How then do we admit that virtue is such as I have said, and yet seek progress in other things and make a display of it?  What is the product of virtue?  Tranquillity.  Who then makes improvement?  Is it he who has read many books of Chrysippus?  But does virtue consist in having understood Chrysippus?  If this is so, progress is clearly nothing else than knowing a great deal of Chrysippus.  But now we admit that virtue produces one thing, and we declare that approaching near to it is another thing, namely, progress or improvement.  Such a person, says one, is already able to read Chrysippus by himself.  Indeed, sir, you are making great progress.  What kind of progress?  But why do you mock the man?  Why do you draw him away from the perception of his own misfortunes?  Will you not show him the effect of virtue that he may learn where to look for improvement?  Seek it there, wretch, where your work lies.  And where is your work?  In desire and in aversion, that you may not be disappointed in your desire, and that you may not fall into that which you would avoid; in your pursuit and avoiding, that you commit no error; in assent and suspension of assent, that you be not deceived.  The first things, and the most necessary are those which I have named.  But if with trembling and lamentation you seek not to fall into that which you avoid, tell me how you are improving.

Do you then show me your improvement in these things?  If I were talking to an athlete, I should say, Show me your shoulders; and then he might say, Here are my Halteres.  You and your Halteres look to that.  I should reply, I wish to see the effect of the Halteres.  So, when you say:  Take the treatise on the active powers ([Greek:  hormea]), and see how I have studied it, I reply:  Slave, I am not inquiring about this, but how you exercise pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and purpose and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not.  If conformably, give me evidence of it, and I will say that you are making progress; but if not conformably, be gone, and not only expound your books, but write such books yourself; and what will you gain by it?  Do you not know that the whole book costs only five denarii?  Does then the expounder seem to be worth more than five denarii?  Never then look for the matter itself in one place, and progress towards it in another.  Where then is progress?  If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own will ([Greek:  proairesis]) to exercise it and to improve it by labor, so as to make it conformable to nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; and if he has learned that he who desires or avoids the things which are not in his power can neither be faithful nor free, but of necessity he must change with them and be tossed about with them as in a tempest, and of necessity must subject himself to others who have the power to procure or prevent what lie desires or would avoid;