But if you ask me what then is the most excellent of all things, what must I say?  I cannot say the power of speaking, but the power of the will, when it is right ([Greek:  orthae]).  For it is this which uses the other (the power of speaking), and all the other faculties both small and great.  For when this faculty of the will is set right, a man who is not good becomes good:  but when it fails, a man becomes bad.  It is through this that we are unfortunate, that we are fortunate, that we blame one another, are pleased with one another.  In a word, it is this which if we neglect it makes unhappiness, and if we carefully look after it, makes happiness.

What then is usually done?  Men generally act as a traveller would do on his way to his own country, when he enters a good inn, and being pleased with it should remain there.  Man, you have forgotten your purpose:  you were not travelling to this inn, but you were passing through it.  But this is a pleasant inn.  And how many other inns are pleasant? and how many meadows are pleasant? yet only for passing through.  But your purpose is this, to return to your country, to relieve your kinsmen of anxiety, to discharge the duties of a citizen, to marry, to beget children, to fill the usual magistracies.  For you are not come to select more pleasant places, but to live in these where you were born and of which you were made a citizen.  Something of the kind takes place in the matter which we are considering.  Since by the aid of speech and such communication as you receive here you must advance to perfection, and purge your will and correct the faculty which makes use of the appearances of things; and since it is necessary also for the teaching (delivery) of theorems to be effected by a certain mode of expression and with a certain variety and sharpness, some persons captivated by these very things abide in them, one captivated by the expression, another by syllogisms, another again by sophisms, and still another by some other inn ([Greek:  paudocheiou]) of the kind; and there they stay and waste away as they were among sirens.

Man, your purpose (business) was to make yourself capable of using conformably to nature the appearances presented to you, in your desires not to be frustrated, in your aversion from things not to fall into that which you would avoid, never to have no luck (as one may say), nor ever to have bad luck, to be free, not hindered, not compelled, conforming yourself to the administration of Zeus, obeying it, well satisfied with this, blaming no one, charging no one with fault, able from your whole soul to utter these verses: 

  Lead me, O Zeus, and thou too Destiny.

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