if it is possible,
recover the things wherein you failed. For we must not shrink when we
are engaged in the greatest combat, but we must even take blows. For the
combat before us is not in wrestling and the Pancration, in which both
the successful and the unsuccessful may have the greatest merit, or may
have little, and in truth may be very fortunate or very unfortunate; but
the combat is for good fortune and happiness themselves. Well then, even
if we have renounced the contest in this matter (for good fortune and
happiness), no man hinders us from renewing the combat again, and we are
not compelled to wait for another four years that the games at Olympia
may come again; but as soon as you have recovered and restored yourself,
and employ the same zeal, you may renew the combat again; and if again
you renounce it, you may again renew it; and if you once gain the
victory, you are like him who has never renounced the combat. Only do
not through a habit of doing the same thing (renouncing the combat),
begin to do it with pleasure, and then like a bad athlete go about after
being conquered in all the circuit of the games like quails who have run
away.

* * * * *

TO THOSE WHO FEAR WANT.--Are you not ashamed at being more cowardly and
more mean than fugitive slaves? How do they when they run away leave
their masters? on what estates do they depend, and what domestics do
they rely on? Do they not after stealing a little, which is enough for
the first days, then afterwards move on through land or through sea,
contriving one method after another for maintaining their lives? And
what fugitive slave ever died of hunger? But you are afraid lest
necessary things should fail you, and are sleepless by night. Wretch,
are you so blind, and don't you see the road to which the want of
necessaries leads?--Well, where does it lead?--to the same place to
which a fever leads, or a stone that falls on you, to death. Have you
not often said this yourself to your companions? have you not read much
of this kind, and written much? and how often have you boasted that you
were easy as to death?

Learn then first what are the things which are shameful, and then tell
us that you are a philosopher: but at present do not, even if any other
man calls you so, allow it.

Is that shameful to you which is not your own act, that of which you are
not the cause, that which has come to you by accident, as a headache, as
a fe