no freedom from perturbations.  Patron or no patron, what care I?  You do care.  I am richer than you. I don’t care what Caesar thinks of me. I flatter no one.  This is what I have instead of your silver and gold plate.  You have silver vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites.  My mind to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me abundant and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness.  All your possessions seem small to you, mine seem great to me.  Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied.”  The comparison with which he ends the discussion is very remarkable.  I once had the privilege of hearing Sir William Hooker explain to the late Queen Adelaide the contents of the Kew Museum.  Among them was a cocoa-nut with a hole in it, and Sir William explained to the Queen that in certain parts of India, when the natives want to catch the monkeys they make holes in cocoa-nuts, and fill them with sugar.  The monkeys thrust in their hands and fill them with sugar; the aperture is too small to draw the paws out again when thus increased in size; the monkeys have not the sense to loose their hold of the sugar, and so they are caught.  This little anecdote will enable the reader to relish the illustration of Epictetus.  “When little boys thrust their hands into narrow-mouthed jars full of figs and almonds, when they have filled their hands they cannot draw them out again, and so begin to howl.  Let go a few of the figs and almonds, and you’ll get your hand out.  And so you, let go your desires.  Don’t desire many things, and you’ll get what you do desire.”  “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed!”

Another of the constant precepts of Epictetus is that we should aim high; we are not to be common threads in the woof of life, but like the laticlave on the robe of a senator, the broad purple stripe which gave lustre and beauty to the whole.  But how are we to know that we are qualified for this high function?  How does the bull know, when the lion approaches, that it is his place to expose himself for all the herd?  If we have high powers we shall soon be conscious of them, and if we have them not we may gradually acquire them.  Nothing great is produced at once,—­the vine must blossom, and bear fruit, and ripen, before we have the purple clusters of the grape,—­“first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.”

But whence are we to derive this high sense of duty and possible eminence?  Why, if Caesar had adopted you, would you not show your proud sense of ennoblement in haughty looks; how is it that you are not proud of being sons of God?  You have, indeed, a body, by virtue of which many men sink into close kinship with pernicious wolves, and savage lions, and crafty foxes, destroying the rational within them, and so becoming greedy cattle or mischievous vermin; but above and beyond this, “If,” says Epictetus, “a man have once been worthily interpenetrated