Discourses 1.4 ¶3 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 1.4 ¶3

Do you then show me your improvement in these things? If I were talking to an athlete, I should say: Show me your shoulders; and then he might say, “Here are my Halteres.” You and your Halteres look to that. I should reply: “I wish to see the effect of the Halteres.” So, when you say: “Take the treatise on the active powers (ὁρμή), and see how I have studied it.” I reply, “Slave, I am not inquiring about this, but how you exercise pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and purpose and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not. If conformably, give me evidence of it, and I will say that you are making progress: but if not conformably, be gone, and not only expound your books, but write such books yourself; and what will you gain by it? Do you not know that the whole book costs only five denarii? Does then the expounder seem to be worth more than five denarii? Never then look for the matter itself in one place, and progress towards it in another.”