“Why,” said he—addressing the sham philosopher—“why do you try to impose on the multitude? Why pretend to be a Jew, being really a Greek? Whenever we see a man trimming, we are accustomed to say, ‘This fellow is no Jew, he is shamming.’ But when a man has taken into himself _the feeling of the dipped and chosen_”—these were his exact words, uttered with a gesture and tone of contempt—“then he is, both in name and in very truth, a Jew. Even so it is with us, having merely a sham baptism; Jews in theory, but something else in fact; far away from any real feeling of our theory, and far away from any intention of putting into practice the professions on which we plume ourselves—as though we knew what they really meant!” I could not quite make out this allusion to Jews. But there was no mistaking his next sentence, and it was the last in the lecture, “So, I repeat, it is with us. We are not equal to the fulfilment of the responsibilities of common humanity, not even up to the standard of Man. Yet we would fain take on ourselves in addition the burden of a philosopher. And what a burden! It is as though a weakling, without power to carry a ten-pound weight, were to aspire to heave the stone of Ajax!” Thus he dismissed us. I went out, feeling like the “weakling” indeed, but without the slightest “aspiration to heave the stone of Ajax.” Perhaps Arrian wished to encourage me. For after we had walked on awhile in silence, he said, “The Master was rather cutting to-day. I remember his once saying that we ought to come away from him, not as from a theatre but as from a surgery. To-day the surgeon used the knife, and we don’t like it.” “But what good has the knife done us?” I exclaimed. “If only I could feel that the surgeon had cut out the mischief, a touch of the knife should not make me wince. But the mischief within me seems more mischievous, and my strength for good less strong, for some things that I have heard to-day. Is a Roman to say, when fighting against barbarians for the name and fame of Rome, ‘These things are nothing to me’? Is Diogenes, healing mankind, his brethren, to say, ‘Your diseases are nothing to me’? And that fine phrase in the Catechism, ‘follow thee’—is it not really a disguised form of ‘follow myself’? Does it not mean, ‘follow the _logos_ within me, my own reason, or my own reasonable will,’ or ‘follow my own peace of mind, on which my mind is bent, to the neglect of everything else’?” “It does not mean that, for Epictetus himself, I am convinced,” said Arrian. “I believe not, for him,” said I; “but it has that meaning for me. His teaching does not teach—not me, at least, however it may be with others—the art of being steadfast. And what about others? Did not he himself just now admit that his _logos_ was less powerful than the _pathos_ of the Jews to produce steadfastness? What, by the way, is this _pathos_? Does it mean passionate and unreasonable conviction? And who on earth are these Jews that are ‘dipped and chosen’?”