Delphi Complete Works of Epictetus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 86)

by Epictetus

  If you will, ask me also if he is to be active in politics. you ninny, are you looking for any nobler politics than that in which he is engaged? Or would you have someone in Athens step forward and discourse about incomes and revenues, when he is the person who ought to talk with all men, Athenians, Corinthians, and Romans alike, not about revenues, or income, or peace, or war, but about happiness and unhappiness, about success and failure, about slavery and freedom? When a man is engaging in such exalted politics, do you ask me if he is to engage in politics? Ask me also, if he will hold office. Again I will tell you: Fool, what nobler office will he hold than that which he now has?

  And yet such a man needs also a certain kind of body, since if a consumptive comes forward, thin and pale, his testimony no longer carries the same weight. For he must not merely, by exhibiting the qualities of his soul, prove to the laymen that it is possible, without the help of the things which they admire, to be a good and excellent man, but he must also show, by the state of his body, that his plain and simple style of life in the open air does not injure even his body: “Look,” he says, “both I and my body are witnesses to the truth of my contention.” That was the way of Diogenes, for he used to go about with a radiant complexion, and would attract the attention of the common people by the very appearance of his body. But a Cynic who excites pity is regarded as a beggar; everybody turns away from him, everybody takes offence at him. No, and he ought not to look dirty either, so as not to scare men away in this respect also; but even his squalor ought to be cleanly and attractive.

  Furthermore, the Cynic ought to possess great natural charm and readiness of wit — otherwise he becomes mere snivel, and nothing else — so as to be able to meet readily and aptly whatever befalls; as Diogenes answered the man who said: “Are you the Diogenes who does not believe in the existence of the gods?” by saying, “And how can that be? You I regard as hated by the gods!” Or again, when Alexander stood over him as he was sleeping and said,

  Sleeping the whole night through beseems not the giver of counsel,

  he replied, still half asleep,

  Who hath charge of the folk, and for many a thing must he watchful.

  But above all, the Cynic’s governing principle should be purer than the sun; if not, he must needs be a gambler and a man of no principle, because he will be censuring the rest of mankind, while he himself is involved in some vice. For see what this means. To the kings and tyrants of this world their bodyguards and their arms used to afford the privilege of censuring certain persons, and the power also to punish those who do wrong, no matter how guilty they themselves were; whereas to the Cynic it is his conscience which affords him this power, and not his arms and his bodyguards. When he sees that he has watched over men, and toiled in their behalf; and that he has slept in purity, while his sleep leaves him even purer than he was before; and that every thought which he thinks is that of a friend and servant to the gods, of one who shares in the government of Zeus; and has always ready at hand the verse

  Lead thou me on, O Zeus, and Destiny,

  and “If so it pleases the gods, so be it,” why should he not have courage to speak freely to his own brothers, to his children, in a word, to his kinsmen?

  That is why the man who is in this frame of mind is neither a busybody nor a meddler; for he is not meddling in other people’s affairs when he is overseeing the actions of men, but these are his proper concern. Otherwise, go call the general a meddler when he oversees and reviews and watches over his troops, and punishes those who are guilty of a breach of discipline. But if you censure other men while you are hiding a little sweet-cake under your arm, I’ll say to you: Wouldn’t you rather go off into a corner and eat up what you have stolen? What have you to do with other people’s business? Why who are you? Are you the hull in the herd, or the queen bee of the hive? Show me the tokens of your leadership, like those which nature gives the queen bee. But if you are a drone and lay claim to the sovereignty over the bees, don’t you suppose your fellow-citizens will overthrow you, just as the bees so treat the drones?

