Someone asked Epictetus why people today seem smarter but made less progress than people in the past. He answered: "More cultivated how? Greater progress in what? You'll make progress in whatever you actually work on. Today people cultivate reason to win arguments and solve logic puzzles. And yes, they get better at that. In the past, people cultivated reason to keep their minds healthy and live according to nature. And they got better at that. Don't mix up different goals. Don't expect to make progress in one area when you're working on something else entirely. Show me someone today who focuses on keeping himself in harmony with nature and living that way consistently. You won't find anyone like that."
When some person asked him how it happened that since reason has been more cultivated by the men of the present age, the progress made in former times was greater. In what respect, he answered, has it been more cultivated now, and in what respect was the progress greater then? For in that in which it has now been more cultivated, in that also the progress will now be found. At present it has been cultivated for the purpose of resolving syllogisms, and progress is made. But in former times it was cultivated for the purpose of maintaining the governing faculty in a condition conformable to nature, and progress was made. Do not then mix things which are different, and do not expect, when you are laboring at one thing to make progress in another. But see if any man among us when he is intent upon this, the keeping himself in a state conformable to nature and living so always, does not make progress. For you will not find such a man.