“Again, you yourself remarked to me on the strangeness and originality of Epictetus’s expression about ‘eating,’ namely, that, in the very act of eating, or going to the gymnasium, or whatever else, the philosopher was to remember that he was ‘feeding on God’ and ‘carrying about God,’ and that he must not ‘defile’ the image of the God within him. Well, I admit it is strange, but I do not admit that it is original. I can match it in the first place with another passage from Epictetus himself, where he bids some of his uppish pupils, who wished to reform the world, first to reform themselves. ‘In this way,’ he said, ‘when eating, help those who eat with you; when drinking, those who drink with you.’ In the next place, I can match both out of the letter to the Corinthians, which says, ‘Ye are _God’s temple_,’ and ‘If anyone destroys _God’s temple_, him will God destroy,’ and again, ‘Your body is _the temple of the Holy Spirit_, which ye have from God.’ It adds that people cause shame to others and injury to themselves by greediness at the sacred meals they take in common; and lastly, says Paul, ‘_Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God._’ There are things like this, of course, in Seneca, but none, as far as I know, that come so near as Epictetus does to the language of Paul. “I could quote more from Paul, and also from other sacred books of the Christians, to shew that Epictetus is indebted to them. But I have been already led on by the fascination—to me it is a fascination—of a merely literary discussion, to say more than enough, and a great deal more than I intended. Let me conclude with an extract from a letter I lately rummaged up from my dear old friend Pliny, whom I greatly miss. He was the former Governor of Bithynia about whom you wrote. It refers to a very fine fellow, Artemidorus by name, a military tribune, son-in-law of the excellent Musonius (Epictetus’s teacher, whom I mentioned above). ‘Among the whole multitude of those who in these days call themselves philosophers, you will hardly find one so sincere, genuine, and true, as Artemidorus. I say nothing about his bodily endurance of heat and cold and the most arduous toil, of his indifference to the pleasures of the table, of the strict control with which he keeps his eyes and his passions in order. These are great virtues, but only great in others. In him they are but trifles compared with his other merits.’