Whatever things (rules) are proposed to you (for the conduct of life)
abide by them, as if they were laws, as if you would be guilty of
impiety if you transgressed any of them. And whatever any man shall say
about you, do not attend to it; for this is no affair of yours. How
long will you then still defer thinking yourself worthy of the best
things, and in no matter transgressing the distinctive reason? Have you
accepted the theorems (rules), which it was your duty to agree to, and
have you agreed to them? what teacher then do you still expect that you
defer to him the correction of yourself? You are no longer a youth, but
already a full-grown man. If, then, you are negligent and slothful, and
are continually making procrastination after procrastination, and
proposal (intention) after proposal, and fixing day after day, after
which you will attend to yourself, you will not know that you are not
making improvement, but you will continue ignorant (uninstructed) both
while you live and till you die. Immediately then think it right to
live as a full-grown man, and one who is making proficiency, and let
everything which appears to you to be the best be to you a law which
must not be transgressed. And if anything laborious or pleasant or
glorious or inglorious be presented to you, remember that now is the
contest, now are the Olympic games, and they cannot be deferred; and
that it depends on one defeat and one giving way that progress is
either lost or maintained. Socrates in this way became perfect, in all
things improving himself, attending to nothing except to reason. But
you, though you are not yet a Socrates, ought to live as one who wishes
to be a Socrates.