chance dislocate an arm, sprain an ankle, gulp down abundance of yellow
sand, be scourge with the whip--and with all this sometimes lose the
victory. Count the cost--and then, if your desire still holds, try the
wrestler's life. Else let me tell you that you will be behaving like a
pack of children playing now at wrestlers, now at gladiators; presently
falling to trumpeting and anon to stage-playing, when the fancy takes
them for what they have seen. And you are even the same: wrestler,
gladiator, philosopher, orator all by turns and none of them with your
whole soul. Like an ape, you mimic what you see, to one thing constant
never; the thing that is familiar charms no more. This is because you
never undertook aught with due consideration, nor after strictly testing
and viewing it from every side; no, your choice was thoughtless; the
glow of your desire had waxed cold . . . .

Friend, bethink you first what it is you would do, and then what your
own nature is able to bear. Would you be a wrestler, consider your
shoulders, your thighs, your lions--not all men are formed to the same
end. Think you to be a philosopher while acting as you do? think you go
on thus eating, thus drinking, giving way in like manner to wrath and
to displeasure? Nay, you must watch, you must labour; overcome certain
desires; quit your familiar friends, submit to be despised by your
slave, to be held in derision by them that meet you, to take the lower
place in all things, in office, in positions of authority, in courts of
law.

Weigh these things fully, and then, if you will, lay to your hand; if
as the price of these things you would gain Freedom, Tranquillity, and
passionless Serenity.