65.  Take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men.[B]

66.  How do we know if Telauges was not superior in character to Socrates?  For it is not enough that Socrates died a more noble death, and disputed more skilfully with the sophists, and passed the night in the cold with more endurance, and that when he was bid to arrest Leon[C] of Salamis, he considered it more noble to refuse, and that he walked in a swaggering way in the streets[D]—­though as to this fact one may have great doubts if it was true.  But we ought to inquire what kind of a soul it was that Socrates possessed, and if he was able to be content with being just towards men and pious towards the gods, neither idly vexed on account of men’s villainy, nor yet making himself a slave to any man’s ignorance, nor receiving as strange anything that fell to his share out of the universal, nor enduring it as intolerable, nor allowing his understanding to sympathize with the affects of the miserable flesh.

[A] The text has [Greek:  hylike], which it has been proposed to alter to [Greek:  logike], and this change is necessary.  We shall then have in this section [Greek:  logike] and [Greek:  koinonike] associated, as we have in s. 68 [Greek:  logike] and [Greek:  politike], and in s. 72.

    [B] I have followed Gataker’s conjecture [Greek:  ohi
    apanthropoi] instead of the MSS. reading [Greek:  ohi anthropoi]

    [C] Leon of Salamis.  See Plato, Epist. 7; Apolog. c. 20;
    Epictetus, iv.  I, 160; iv. 7, 30.

    [D] Aristophan.  Nub. 362. [Greek:  hoti brenthuei t’ en taisis
    hodois kai to ophthalmo paraballei.]

67.  Nature has not so mingled+ [the intelligence] with the composition of the body, as not to have allowed thee the power of circumscribing thyself and of bringing under subjection to thyself all that is thy own; for it is very possible to be a divine man and to be recognized as such by no one.  Always bear this in mind; and another thing too, that very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life.  And because thou hast despaired of becoming a dialectician and skilled in the knowledge of nature, do not for this reason renounce the hope of being both free and modest, and social and obedient to God.

68.  It is in thy power to live free from all compulsion in the greatest tranquillity of mind, even if all the world cry out against thee as much as they choose, and even if wild beasts tear in pieces the members of this kneaded matter which has grown around thee.  For what hinders the mind in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in tranquillity and in a just judgment of all surrounding things and in a ready use of the objects which are presented to it, so that the judgment may say to the thing which falls under its observation:  This thou art in substance [reality], though in men’s opinion thou mayest appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to that which falls under the hand:  Thou art the thing that I was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always a material for virtue both rational and political, and in a word, for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or God.  For everything which happens has a relationship either to God or man, and is neither new nor difficult to handle, but usual and apt matter to work on.