THAT WHERE THE HEART IS THE BOND IS.
1. Thou art a fool if thou desire wife and children and friends to live
forever, for that is desiring things to be in thy power which are not in
thy power, and things pertaining to others to be thine own. So also thou
art a fool to desire that thy servant should never do anything amiss,
for that is desiring evil not to be evil, but something else. But if
thou desire never to fail in any pursuit, this thou canst do. This,
therefore, practice to attain--namely, the attainable.
2. The lord of each of us is he that hath power over the things that we
desire or dislike, to give or to take them away. Whosoever, then, will
be free, let him neither desire nor shun any of the things that are in
others' power; otherwise he must needs be enslaved.
3. Wherefore Demetrius[1] said to Nero, _You threaten me with death,
but Nature threatens you_. If I am taken up with my poor body, or my
property, I have given myself over to slavery, for I immediately show of
my own self with what I may be captured. As when a snake draws in his
head, I say, _Strike at that part of him which he guards_. And know
thou, that at the part thou desirest to guard, there thy master will
fall upon thee. Remembering this, whom wilt thou still flatter or fear?
4. Think that thou shouldst conduct thyself in life as at a feast. Is
some dish brought to thee? Then put forth thyself in seemly fashion.
Doth it pass thee by? Then hold it not back. Hath it not yet come? Then
do not reach out for it at a distance, but wait till it is at thine
hand. And thus doing with regard to children and wife and governments
and wealth, thou wilt be a worthy guest at the table of the Gods. And if
thou even pass over things that are offered to thee, and refuse to take
of them, then thou wilt not only share the banquet, but also the
dominion of the Gods. For so doing Diogenes and Heracleitus, and the
like, both were, and were reported to be, rightly divine.