A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
to be constant (firm), and that the will is naturally free and not
subject to compulsion, but that all other things are subject to
hindrance, to slavery, and are in the power of others, they suppose
that they ought without deviation to abide by everything which they
have determined. But in the first place that which has been determined
ought to be sound (true). I require tone (sinews) in the body, but such
as exists in a healthy body, in an athletic body; but if it is plain to
me that you have the tone of a frenzied man and you boast of it, I
shall say to you, Man, seek the physician; this is not tone, but atony
(deficiency in right tone). In a different way something of the same
kind is felt by those who listen to these discourses in a wrong manner;
which was the case with one of my companions, who for no reason
resolved to starve himself to death. I heard of it when it was the
third day of his abstinence from food, and I went to inquire what had
happened. “I have resolved,” he said. “But still tell me what it was
which induced you to resolve; for if you have resolved rightly, we
shall sit with you and assist you to depart, but if you have made an
unreasonable resolution, change your mind.” “We ought to keep to our
determinations.” “What are you doing, man? We ought to keep not to all
our determinations, but to those which are right; for if you are now
persuaded that it is right, do not change your mind, if you think fit,
but persist and say, We ought to abide by our determinations. Will you
not make the beginning and lay the foundation in an inquiry whether the
determination is sound or not sound, and so then build on it firmness
and security? But if you lay a rotten and ruinous foundation, will not
your miserable little building fall down the sooner, the more and the
stronger are the materials which you shall lay on it? Without any
reason would you withdraw from us out of life a man who is a friend and
a companion, a citizen of the same city, both the great and the small
city? Then while you are committing murder and destroying a man who has
done no wrong, do you say that you ought to abide by your
determinations? And if it ever in any way came into your head to kill
me, ought you to abide by your determinations?”
Now this man was with difficulty persuaded to change his mind. But it
is impossible to convince some persons at present; so that I seem now
to know what I did not know before, the meaning of the common saying,
that you can neither persuade nor break a fool. May it never be my lot
to have a wise fool for my friend; nothing is more untractable. “I am
determined,” the man says. Madmen are also, but the more firmly they
form a judgment on things which do not exist, the more hellebore they
require. Will you not act like a sick man and call in the physician?—I
am sick, master, help me; consider what I must do: it is my duty to
obey you. So it is here also: I know not what I ought to do, but I am
come to learn.—Not so; but speak to me about other things: upon this I
have determined.—What other things? for what is greater and more useful
than for you to be persuaded that it is not sufficient to have made
your determination and not to change it. This is the tone (energy) of
madness, not of health.—I will die, if you compel me to this.—Why, man?
What has happened?—I have determined—I have had a lucky escape that you
have not determined to kill me—I take no money. Why?—I have
determined—Be assured that with the very tone (energy) which you now
use in refusing to take, there is nothing to hinder you at some time
from inclining without reason to take money, and then saying, I have
determined. As in a distempered body, subject to defluxions, the humor
inclines sometimes to these parts, and then to those, so too a sickly
soul knows not which way to incline; but if to this inclination and
movement there is added a tone (obstinate resolution), then the evil
becomes past help and cure.
THAT WE DO NOT STRIVE TO USE OUR OPINIONS ABOUT GOOD AND EVIL.—Where is
the good? In the will. Where is the evil? In the will. Where is neither
of them? In those things which are independent of the will. Well then?
Does any one among us think of these lessons out of the schools? Does
any one meditate (strive) by himself to give an answer to things as in
the case of questions?—Is it day?—Yes.—Is it night?—No.—Well, is the
number of stars even?—I cannot say.—When money is shown (offered) to
you, have you studied to make the proper answer, that money is not a
good thing? Have you practised yourself in these answers, or only
against sophisms? Why do you wonder then if in the cases which you have
studied, in those you have improved; but in those which you have not
studied, in those you remain the same? When the rhetorician knows that
he has written well, that he has committed to memory what he has
written, and brings an agreeable voice, why is he still anxious?
Because he is not satisfied with having studied. What then does he
want? To be praised by the audience? For the purpose then of being able
to practise declamation he has been disciplined; but with respect to
praise and blame he has not been disciplined. For when did he hear from
any one what praise is, what blame is, what the nature of each is, what
kind of praise should be sought, or what kind of blame should be
shunned? And when did he practise this discipline which follows these
words (things)? Why then do you still wonder, if in the matters which a
man has learned, there he surpasses others, and in those in which he
has not been disciplined, there he is the same with the many. So the
lute player knows how to play, sings well, and has a fine dress, and
yet he trembles when he enters on the stage; for these matters he
understands, but he does not know what a crowd is, nor the shouts of a
crowd, nor what ridicule is. Neither does he know what anxiety is,
whether it is our work or the work of another, whether it is possible
to stop it or not. For this reason if he has been praised, he leaves
the theatre puffed up, but if he has been ridiculed, the swollen
bladder has been punctured and subsides.
