A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
healthy and unhealthy before Hippocrates lived, or did we utter these
words as empty sounds? For we have also a certain preconception of
health, but we are not able to adapt it. For this reason one says,
Abstain from food; another says, Give food; another says, Bleed; and
another says, Use cupping. What is the reason? is it any other than
that a man cannot properly adapt the preconceptions of health to
particulars?
HOW WE SHOULD STRUGGLE AGAINST APPEARANCES.—Every habit and faculty is
maintained and increased by the corresponding actions: the habit of
walking by walking, the habit of running by running. If you would be a
good reader, read; if a writer, write. But when you shall not have read
for thirty days in succession, but have done something else, you will
know the consequence. In the same way, if you shall have lain down ten
days, get up and attempt to make a long walk, and you will see how your
legs are weakened. Generally then if you would make anything a habit,
do it; if you would not make it a habit, do not do it, but accustom
yourself to do something else in place of it.
So it is with respect to the affections of the soul: when you have been
angry, you must know that not only has this evil befallen you, but that
you have also increased the habit, and in a manner thrown fuel upon
fire.
In this manner certainly, as philosophers say, also diseases of the
mind grow up. For when you have once desired money, if reason be
applied to lead to a perception of the evil, the desire is stopped, and
the ruling faculty of our mind is restored to the original authority.
But if you apply no means of cure, it no longer returns to the same
state, but being again excited by the corresponding appearance, it is
inflamed to desire quicker than before: and when this takes place
continually, it is henceforth hardened (made callous), and the disease
of the mind confirms the love of money. For he who has had a fever, and
has been relieved from it, is not in the same state that he was before,
unless he has been completely cured. Something of the kind happens also
in diseases of the soul. Certain traces and blisters are left in it,
and unless a man shall completely efface them, when he is again lashed
on the same places, the lash will produce not blisters (weals) but
sores. If then you wish not to be of an angry temper, do not feed the
habit: throw nothing on it which will increase it: at first keep quiet,
and count the days on which you have not been angry. I used to be in
passion every day; now every second day; then every third, then every
fourth. But if you have intermitted thirty days, make a sacrifice to
God. For the habit at first begins to be weakened, and then is
completely destroyed. “I have not been vexed to-day, nor the day after,
nor yet on any succeeding day during two or three months; but I took
care when some exciting things happened.” Be assured that you are in a
good way.
How then shall this be done? Be willing at length to be approved by
yourself, be willing to appear beautiful to God, desire to be in purity
with your own pure self and with God. Then when any such appearance
visits you, Plato says, Have recourse to expiations, go a suppliant to
the temples of the averting deities. It is even sufficient if you
resort to the society of noble and just men, and compare yourself with
them, whether you find one who is living or dead.
But in the first place, be not hurried away by the rapidity of the
appearance, but say, Appearances, wait for me a little; let me see who
you are, and what you are about; let me put you to the test. And then
do not allow the appearance to lead you on and draw lively pictures of
the things which will follow; for if you do, it will carry you off
wherever it pleases. But rather bring in to oppose it some other
beautiful and noble appearance, and cast out this base appearance. And
if you are accustomed to be exercised in this way, you will see what
shoulders, what sinews, what strength you have. But now it is only
trifling words, and nothing more.
This is the true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such
appearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. Great is the combat,
divine is the work; it is for kingship, for freedom, for happiness, for
freedom from perturbation. Remember God; call on him as a helper and
protector, as men at sea call on the Dioscuri in a storm. For what is a
greater storm than that which comes from appearances which are violent
and drive away the reason? For the storm itself, what else is it but an
appearance? For take away the fear of death, and suppose as many
thunders and lightnings as you please, and you will know what calm and
serenity there is in the ruling faculty. But if you have once been
defeated and say that you will conquer hereafter, and then say the same
again, be assured that you will at last be in so wretched a condition
and so weak that you will not even know afterwards that you are doing
wrong, but you will even begin to make apologies (defences) for your
wrong-doing, and then you will confirm the saying of Hesiod to be true,
With constant ills the dilatory strives.
OF INCONSISTENCY.—Some things men readily confess, and other things
they do not. No one then will confess that he is a fool or without
understanding; but quite the contrary you will hear all men saying, I
wish that I had fortune equal to my understanding. But men readily
confess that they are timid, and they say: I am rather timid, I
confess; but as to other respects you will not find me to be foolish. A
man will not readily confess that he is intemperate; and that he is
unjust, he will not confess at all. He will by no means confess that he
is envious or a busybody. Most men will confess that they are
compassionate. What then is the reason?
