A breviate of a discourse, showing that the Stoics speak greater improbabilities than the poets. (4)

He that in the Stoics’ account was in the forenoon (for example) the worst man in the world is in the afternoon best of men; and he that falls asleep a very sot, dunce, miscreant, and brute, nay, by Jove, a slave and a beggar to boot, rises up the same day a prince, a rich and a happy man, and (which is yet more) a continent, just, determined, and unprepossessed person;—not by shooting forth out of a young and tender body a downy beard or the sprouting tokens of mature youth, but by having in a feeble, soft, unmanful, and undetermined mind, a perfect intellect, a consummate prudence, a godlike disposition, an unprejudiced science, and an unalterable habit. All this time his viciousness gives not the least ground in order to it, but he becomes in an instant, I had almost said, of the vilest brute, a sort of hero, genius, or God. For he that receives his virtue from the Stoics’ portico may say,

Ask what thou wilt, it shall be granted thee.[*]

It brings wealth along with it, it contains kingship in it, it confers fortune; it renders men prosperous, and makes them to want nothing and to have a sufficiency of every thing. though they have not one drachm of silver in the house.