This is the case also with ourselves. What do we admire? Externals.
About what things are we busy? Externals. And have we any doubt then
why we fear or why we are anxious? What then happens when we think the
things, which are coming on us, to be evils? It is not in our power not
to be afraid, it is not in our power not to be anxious. Then we say,
Lord God, how shall I not be anxious? Fool, have you not hands, did not
God make them for you? Sit down now and pray that your nose may not
run. Wipe yourself rather and do not blame him. Well then, has he given
to you nothing in the present case? Has he not given to you endurance?
Has he not given to you magnanimity? Has he not given to you manliness?
When you have such hands do you still look for one who shall wipe your
nose? But we neither study these things nor care for them. Give me a
man who cares how he shall do anything, not for the obtaining of a
thing, but who cares about his own energy. What man, when he is walking
about, cares for his own energy? Who, when he is deliberating, cares
about his own deliberation, and not about obtaining that about which he
deliberates? And if he succeeds, he is elated and says, How well we
have deliberated; did I not tell you, brother, that it is impossible,
when we have thought about anything, that it should not turn out thus?
But if the thing should turn out otherwise, the wretched man is
humbled; he knows not even what to say about what has taken place. Who
among us for the sake of this matter has consulted a seer? Who among us
as to his actions has not slept in indifference? Who? Give (name) to me
one that I may see the man whom I have long been looking for, who is
truly noble and ingenuous, whether young or old; name him.
What then are the things which are heavy on us and disturb us? What
else than opinions? What else than opinions lies heavy upon him who
goes away and leaves his companions and friends and places and habits
of life? Now little children, for instance, when they cry on the nurse
leaving them for a short time, forget their sorrow if they receive a
small cake. Do you choose then that we should compare you to little
children? No, by Zeus, for I do not wish to be pacified by a small
cake, but by right opinions. And what are these? Such as a man ought to
study all day, and not to be affected by anything that is not his own,
neither by companion nor place nor gymnasia, and not even by his own
body, but to remember the law and to have it before his eyes. And what
is the divine law? To keep a man’s own, not to claim that which belongs
to others, but to use what is given, and when it is not given, not to
desire it; and when a thing is taken away, to give it up readily and
immediately, and to be thankful for the time that a man has had the use
of it, if you would not cry for your nurse and mamma. For what matter
does it make by what thing a man is subdued, and on what he depends? In
what respect are you better than he who cries for a girl, if you grieve
for a little gymnasium, and little porticos, and young men, and such
places of amusement? Another comes and laments that he shall no longer
drink the water of Dirce. Is the Marcian water worse than that of
Dirce? But I was used to the water of Dirce. And you in turn will be
used to the other. Then if you become attached to this also, cry for
this too, and try to make a verse like the verse of Euripides,
The hot baths of Nero and the Marcian water.
See how tragedy is made when common things happen to silly men.
When then shall I see Athens again and the Acropolis? Wretch, are you
not content with what you see daily? Have you anything better or
greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the
sea? But if indeed you comprehend Him who administers the whole, and
carry him about in yourself, do you still desire small stones and a
beautiful rock?
HOW WE MUST ADAPT PRECONCEPTIONS TO PARTICULAR CASES.—What is the first
business of him who philosophizes? To throw away self-conceit ([Greek:
oiaesis]). For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which
he thinks that he knows. As to things then which ought to be done and
ought not to be done, and good and bad, and beautiful and ugly, all of
us talking of them at random go to the philosophers; and on these
matters we praise, we censure, we accuse, we blame, we judge and
determine about principles honorable and dishonorable. But why do we go
to the philosophers? Because we wish to learn what we do not think that
we know. And what is this? Theorems. For we wish to learn what
philosophers say as being something elegant and acute; and some wish to
learn that they may get profit from what they learn. It is ridiculous
then to think that a person wishes to learn one thing, and will learn
another; or further, that a man will make proficiency in that which he
does not learn. But the many are deceived by this which deceived also
the rhetorician Theopompus, when he blames even Plato for wishing
everything to be defined. For what does he say? Did none of us before
you use the words good or just, or do we utter the sounds in an
unmeaning and empty way without understanding what they severally
signify? Now who tells you, Theopompus, that we had not natural notions
of each of these things and preconceptions ([Greek: prolaepseis])? But
it is not possible to adapt preconceptions to their correspondent
objects if we have not distinguished (analyzed) them, and inquired what
object must be subjected to each preconception. You may make the same
charge against physicians also. For who among us did not use the words