How do we learn to write? Do I get to write the name "Dion" however I want? No. I'm taught to write it the correct way. What about music? Same thing. What about every art or skill? Exactly the same. If this weren't true, knowledge would be worthless. Everyone would just do whatever they felt like doing. So why would freedom — the most important thing of all — be any different? Why would you be allowed to want things carelessly? You're not. True learning means this: you learn to want everything to happen exactly as it does happen. And how do things happen? However the one in charge has arranged them. He has set up summer and winter, plenty and shortage, virtue and vice, and all these opposites to create harmony in the whole universe. And to each of us, he has given a body, body parts, possessions, and companions.
For how do we proceed in the matter of writing? Do I wish to write the name of Dion as I choose? No, but I am taught to choose to write it as it ought to be written. And how with respect to music? In the same manner. And what universally in every art or science? Just the same. If it were not so, it would be of no value to know anything, if knowledge were adapted to every man's whim. Is it then in this alone, in this which is the greatest and the chief thing, I mean freedom, that I am permitted to will inconsiderately? By no means; but to be instructed is this, to learn to wish that everything may happen as it does. And how do things happen? As the disposer has disposed them? And he has appointed summer and winter, and abundance and scarcity, and virtue and vice, and all such opposites for the harmony of the whole; and to each of us he has given a body, and parts of the body, and possessions, and companions.