He then communicated the various precepts given, from time to time, for the conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness of those who had obtained the important victory, after which man is no longer the slave of fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by tenderness, or depressed by grief; but walks on calmly through the tumults, or privacies of life, as the sun pursues alike his course through the calm or the stormy sky.

He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or accidents, to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil.  He exhorted his hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm themselves against the shafts of malice or misfortune, by invulnerable patience; concluding, that this state only was happiness, and that this happiness was in every one’s power.

Rasselas listened to him, with the veneration due to the instructions of a superiour being, and, waiting for him at the door, humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a master of true wisdom.  The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse of gold into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and wonder.

“I have found,” said the prince, at his return to Imlac, “a man who can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life changing beneath him.  He speaks, and attention watches his lips.  He reasons, and conviction closes his periods.  This man shall be my future guide:  I will learn his doctrines, and imitate his life.”

“Be not too hasty,” said Imlac, “to trust, or to admire the teachers of morality:  they discourse, like angels, but they live, like men.”

Rasselas, who could not conceive, how any man could reason so forcibly, without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his visit in a few days, and was denied admission.  He had now learned the power of money, and made his way, by a piece of gold, to the inner apartment, where he found the philosopher, in a room half-darkened, with his eyes misty, and his face pale.  “Sir,” said he, “you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what I suffer cannot be remedied, what I have lost cannot be supplied.  My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever.  My views, my purposes, my hopes are at an end:  I am now a lonely being, disunited from society.”

“Sir,” said the prince, “mortality is an event by which a wise man can never be surprised:  we know that death is always near, and it should, therefore, always be expected.”  “Young man,” answered the philosopher, “you speak like one that has never felt the pangs of separation.”  “Have you then forgot the precepts,” said Rasselas, “which you so powerfully enforced?  Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart against calamity?  Consider, that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same.”  “What comfort,” said the mourner, “can truth and reason afford me?  Of what effect are they now, but to tell me, that my daughter will not be restored?”