ABSTRACT
The “true benefit” of a nation, said Ruskin, consists in “extinguishing a want—in living with as few wants as possible.” “To have no wants at all is, to my mind, an attribute of godhead; to have as few as possible, the nearest approach to godhead”—is attributed to Socrates. Epictetus asks,
Where, then, is progress? If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own will to exercise it and to improve it by labor, so as to make it conformable with nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; and if he has learned that he who desires or avoids the things which are not in his power can be neither faithful nor free, but of necessity must be changed with them and be tossed about with them as in a tempest, and of necessity must subject himself to others who have the power to procure or prevent what he desires or would avoid; finally, if, when he rises in the morning, he observes and keeps these rules, bathes as a man of fidelity, eats as a modest man; in like manner, if in every matter that occurs he works out his chief principles as the runner does with reference to his running, and the trainer of the voice with reference to the voice—this is the man who truly makes progress—this is the man who has not traveled in vain.
