“‘This man,’ some one tells us, ‘can now read Chrysippus even by himself.’ “‘You are most assuredly making splendid progress, my friend,’ he tells him. “Progress indeed! why do you make game of him? Why do you lead him astray from the consciousness of his misfortunes? Will you not show him what the effect of moral perfection is, that he may learn where to look for progress towards it? “Look for progress, my poor friend, in the direction of the effect which you have to produce. And what is the effect which you have to produce? Never to be disappointed of the object of your desire, and never to encounter the object of your undesire: never to miss the mark in your endeavours to do and not to do: never to be deceived in your assent and suspension of assent. The first of these is the primary and most necessary point: for if it is with trembling and reluctance that you seek to avoid falling into evil, how can you be said to be making progress? “It is in these respects, then, that I ask you to show me your progress. If I were to say to an athlete, ‘Show me your muscles,’ and he were to say, ‘See here are my dumb-bells,’ I should reply, ‘Begone with your dumb-bells! What I want to see is, not them, but their effect.’ (And yet that is just what you do:) ‘Take the treatise _On Effort_’ (you say), ‘and examine me in it.’ Slave! that is not what I want to know; but rather how you endeavour to do or not to do—how you desire to have and not to have—how you form your plans and purposes and preparations for action—whether you do all this in harmony with nature or not. If you do so in accordance with nature, show me that you do so, and I will say that you are making progress; but if not, begone, and do not merely interpret books, but write similar ones yourself besides. And what will you gain by it? Don’t you know that the whole book costs five shillings, and do you think the man who interprets the book is worth more than the book itself costs? “Never, then, look for the effect (of philosophy) in one place, and progress towards that effect in another.