conditions of the world as it is. The state of human nature is such, that to linger upon the threshold of philosophy is to induce a moral torpor. The student who aims at shaping his reason into harmony with nature has to begin, not with unformed and plastic material, which he can fashion to his will by systematic rules of art, but with his nature as it is shaped already, almost beyond possibility of unshaping, by pernicious habits, and beguiling associations of ideas, and false opinions about good and evil. While you are teaching him logic and physics, the very evils which it is his object to remedy will be gathering fresh strength. The old familiar names of “good” and “evil,” with all the false ideas which they suggest, will be giving birth at every moment to mistaken judgments and wrong actions, to all the false pleasures and false pains which it is the very purpose of philosophy to destroy. He must begin, as he must end, with practice. He must accept precepts and act upon them before he learns the theory of them. His progress in philosophy must be measured by his progress, not in knowledge, but in moral conduct. This view, which Epictetus preaches again and again with passionate fervour, will be best stated in his own words:[238] “A man who is making progress, having learnt from the philosophers that desire has good things for its object and undesire evil things,—having learnt moreover that in no other way can contentment and dispassionateness come to a man than by his never failing of the object of his desire and never encountering the object of undesire,—banishes the one altogether, or at least postpones it, while he allows the other to act only in regard to those things which are within the province of the will. For he knows that if he strives not to have things that are without the province of the will, he will some time or other encounter some such things and so be unhappy. But if what moral perfection professes is to cause happiness and dispassionateness and peace of mind, then of course progress towards moral perfection is progress towards each one of the things which moral perfection professes to secure. For in all cases progress is the approaching to that to which perfection finally brings us. “How is it, then, that while we admit this to be the definition of moral perfection, we seek and show off progress in other things? What is the effect of moral perfection? “‘Peace of mind?’ “Who then is making progress towards it? He who has read many treatises of Chrysippus? Surely moral perfection does not consist in this—in understanding Chrysippus: if it does, then confessedly progress towards moral perfection is nothing else than understanding a good deal of Chrysippus. But as it is, while we admit that moral perfection effects one thing, we make progress—the approximation to perfection—effect another.