  Now the spirit of patient endurance the Cynic must have to such a degree that common people will think him insensate and a stone; nobody reviles him, nobody beats him, nobody insults him; but his body he has himself given for anyone to use as he sees fit. For he bears in mind that the inferior, in that respect in which it is inferior, must needs be overcome by the superior, and that his body is inferior to the crowd — the physically weaker, that is, inferior to the physically stronger. Therefore, he never enters this contest where he can be beaten, but immediately gives up what is not his own; he makes no claim to what is slavish. But in the realm of the moral purpose, and the use of his sense-impressions, there you will see he has so many eyes that you will say Argus was blind in comparison with him. Is there anywhere rash assent, reckless choice, futile desire, unsuccessful aversion, incompleted purpose, fault-finding, self-disparagement, or envy? Here is concentrated his earnest attention and energy; but, as far as other things go, he lies flat on his back and snores; he is in perfect peace. There rises up no thief of his moral purpose, nor any tyrant over it. But of his body? Certainly. And of his paltry possessions? Certainly; and of his offices and honours. Why, then, does he pay any attention to these? So when anyone tries to terrify him by means of these things, he says to him, “Go to, look for children; they are scared by masks; but I know that they are made of earthenware, and have nothing inside.”

  Such is the nature of the matter about which you are deliberating. Wherefore, in the name of God I adjure you, put off your decision, and look first at your endowment. For see what Hector says to Andromache. “Go,” says he, “rather into the house and weave;

  ⁠but for men shall war be the business.

  Men one and all, and mostly for me.”

  So did he recognize not only his own special endowment, but also her incapacity.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  To those who read and discuss for the purpose of display

  Tell yourself, first of all, what kind of man you want to be; and then go ahead with what you are doing. For in practically every other pursuit we see this done. The athletes first decide what kind of athletes they want to be, and then they act accordingly. If a man wants to be a distance-runner, he adopts a suitable diet, walking, rubbing, and exercise; if he wants to be a sprinter, all these details are different; if he wants to contend in the pentathlon, they are still more different You will find the same thing in the arts. If you want to be a carpenter, you will have such and such exercises; if a blacksmith, such and such other. For in everything that we do, if we do not refer it to some standard, we shall be acting at random; but if we refer it to the wrong standard, we shall make an utter failure. Furthermore, there are two standards to go by, the one general, the other individual. First of all, I must act as a man. What is included in this? Not to act as a sheep, gently but without fixed purpose; nor destructively, like a wild beast. The individual standard applies to each man’s occupation and moral purpose. The citharoede is to act as a citharoede, the carpenter as a carpenter, the philosopher as a philosopher, the rhetor as a rhetor. When, therefore, you say, “Come and listen to me as I read you a lecture,” see to it first that you are not acting without fixed purpose. And then, if you find that you are using a standard of judgement, see if it is the right one. Do you wish to do good or to be praised? you ask. Immediately you get the answer, “What do I care for praise from the mob?” And that is an excellent answer. Neither does the musician, in so far as he is a musician, nor the geometrician. Do you wish to do good, then? To what end? men reply. Tell us, also, that we too may run to your lecture-room. Now can anybody do good to others unless he has received good himself? No more than the non-carpenter can help others in carpentry, or the non-cobbler in cobbling.

  Do you wish, then, to know whether you have received any good? Produce your judgements, philosopher. What does desire promise? Not to fail in getting. What does aversion? Not to fall into what we are avo
iding. Well, do we fulfil their promise? Tell me the truth; but if you lie, I will say to you: “The other day, when your audience gathered rather coolly, and did not shout applause, you walked out of the hall in low spirits. And again the other day, when you were received with applause, you walked around and asked everybody, ‘What did you think of me?’ ‘It was marvellous, sir, I swear by my life.’ ‘How did I render that particular passage?’ ‘Which one?’ ‘Where I drew a picture of Pan and the Nymphs?’ ‘It was superb.’” And after all this you tell me that you follow nature in desire and aversion? Go to; try to get somebody else to believe you! Didn’t you, just the other day, praise So-and-so contrary to your honest opinion? And didn’t you flatter So-and-so, the senator? Did you want your children to be like that? — Far from it! — Why then did you praise him and palaver over him? — He is a gifted young man and fond of listening to discourses. — How do you know that? — He is an admirer of mine. — There you gave your proof!

