(1) This special discipline of life was designated by the term which was in use for bodily training, _askesis_ (ἄσκησις).[240] It is frequently used in this relation in Philo. He distinguishes three elements in the process of attaining goodness—nature, learning, discipline.[241] He distinguishes those who discipline themselves in wisdom by means of actual works, from those who have only a literary and intellectual knowledge of it.[242] He holds that the greatest and most numerous blessings that a man can have come from the gymnastic of moral efforts.[243] Its elements are “reading, meditation, reformation, the memory of noble ideals, self-restraint, the active practice of duties:”[244] in another passage he adds to these _prayer_, and the recognition of the indifference of things that are indifferent.[245] In the second century, when the idea of moral reformation had taken a stronger hold, this moral discipline was evidently carried out under systematic rules. It was not left to a student’s option. He must undergo hardships, drinking water rather than wine, sleeping on the ground rather than on a bed; and sometimes even subjecting himself to austerities, being scourged and bound with chains. There was sometimes no ostentation of endurance. Marcus Aurelius says that he owed it to Rusticus that he did not show off with a striking display either his acts of benevolence or his moral exercises.[246] “If you drink water,” says Epictetus in his Student’s Manual,[247] “don’t take every opportunity of saying, I drink water.... And if you resolve to exercise yourself in toil and hardship, do it for yourself alone, and not for the world outside. Don’t embrace statues (in public, to cool yourself); but if ever your thirst become extreme, fill your mouth with cold water and put it out again—_and tell no one_.” Epictetus himself preferred that men should be disciplined, not by bodily hardships, but by the voluntary repression of desire. The true “ascetic” is he who disciplines himself against all the suggestions of evil desire:[248] “an object of desire comes into sight: wait, poor soul; do not straightway be carried off your feet by it: consider, the contest is great, the task is divine; it is for kingship, for freedom, for calm, for undisturbedness. Think of God: call Him to be your helper and to stand by your side, as sailors call upon Castor and Pollux in a storm: for yours is a storm, the greatest of all storms, the storm of strong suggestions that sweep reason away.” In a similar way Lucian’s friend Nigrinus condemns those who endeavour to fashion young men to virtue by great bodily hardships rather than by a mingled discipline of body and mind: and Lucian himself says that he knew of some who had died under the excessive strain.[249]