[10] These indeed, since they infect not only their own compatriots but the peoples in their neighbourhood with their folly, must remain incurable, for they have lost the use of the most vital of the senses, sight. And by this I do not mean the sight of the body but of the soul, the sight which alone gives a knowledge of truth and falsehood.
[11] But it is well that the Therapeutae, a people always taught from the first to use their sight, should desire the vision of the Existent and soar above the sun of our senses and never leave their place in this company which carries them on to perfect happiness.
[12] And those who set themselves to this service, not just following custom nor on the advice and admonition of others but carried away by a heaven-sent passion of love, remain rapt and possessed like bacchanals or corybants until they see the object of their yearning.
[13] Then such is their longing for the deathless and blessed life that thinking their mortal life already ended they abandon their property to their sons or daughters or to other kinsfolk, thus voluntarily advancing the time of their inheritance, while those who have no kinsfolk give them to comrades and friends. For it was right that those who have received ready to their hand the wealth that has eyes to see should surrender the blind wealth to those who are still blind in mind.
[14] The Greeks extol Anaxagoras and Democritus because smitten with the desire for philosophy they left their fields to be devoured by sheep. I too myself admire them for showing themselves superior to wealth, but how much better are these who did not let their estates serve as feeding-ground for cattle but made good the needs of men, their kinsfolk and friends, and so turned their indigence into affluence. Of the two actions the first was thoughtless, I might say mad, but that the persons concerned have the admiration of Greece, the second showed soberness and careful consideration and remarkable good sense.
[15] What more does a hostile army do than cut the crops and hew the trees of their opponents’ country to force them to surrender through lack of necessaries? This is what a Democritus did to his own blood-relations, inflicting on them poverty and indigence artificially created, not perhaps with mischievous intent but through lack of foresight and consideration for the interest of the others.
[16] How much better and more admirable are these who with no less ardour for the study of wisdom preferred magnanimity to negligence and gave away their possessions instead of wasting them, in this way benefiting both others and themselves, others through supplying them with abundant resources, themselves through furthering the study of philosophy? For taking care of wealth and possessions consumes time and to economize time is an excellent thing since according to the physician Hippocrates “life is short but art is long.”
[17] The same idea is suggested I think by Homer in the Iliad at the beginning of the thirteenth book in the lines
The Mysians fighting hand to hand, and noble Mare’s-milk-drinkers—
Nought else but milk sustains their life, these men of perfect justice.
The idea conveyed is that injustice is bred by anxious thought for the means of life and for money-making, justice by holding and following the opposite creed. The first entails inequality, the second equality, the principle by which nature’s wealth is regulated and so stands superior to the wealth of vain opinion.
[18] So when they have divested themselves of their possessions and have no longer aught to ensnare them they flee without a backward glance and leave their brothers, their children, their wives, their parents, the wide circle of their kinsfolk, the groups of friends around them, the fatherlands in which they were born and reared, since strong is the attraction of familiarity and very great its power to ensnare.
[19] And they do not migrate into another city like the unfortunate or worthless slaves who demand to be sold by their owners and so procure a change of masters but not freedom. For every city, even the best governed, is full of turmoils and disturbances innumerable which no one could endure who has ever been even once under the guidance of wisdom.
[20] Instead of this they pass their days outside the walls pursuing solitude in gardens or lonely bits of country, not from any acquired habit of misanthropical bitterness but because they know how unprofitable and mischievous are associations with persons of dissimilar character.