  After all, what do you think? Don’t these very same persons secretly despise you? When, therefore, a person who is conscious of never having either thought or done a good thing finds a philosopher who tells him, “You are a genius, straightforward and unspoiled,” what else do you suppose the man says to himself but, “This man wants to use me for something or other”? Or else tell me; what work of genius has he displayed? Look, he has been with you all this time, he has listened to your discourse, he has heard you lecture. Has he settled down? Has he come to himself? Has he realized the evil plight in which he is? Has he cast aside his self-conceit? Is he looking for the man who will teach him? — He is looking, the man says. — The man who will teach him how he ought to live? No, fool, but only how he ought to deliver a speech; for that is why he admires even you. Listen to him, and hear what he says. “This fellow has a most artistic style; it is much finer than Dio’s.” That’s altogether different. He doesn’t say, does he, “The man is respectful, he is faithful and unperturbed”? And even if he had said this, I would have replied: “Since this man is faithful, what is your definition of the faithful man?” And if he had no answer to give, I would have added: “First find out what you are talking about, and then do your talking.”

  When you are in such a sorry state as this, then, gaping for men to praise you, and counting the number of your audience, is it your wish to do good to others? “To-day I had a much larger audience.” “Yes, indeed, there were great numbers.” “Five hundred, I fancy.” “Nonsense, make it a thousand.” “Dio never had so large an audience.” “How could you expect him to?” “Yes, and they are clever at catching the points.” “Beauty, sir, can move even a stone.” There are the words of a philosopher for you! That’s the feeling of one who is on his way to do good to men! There you have a man who has listened to reason, who has read the accounts of Socrates as coining from Socrates, not as though they were from Lysias, or Isocrates! “‘I have often wondered by what arguments ever’ — no, but ‘by what argument ever’ — this form is smoother than the other!” You have been reading this literature just as you would music-hall songs, haven’t you? Because, if you had read them in the right way, you would not have lingered on these points, but this is the sort of thing rather that would have caught your eye: “Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me”; and: “I have always been the kind of man to pay attention to none of my own affairs, but only to the argument which strikes me as best upon reflection.” And for that reason who ever heard Socrates saying, “I know something and teach it”? But he used to send one person here and another there. Therefore men used to go to him to have him introduce them to philosophers, and he used to take them around and introduce them. But no, your idea of him, no doubt, is that, as he was taking them along, he used to say, “Come around to-day and hear me deliver a discourse in the house of Quadratus”!

  Why should I listen to you? Do you want to exhibit to me the clever way in which you put words together? You do compose them cleverly, man; and what good is it to you? “But praise me.” What do you mean by “praise”? “Cry out to me, ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Marvellous!’” All right, I’ll say it. But if praise is some one of those things which the philosophers put in the category of the good, what praise can I give you? If it is a good thing to speak correcty, teach me and I will praise you. What then? Ought one to take no pleasure in listening to such efforts? Far from it. I do not fail to take pleasure in listening to a citharoede; surely I am not bound for that reason to stand and sing to my own accompaniment on the harp, am I? Listen, what does Socrates say? “Nor would it be seemly for me, O men of Athens, at my time of life to appear before you like some lad, and weave a cunning discourse.” “Like some lad,” he says. For it is indeed a dainty thing, this small art of selecting trivial phrases and putting them together, and of coming forward and reading or reciting them gracefully, and then in the midst of the delivery shouting out, “There are not many people who can follow this, by your lives, I swear it!”

  Does a philosopher invite people to a lecture? — Is it not rather the case that, as the sun draws its own sustenance to itself, so he also draws to himself those to whom he is to do good? What physician ever invites a patient to come and be healed by him? Although I am told that in these days the physicians in Rome do advertise; however, in my time they were called in by their patients. “I invite you to come and hear that you are in a bad way, and that you are concerned with anything rather than what you should be concerned with, and that you are ignorant of the good and the evil, and are wretched and miserable.” That’s a fine invitation I And yet if the philosopher’s discourse does not produce this effect, it is lifeless and so is the speaker himself Rufus used to say, “If you have nothing better to do than to praise rae, then I am speaking to no purpose.” Wherefore he spoke in such a way that each of us as we sat there fancied someone had gone to Rufus and told him of our faults; so effective was his grasp of what men actually do, so vividly did he set before each man’s eyes his particular weaknesses.

