You do the same thing. One day you're an athlete. The next day you're a gladiator. Then a philosopher. Then a public speaker. But deep down, you're nothing. You're like a monkey that copies whatever it sees. You always want the next new thing. But once you get used to something, you don't want it anymore. You never think things through. You never fully explore what you're getting into or examine it carefully. You just jump in randomly with half-hearted interest. It's like people who hear a philosopher speak — someone like Euphrates, who is truly gifted — and suddenly they want to be philosophers too.
So you also do: you are at one time a wrestler (athlete), then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a rhetorician; but with your whole soul you are nothing: like the ape you imitate all that you see; and always one thing after another pleases you, but that which becomes familiar displeases you. For you have never undertaken anything after consideration, nor after having explored the whole matter and put it to a strict examination; but you have undertaken it at hazard and with a cold desire. Thus some persons having seen a philosopher and having heard one speak like Euphrates—and yet who can speak like him?—wish to be philosophers themselves.