5. Be not elated in mind at any superiority that is not of yourself. If your horse were elated and should say, _I am beautiful_, that would be tolerable. But when you are elated and say, _I have a beautiful horse_, know that it is at an excellence in your horse that you are elated. What, then, is your own? This—to make use of the appearances. So that when you deal according to Nature in the use of appearances, then shall you be elated, for you will then be elated at an excellence that is your own. CHAPTER IV. THREE STEPS TO PERFECTION. 1. There are three divisions of Philosophy wherein a man must exercise himself who would be wise and good.[1] The first concerns his pursuit and avoidance, so that he may not fail of aught that he would attain, nor fall into aught that he would avoid. The second concerns his desires and aversions, and, generally, all that it becomes a man to be, so that he bear himself orderly and prudently and not heedlessly. The third is that which concerns security from delusion and hasty apprehension, and, generally, the assenting to appearances. Of these the chief and most urgent is that which hath to do with the passions,[2] for the passions arise in no other way than by our failing in endeavor to attain or to avoid something. This it is which brings in troubles and tumults and ill-luck and misfortune, that is the cause of griefs and lamentations and envies, that makes envious and jealous men; by which things we become unable even to hear the doctrines of reason. The second concerns that which is becoming to a man; for I must not be passionless,[3] like a statue, but maintain all relations natural and acquired, as a religious being, as a son, as a brother, as a father, as a citizen. The third is that which concerns men as soon as they are making advance in philosophy, which provides for the security of the two others; so that not even in dreams may any appearance that approacheth us pass untested, nor in wine, nor in ill-humors. This, a man may say, is beyond us. But the philosophers of this day, passing by the first and second parts of philosophy, occupy themselves in the third, caviling, and arguing by questions, and constructing hypotheses and fallacies. For, they say, when dealing with these subjects a man must guard himself from delusion. Who must? The wise and good man.