  Men, the lecture-room of the philosopher is a hospital; you ought not to walk out of it in pleasure, but in pain. For you are not well when you come; one man has a dislocated shoulder, another an abscess, another a fistula, another a headache. And then am I to sit down and recite to you dainty little notions and clever little mottoes, so that you will go out with words of praise on your lips, one man carrying away his shoulder just as it was when he came in, another his head in the same state, another his fistula, another his abscess? And so it’s fur this, is it, that young men are to travel from home, and leave their parents, their friends, their relatives, and their bit of property, merely to cry “Bravo!” as you recite your clever little mottoes? Was this what Socrates used to do, or Zeno, or Cleanthes?

  Well! but isn’t there such a thing as the right style for exhortation? — Why yes, who denies that? Just as there is the style for refutation, and the style for instruction. Who, then, has ever mentioned a fourth style along with these, the style of display? Why, what is the style for exhortation? The ability to show to the individual, as well as to the crowd, the warring inconsistency in which they are floundering about, and how they are paying attention to anything rather than what they truly want. For they want the things that conduce to happiness, but they are looking for them in the wrong place. To achieve that must a thousand benches be placed, and the prospective audience be invited, and you put on a fancy cloak, or dainty mantle, and mount the speaker’s stand, and paint a word-picture of — how Achilles died? By the gods, I beseech you, have done Avith discrediting, as far as it is in your power to discredit, words and actions that are noble! There is nothing more effective in the style for exhortation than when the speaker makes clear to his audience that he has need of them. Or tell me, who that ever heard you reading a lecture or conducting a discourse felt greatly disturbed about himself, or came to a realization of the state he was in, or on going out said, “The philosopher brought it home to me in fine style; I must not act like this any longer”? But does
n’t he say to a companion, if you make an unusually fine impression, “That was beautiful diction in the passage about Xerxes”; and doesn’t the other answer, “No, I preferred the one about the battle of Thermopylae”? Is this what listening to a philosopher amounts to?

  CHAPTER XXIV

  That we ought not to yearn for the things which are not under our control

  Let not that which in the case of another is contrary to nature become an evil for you; for you are born not to be humiliated along with others, nor to share in their misfortunes, but to share in their good fortune. If, however, someone is unfortunate, remember that his misfortune concerns himself. For God made all mankind to be happy, to be serene. To this end He gave them resources, giving each man some things for his own, and others not for his own. The things that are subject to hindrance, deprivation, and compulsion are not a man’s own, but those which cannot be hindered are his own. The true nature of the good and the evil, as was fitting for Him who watches over and protects us like a father. He gave to man to be among his own possessions. “But I have parted from So-and-so, and he is stricken with grief” Yes, but why did he regard what was not his own as his own? Why, when he was glad to see you, did he not reflect that you are mortal, and likely to go on a journey? And therefore he is paying the penalty for his own folly. But why are you bewailing yourself, and to what end? Or did you also neglect to study this matter, but, like worthless women, did you enjoy everything in which you took delight as though you were to enjoy it for ever, your surroundings, human beings, your ways of life? And now you sit and wail because you no longer lay eyes upon the same persons, and do not spend your life in the same places. Yes, for that’s what you deserve, to be more wretched than crows and ravens, which can fly away wherever they please, and change their nests, and cross the seas, without groaning or longing for their first home. — Yes, but they feel that way because they are irrational creatures. — Has, then, reason been given us by the gods for misfortune and misery, so that we may spend our lives in wretchedness and mourning? Or shall all men be immortal, and no one leave home, but shall we stay rooted in the ground like the plants? And if any one of our acquaintances leaves home, shall we sit down and wail, and then again, if he comes back, dance and clap our hands as the children do?