ver? If your parents were poor, and left their property to others,
and if while they live, they do not help you at all, is this shameful to
you? Is this what you learned with the philosophers? Did you never hear
that the thing which is shameful ought to be blamed, and that which is
blamable is worthy of blame? Whom do you blame for an act which is not
his own, which he did not do himself? Did you then make your father such
as he is, or is it in your power to improve him? Is this power given to
you? Well then, ought you to wish the things which are not given to you,
or to be ashamed if you do not obtain them? And have you also been
accustomed while you were studying philosophy to look to others and to
hope for nothing from yourself? Lament then and groan and eat with fear
that you may not have food to-morrow. Tremble about your poor slaves
lest they steal, lest they run away, lest they die. So live, and
continue to live, you who in name only have approached philosophy, and
have disgraced its theorems as far as you can by showing them to be
useless and unprofitable to those who take them up; you, who have never
sought constancy, freedom from perturbation, and from passions; you who
have not sought any person for the sake of this object, but many for the
sake of syllogisms; you who have never thoroughly examined any of these
appearances by yourself, Am I able to bear, or am I not able to bear?
What remains for me to do? But as if all your affairs were well and
secure, you have been resting on the third topic, that of things being
unchanged, in order that you may possess unchanged--what? cowardice,
mean spirit, the admiration of the rich, desire without attaining any
end, and avoidance ([Greek: echchlisin]) which fails in the attempt?
About security in these things you have been anxious.

Ought you not to have gained something in addition from reason, and then
to have protected this with security? And whom did you ever see building
a battlement all around and encircling it with a wall? And what
doorkeeper is placed with no door to watch? But you practise in order to
be able to prove--what? You practise that you may not be tossed as on
the sea through sophisms, and tossed about from what? Show me first what
you hold, what you measure, or what you weigh; and show me the scales or
the medimnus (the measure); or how long will you go on measuring the
dust? Ought you not to demonstrate those things which make men happy,
which make