7. _In what, then, is the good, seeing that in these things it is not? Tell us, thou, my lord missionary and spy!_ It is there where ye deem it not, and where ye have no desire to seek it. For did ye desire, ye would have found it in yourselves, nor would ye wander to things without, nor pursue things alien, as if they were your own concerns. Turn to your own selves; understand the natural conceptions which ye possess. What kind of thing do ye take the Good to be? Peace? happiness? freedom? Come, then, do ye not naturally conceive it as great, as precious, and that cannot be harmed? What kind of material, then, will ye take to shape peace and freedom withal—that which is enslaved or in that which is free? _That which is free._ Have ye the flesh enslaved or free? _We know not._ Know ye not that it is the slave of fever, of gout, of ophthalmia, of dysentery, of tyranny, and fire, and steel, and everything that is mightier than itself? _Yea, it is enslaved._ How, then, can aught that is of the body be free? and how can that be great or precious which by nature is dead, mere earth or mud? 8. What then? have ye nothing that is free? _It may be nothing._ And who can compel you to assent to an appearance that is false? _No man._ And who can compel you not to assent to an appearance that is true? _No man._ Here, then, ye see that there is in you something that is by nature free. But which of you, except he lay hold of some appearance of the profitable, or of the becoming, can either pursue or avoid, or desire or dislike, or adapt or intend anything? _No man._ In these things, too, then, ye have something that is unhindered and free. This, miserable men, must ye perfect; this have a care to, in this seek for the Good. 9. _And how is it possible that one can live prosperously who hath nothing; a naked, homeless, hearthless, beggarly man, without servants, without a country?_ Lo, God hath sent you a man to show you in very deed that it is possible. Behold me, that I have neither country, nor house, nor possessions, nor servants; I sleep on the ground; nor is a wife mine, nor children, nor domicile, but only earth and heaven, and a single cloak. And what is lacking to me? do ever I grieve? do I fear? am I not free? When did any of you see me fail of my pursuit, or meet with what I had avoided? When did I blame God or man? When did I accuse any man? When did any of you see me of a sullen countenance? How do I meet those whom ye fear and marvel at? Do I not treat them as my slaves? Who that seeth me, but thinketh he beholdeth his king and his lord? 10. So these are the accents of the Cynic, this his character, this his design. Not so—but it is his bag, and his staff, and his great jaws; and to devour all that is given to him, or store it up, or to reprove out of season every one that he may meet, or to show off his shoulder.[9]