But I can't focus on my philosophy studies. What are you studying philosophy for anyway? Fool, isn't it so you can be happy? So you can stay steady? So you can live according to your nature? What stops you from keeping your mind in its natural state when you have a fever? This is your proof. This is your test as a philosopher. Having a fever is part of life, just like walking, sailing, or traveling on land. Do you read while you're walking? No. Do you read when you have a fever? No. But if you walk well, you're doing everything a walking person should do. If you handle a fever well, you're doing everything a person with a fever should do.
But I cannot attend to my philosophical studies. And for what purpose do you follow them? Slave, is it not that you may be happy, that you may be constant, is it not that you may be in a state conformable to nature and live so? What hinders you when you have a fever from having your ruling faculty conformable to nature? Here is the proof of the thing, here is the test of the philosopher. For this also is a part of life, like walking, like sailing, like journeying by land, so also is fever. Do you read when you are walking? No. Nor do you when you have a fever. But if you walk about well, you have all that belongs to a man who walks. If you bear a fever well, you have all that belongs to a man in a fever.