and the philosopher screams; and an impertinent person stands by and asks in surprise, “Is it then vice to suffer shipwreck? because, if not, it can be no evil;” a question which makes our philosopher so angry that he is inclined to fling a log at his interlocutor’s head.  But Epictetus sternly tells him that the philosopher never was one at all, except in name; that as he sat in the schools puffed up by homage and adulation, his innate cowardice and conceit were but hidden under borrowed plumes; and that in him the name of Stoic was usurped.

“Why,” he asks in another passage, “why do you call yourself a Stoic?  Why do you deceive the multitude?  Why do you act the Jew when you are a Greek?  Don’t you see on what terms each person is called a Jew? or a Syrian? or an Egyptian?  And when we see some mere trimmer we are in the habit of saying, ’This is no Jew; he is only acting the part of one,’ but when a man takes up the entire condition of a proselyte, thoroughly imbued with Jewish doctrines, then he both is in reality and is called a Jew.  So we philosophers too, dipped in a false dye, are Jews in name, but in reality are something else....  We call ourselves philosophers when we cannot even play the part of men, as though a man should try to heave the stone of Ajax who cannot lift ten pounds.”  The passage is interesting not only on its own account, but because of its curious similarity both with the language and with the sentiment of St. Paul—­“He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the latter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.”

The best way to become a philosopher in deed is not by a mere study of books and knowledge of doctrines, but by a steady diligence of actions and adherence to original principles, to which must be added consistency and self control.  “These principles,” says Epictetus, “produce friendship in a house, unanimity in a city, peace in nations; they make a man grateful to God, bold under all circumstances, as though dealing with things alien and valueless.  Now we are capable of writing these things, and reading them, and praising them when they are read, but we are far enough off following them.  Hence comes it that the reproach of the Lacedaemonians, that they are ‘lions at home, foxes at Ephesus,’ will also apply to us; in the school we are lions, out of it foxes.”

These passages include, I think, all the most original, important, and characteristic conceptions which are to be found in the Discourses.  They are most prominently illustrated in the long and important chapter on the Cynic philosophy.  A genuine Cynic—­one who was so, not in brutality of manners or ostentation of rabid eccentricity, but a Cynic in life and in his inmost principles—­was evidently in the eyes of Epictetus one of the loftiest of human beings.  He drew a sketch of his ideal conception to one of his scholars who inquired of him upon the subject.