ut the praisers and admirers of which
they esteem absurd and ridiculous?

And yet this will (I suppose) appear to you more against common sense,
that a wise man should take no care whether he enjoys or not enjoys the
greatest good things, but should carry himself after the same manner in
these things, as in those that are indifferent both in their management
and administration. For all of us, "whoever we are that eat the fruit
of the broad earth," judge that desirable, good, and profitable, which
being present we use, and absent we want and desire. But that which
no man thinks worth his concern, either for his profit or delight, is
indifferent. For we by no other means distinguish a laborious man from a
trifler, who is for the most part also employed in action, but that the
one busies himself in useless matters and indifferently, and the other
in things commodious and profitable. But these men act quite contrary;
for with them, a wise and prudent man, being conversant in many
comprehensions and memories of comprehension, esteems few of them to
belong to him; and not caring for the rest, he thinks he has neither
more or less by remembering that he lately had the comprehension of Dion
sneezing or Theon playing at ball. And yet every comprehension in a wise
man, and every memory having assurance and firmness, is a great, yea, a
very great good. When therefore his health fails, when some organ of
his senses is disordered, or when his wealth is lost, is a wise man so
careless as to think that none of these things concern him? Or does he,
"when sick, give fees to the physicians: for the gaining of riches sail
to Leucon, governor in the Bosphorus, or travel to Idanthyrsus, king of
the Scythians," as Chrysippus says? And being deprived of some of his
senses, does he not become weary even of life? How then do they not
acknowledge that they philosophize against the common notions, employing
so much care and diligence on things indifferent, and not minding
whether they have or have not great good things?

But this is also yet against the common conceptions, that he who is
a man should not rejoice when coming from the greatest evils to the
greatest goods. Now their wise men suffer this. Being changed from
extreme viciousness to the highest virtue, and at the same time escaping
a most miserable life and attaining to a most happy one, he shows no
sign of joy, nor does this so great change lift him up or yet move him,
being delivered