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He said that a man should apply cutting to his head much as we apply pruning to a vine, only for the sake of removing what is useless . . . . . . nor a beard to the chin, but that this too is a certain covering provided to us by nature; and the beard has also come to be a symbol of the male, just as the crest for the rooster and the mane for the lion. Hence one must remove from the hair whatever is troublesome, but from the beard nothing. For it causes no trouble at all, so long as the body is healthy or is not afflicted with such a disease on account of which there would be a removal of the hairs on the chin. For that saying of Zeno's is well put, he said, that one should cut for the same reason that one should let it grow—namely, in accordance with nature—so that a person may not be weighed down by his hair nor troubled in it with respect to any activity. For nature evidently guards more against deficiency and less against excess, both in the case of plants and of animals, because the removal of what is excessive is much easier and simpler than the addition of what is deficient. And in both directions human reasoning ought to assist nature, so as to fill up deficiencies as far as it is possible to make them up, and to reduce and remove excesses. Hence one should cut only for the sake of removing what is excessive, and not for the sake of adornment—which is what some men think they ought to do, smoothing their cheeks and imitating the beardless, or, by Zeus, those who are just beginning to grow a beard, while cutting the head unevenly, the front differently from the back. For indeed this thing, though it seems to be adornment, has much disorder in it and differs in no way from the beautification of women. For those women braid some portions of the hair and let others hang down and arrange others in some other way, so that they may appear more beautiful; and the men who cut their hair in this manner are clearly recognized, by their desire to appear beautiful to those whom they wish to please, as removing some of their hairs entirely and shaping others in such a way as to be most pleasing to look at for the women and boys by whom they crave to be praised. And by now some men even cut their hair for the very reason of being weighed down by it, and smooth their cheeks—these men being clearly broken by luxury and utterly unmanned, since they endure to be seen as androgynous and womanish, which they ought to flee by every means, if they were in truth men. For in what way are the hairs a burden to human beings? Unless, by Zeus, one were to say that feathers too are a burden to birds.