The chief thing (the ruling thing) is inconsistency and confusion in
the things which relate to good and evil. But different men have
different reasons; and generally what they imagine to be base, they do
not confess at all. But they suppose timidity to be a characteristic of
a good disposition, and compassion also; but silliness to be the
absolute characteristic of a slave. And they do not at all admit
(confess) the things which are offences against society. But in the
case of most errors for this reason chiefly they are induced to confess
them, because they imagine that there is something involuntary in them
as in timidity and compassion; and if a man confess that he is in any
respect intemperate, he alleges love (or passion) as an excuse for what
is involuntary. But men do not imagine injustice to be at all
involuntary. There is also in jealousy, as they suppose, something
involuntary; and for this reason they confess to jealousy also.
Living then among such men, who are so confused, so ignorant of what
they say, and of the evils which they have or have not, and why they
have them, or how they shall be relieved of them, I think it is worth
the trouble for a man to watch constantly (and to ask) whether I also
am one of them, what imagination I have about myself, how I conduct
myself, whether I conduct myself as a prudent man, whether I conduct
myself as a temperate man, whether I ever say this, that I have been
taught to be prepared for everything that may happen. Have I the
consciousness, which a man who knows nothing ought to have, that I know
nothing? Do I go to my teacher as men go to oracles, prepared to obey?
or do I like a snivelling boy go to my school to learn history and
understand the books which I did not understand before, and, if it
should happen so, to explain them also to others? Man, you have had a
fight in the house with a poor slave, you have turned the family upside
down, you have frightened the neighbors, and you come to me as if you
were a wise man, and you take your seat and judge how I have explained
some word, and how I have babbled whatever came into my head. You come
full of envy, and humbled, because you bring nothing from home; and you
sit during the discussion thinking of nothing else than how your father
is disposed towards you and your brother. What are they saying about me
there? now they think that I am improving, and are saying, He will
return with all knowledge. I wish I could learn everything before I
return; but much labor is necessary, and no one sends me anything, and
the baths at Nicopolis are dirty; everything is bad at home, and bad
here.
ON FRIENDSHIP.—What a man applies himself to earnestly, that he
naturally loves. Do men then apply themselves earnestly to the things
which are bad? By no means. Well, do they apply themselves to things
which in no way concern themselves? Not to these either. It remains
then that they employ themselves earnestly only about things which are
good; and if they are earnestly employed about things, they love such
things also. Whoever then understands what is good can also know how to
love; but he who cannot distinguish good from bad, and things which are
neither good nor bad from both, how can he possess the power of loving?
To love, then, is only in the power of the wise.
For universally, be not deceived, every animal is attached to nothing
so much as to its own interests. Whatever then appears to it an
impediment to this interest, whether this be a brother, or a father, or
a child, or beloved, or lover, it hates, spurns, curses; for its nature
is to love nothing so much as its own interests: this is father, and
brother, and kinsman, and country, and God. When then the gods appear
to us to be an impediment to this, we abuse them and throw down their
statues and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of
Aesculapius to be burned when his dear friend died.
For this reason, if a man put in the same place his interest, sanctity,
goodness, and country, and parents, and friends, all these are secured:
but if he puts in one place his interest, in another his friends, and
his country and his kinsmen and justice itself, all these give way,
being borne down by the weight of interest. For where the I and the
Mine are placed, to that place of necessity the animal inclines; if in
the flesh, there is the ruling power; if in the will, it is there; and
if it is in externals, it is there. If then I am there where my will
is, then only shall I be a friend such as I ought to be, and son, and
father; for this will be my interest, to maintain the character of
fidelity, of modesty, of patience, of abstinence, of active
co-operation, of observing my relations (towards all). But if I put
myself in one place, and honesty in another, then the doctrine of
Epicurus becomes strong, which asserts either that there is no honesty
or it is that which opinion holds to be honest (virtuous).
It was through this ignorance that the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians
quarrelled, and the Thebans with both; and the great king quarrelled
with Hellas, and the Macedonians with both: and the Romans with the
Getae. And still earlier the Trojan war happened for these reasons.
Alexander was the guest of Menelaus, and if any man had seen their
friendly disposition, he would not have believed any one who said that
they were not friends. But there was cast between them (as between
dogs) a bit of meat, a handsome woman, and about her war arose. And now
when you see brothers to be friends appearing to have one mind, do not
conclude from this anything about their friendship, not even if they
swear it and say that it is impossible for them to be separated from
one another. For the ruling principle of a bad man cannot be trusted;
it is insecure, has no certain rule by which it is directed, and is
overpowered at different times by different appearances. But examine,
not what other men examine, if they are born of the same parents and