"It is not easy," says Epictetus, "to train effeminate youths, any more than it is easy to take up whey with a hook.
But those of fine nature, even if you discourage them, desire instruction all the more.

For which reason Rufus often discouraged pupils, using this as a criterion of fine and of common natures; for he used to say, that just as a stone, even if you fling it into the air, will fall down to the earth by its own gravitating force, so also a noble nature, in proportion as it is repulsed, in that proportion tends more in its own natural direction." As Emerson says,-- "Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'THOU MUST,' The youth replies, 'I CAN.'" One more trait of the character of Musonius will show how deeply Epictetus respected him, and how much good he derived from him.

In his _Discourse on Ostentation_, Epictetus says that Rufus was in the habit of remarking to his pupils, "If you have leisure to praise me, I can have done you no good." "He used indeed so to address us that each one of us, sitting there, thought that some one had been privately telling tales against _him_ in particular, so completely did Rufus seize hold of his characteristics, so vividly did he portray our individual faults." Such was the man under whose teaching Epictetus grew to maturity, and it was evidently a teaching which was wise and noble, even if it were somewhat chilling and austere.

It formed an epoch in the slave's life; it remoulded his entire character; it was to him the source of blessings so inestimable in their value that it is doubtful whether they were counter-balanced by all the miseries of poverty, slavery, and contempt.
He would probably have admitted that it was _better_ for him to have been sold into cruel slavery, than it would have been to grow up in freedom, obscurity, and ignorance in his native Hierapolis.

So that Epictetus might have found, and did find, in his own person, an additional argument in favour of Divine Providence: an additional proof that God is kind and merciful to all men; an additional intensity of conviction that, if our lots on earth are not equal, they are at least dominated by a principle of justice and of wisdom, and each man, on the whole, may gain that which is best for him, and that which most honestly and most heartily he desires.