YOU AND WE HAVE

I desire wisdom as keenly as Solomon did. But it must be wisdom that can be obtained with vary little efforts, wisdom that can be caught almost by infection. I have no time or energy for the laborious quest of philosophy. I wish the philosophers to perform the laborious quest and at the end of it, feed me with the fruits of their labors; just as I get eggs from the farmer, apple from the fruit grower, medicines from the chemist. So, do I expect the philosopher to provide me with wisdom at the cost of a few shillings? That is why at one time I read emersion and at another Marcus Aurelius. To read them I hoped was to become wise. I agreed with them while I read them. But when I had finished reading I was still much. The same man that I had been before incapable of concentrating on the things on which they said I should concentrate or of not being indifferent to the things to which they said I should not be indifferent. Still, I have never lost faith in books, believing that some where printed matter exists from which I shall be able to absorb philosophy and strength of character while smoking in an armchair…….
When the world is normally cheerful and comfortable we hold the philosophers were wise men but that we should be fools to imitate them. We are convinced that, while philosophers are worth reading, material things are worth bothering about. It is as though we enjoyed wisdom as a spectacle a delightful spectacle on a stage which it would be unseemly for the audience to attempt to invade where the Greeks and the Romans made differently? Did the admirers of Socrates and Epictetus really attempt to become philosophers or were they like ourselves. Hopeful of achieving wisdom, not by practice but through a magic potion administered by a wiser man then they. To become wise without effort by listening to a voice, by reading a book it is at once the most exciting and the most soothing of dreams. In such a dream I took down Epictetus and behold it was only a dream.