joy go with you, may the gods give you
happiness!"[284] While as to Pyrrho they say, when he was at sea and in
peril from a storm, that he pointed out a little pig that was quietly
enjoying some grain that had been scattered about, and said to his
companions that the man who did not wish to be disturbed by the changes
and chances of life should attain a similar composedness of mind through
reason and philosophy.

Sec. XII. Look also at the opinion of Zeno, who thought that everybody
might gauge his progress in virtue by his dreams, if he saw himself in
his dreams pleasing himself with nothing disgraceful, and neither doing
nor wishing to do anything dreadful or unjust, but that, as in the clear
depths of a calm and tranquil sea, his fancy and passions were plainly
shown to be under the control of reason. And this had not escaped the
notice of Plato,[285] it seems, who had earlier expressed in form and
outline the part that fancy and unreason played in sleep in the soul
that was by nature tyrannical, "for it attempts incest," he says, "with
its mother, and procures for itself unlawful meats, and gives itself up
to the most abandoned desires, such as in daytime the law through shame
and fear debars people from." As then beasts of burden that have been
well-trained do not, even if their driver let go the reins, attempt to
turn aside and leave the proper road, but go forward orderly as usual,
pursuing their way without stumbling, so those whose unreason has become
obedient and mild and tempered by reason, will not easily wish, either
in dreams or in illnesses, to deal insolent