"
But Epictetus is particularly in earnest about warning us that to
_profess_ these principles and _talk_ about them is one thing--to act up
to them quite another. He draws a humorous picture of an inconsistent
and unreal philosopher, who--after eloquently proving that nothing is
good but what pertains to virtue, and nothing evil but what pertains to
vice, and that all other things are indifferent--goes to sea. A storm
comes on, and the masts creak, and the philosopher screams; and an
impertinent person stands by and asks in surprise, "Is it then _vice_ to
suffer shipwreck? because, if not, it can be no evil;" a question which
makes our philosopher so angry that he is inclined to fling a log at his
interlocutor's head. But Epictetus sternly tells him that the
philosopher never was one at all, except in name; that as he sat in the
schools puffed up by homage and adulation, his innate cowardice and
conceit were but hidden under borrowed plumes; and that in him the name
of Stoic was usurped.
"Why," he asks in another passage, "why do you call yourself a Stoic?
Why do you deceive the multitude? Why do you act the Jew when you are a
Greek? Don't you see on what terms each person is called a Jew? or a
Syrian? or an Egyptian? And when we see some mere _trimmer_ we are in
the habit of saying, 'This is no Jew; he is only acting the part of
one,' but when a man takes up the entire condition of a proselyte,
thoroughly imbued with Jewish doctrines, then he both _is_ in reality
and is _called_ a Jew.
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