The first difference between one of the crowd and a philosopher is this: the one says, "I am undone on the account of my child, my brother, my father"; but the other, if ever he be obliged to say, "I am undone!" reflects, and adds, "on account of myself." For the Will can not be restrained or hurt by anything to which the Will does not extend, but only by itself. If, therefore, we always would incline this way, and whenever we are unsuccessful, would lay the fault on ourselves, and remember that there is no cause of perturbation and inconstancy but wrong principles, I pledge myself to you that we should make some proficiency. But we set out in a very different way from the very beginning. In infancy, for example, if we happen to stumble, our nurse does not chide us, but beats the stone. Why, what harm has the stone done? Was it to move out of its place for the folly of your child? Again, if we do not find something to eat when we come out of the bath, our tutor does not try to moderate our appetite, but beats the cook. Why, did we appoint you tutor of the cook, man? No; but of our child. It is he whom you are to correct and improve. By these means even when we are grown up, we appear children. For an unmusical person is a child in music; an illiterate person, a child in learning; and an untaught one, a child in life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 113: From the "Discourses." Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Copyright, 1890, by Little, Brown & Co.] LUCIAN Born at Samosata, Syria, about 120 A.D.; died about 200; apprenticed to his maternal uncle, who was a sculptor, but ran away in dislike of the art; becoming interested in the Rhetoricians, began to write himself; his works, as collected in English, comprize four volumes, among them "Dialogues of the Gods," "Dialogues of the Dead," "Zeus, the Tragedian," "The Ferryboat," and "Toxaris."[114] I A DESCENT TO THE UNKNOWN[115] Dawn was approaching when we went down to the river to embark; he had provided a boat, victims, hydromel, and all necessaries for our mystic enterprise. We put all aboard, and then, Troubled at heart, with welling tears, we went. For some distance we floated down stream, until we entered the marshy lake in which the Euphrates disappears. Beyond this we came to a desolate, wooded, sunless spot; there we landed, Mithrobarzanes leading the way, and proceeded to dig a pit, slay our sheep, and sprinkle their blood round the edge. Meanwhile the Mage, with a lighted torch in his hand, abandoning his customary whisper, shouted at the top of his voice an invocation to all spirits, particularly the Poenae and Erinyes, Hecate's dark might, and dread Persephone, with a string of other names, outlandish, unintelligible, and polysyllabic. As he ended, there was a great commotion, earth was burst open by the incantation, the barking of Cerberus was heard far off, and all was overcast and lowering: