Miscellanies in Prose and Verse

THE doctrine of the genuine Stoics and Platonists, concerning the constancy of the wise man, is no less paradoxical to the general public—though perfectly scientific—than the examples they have given of the endurance of calamity are magnanimous and sublime. For what, to the understanding of the multitude, can be more incredible than the dogma that a wise man can neither receive an injury nor an insult? That he may be a servant, and deprived of all the necessities of life, and yet not be poor; that he may be insane, and yet his intellect remain uninjured? For the common people believe that the wise man is not to be adorned with an imaginary honor of words—for such, in their opinion, are these assertions—but that he is to be situated in a place where no injury is permitted. Will there, however, we ask, be no one who will revile him, no one who will attempt to injure him?