as many thunders and lightnings as thou wilt, and thou shalt know how great is the tranquillity and calm in that reason which is the ruling faculty of the soul. But should you once be worsted, and say that you will conquer _hereafter_, and then the same again and again, know that thus your condition will be vile and weak, so that at the last you will not even know that you are doing wrong, but you will even begin to provide excuses for your sin; and then you will confirm the truth of that saying of Hesiod,-- "'The man that procrastinates struggles ever with ruin.'" Even so! So early did a heathen moralist learn the solemn fact that "only this once" ends in "there is no harm in it." Well does Mr. Coventry Patmore sing:-- "How easy to keep free from sin; How hard that freedom to recall; For awful truth it is that men _Forget_ the heaven from which they fall." In another place Epictetus warns us, however, not to be too easily discouraged in our attempts after good;--and, above all, never to _despair_. "In the schools of the wrestling master, when a boy falls he is bidden to get up again, and to go on wrestling day by day till he has acquired strength; and we must do the same, and not be like those poor wretches who after one failure suffer themselves to be swept along as by a torrent. You need but _will_" he says, "and it is done; but if you relax your efforts, you will be ruined; for ruin and recovery are both from within.--And what will you gain by all this? You will gain modesty for inpudence, purity for vileness, moderation for drunkenness. If you think there are any better ends than these, then by all means go on in sin, for you are beyond the power of any god to save." But Epictetus is particularly in earnest about warning us that to _profess_ these principles and _talk_ about them is one thing--to act up to them quite another. He draws a humorous picture of an inconsistent and unreal philosopher, who--after eloquently proving that nothing is good but what pertains to virtue, and nothing evil but what pertains to vice, and that all other things are indifferent--goes to sea. A storm comes on, and the masts creak, 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.