by Epictetus
Does a good man fear that food will fail him? It does not fail the blind, it does not fail the lame; will it fail a good man? A good soldier does not lack someone to give him pay, or a workman, or a cobbler; and shall a good man? Does God so neglect His own creatures, His servants, His witnesses, whom alone He uses as examples to the uninstructed, to prove that He both is, and governs the universe well, and does not neglect the affairs of men, and that no evil befalls a good man either in life or in death? — Yes, but what if He does not provide food? — Why, what else but that as a good general He has sounded the recall? I obey, I follow, lauding my commander, and singing hymns of praise about His deeds. For I came into the world when it so pleased Him, and I leave it again at His pleasure, and while I live this was my function — to sing hymns of praise unto God, to myself and to others, be it to one or to many. God does not give me much, no abundance. He does not want me to live luxuriously; He did not give much to Heracles, either, though he was His own son, but someone else was king over Argos and Mycenae, while he was subject, and suffered labours and discipline. And Eurystheus, such as he was, was not king over either Argos or Mycenae, for he was not king even over himself; but Heracles was ruler and leader of all the land and sea, purging them of injustice and lawlessness, and introducing justice and righteousness; and all this he did naked and by himself And when Odysseus was shipwrecked and cast ashore, did his necessity make abject his spirit, or break it? Nay, but how did he advance upon the maidens to ask for food, which is regarded as being the most disgraceful thing for one person to ask of another?
As a lion reared in the mountains.
In what did he trust? Not in reputation, or money, or office, but in his own might, that means, his judgements about the things which are under our control, and those which are not under our control. For these are the only things that make men free, that make men unhampered, that lift up the neck of those who have become abject, that make them look with level eyes into the faces of the rich, and the faces of tyrants. And all this was what the philosopher had to give, yet will you not come forth bold, instead of trembling for your paltry clothes and silver plate? Miserable man, have you so wasted your time down to the present?
Yes, but what if I fall ill? — You will bear illness well. — Who will nurse me? — God and your friends. — I shall have a hard bed to lie on. — But like a man. — I shall not have a suitable house. — Then you will fall ill in an unsuitable house. — Who will prepare my food for me? — Those who prepare it for others also. You will be ill like Manes. — And what is also the end of the illness? — Anything but death? Will you, then, realize that this epitome of all the ills that befall man, of his ignoble spirit, and his cowardice, is not death, but it is rather the fear of death? Against this fear, then, I would have you discipline yourself, toward this let all your reasoning tend, your exercises, your reading; and then you will know that this is the only way in which men achieve freedom.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
Of freedom
He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid. Who, then, wishes to live in error? — No one. — Who wishes to live deceived, impetuous, unjust, unrestrained, peevish, abject? — No one. — Therefore, there is no bad man who lives as he wills, and accordingly no bad man is free. And who wishes to live in grief, fear, envy, pity, desiring things and failing to get them, avoiding things and falling into them? — No one at all. — Do we find, then, any bad man free from grief or fear, not falling into what he would avoid, nor failing to achieve what he desires? — No one. — Then we find no bad man free, either.
Now if some man who has been consul twice hear this, he will forgive you, if you add, “But you are a wise man; this does not apply to you.” Yet if you tell him the truth, to wit: “In point of being a slave you are not a whit better than those who have been thrice sold,” what else can you expect but a flogging? “Why, how am I a slave?” says he. “My father was free, my mother free; no one has a deed of sale for me. More than that, I am a member of the senate, and a friend of Caesar, and I have been consul, and I own many slaves.” Now in the first place, most worthy senator, it is very likely that your father was the same kind of slave that you are, and your mother, and your grandfather, and all your ancestors from first to last. But even if they were free to the limit, what does that prove in your case? Why, what does it prove if they were noble, and you are mean-spirited? If they were brave, and you a coward? If they were self-controlled, and you unrestrained?
And what, says someone, has this to do with being a slave? — Doesn’t it strike you as “having to do with being a slave” for a man to do something against his will, under compulsion? — Granted the point, he replies. But who can put me under compulsion, except Caesar, the lord of all? — There, you have yourself admitted that you have one master. And let it not comfort you that he is, as you say, the common master of all men, but realize that you are a slave in a great house. So also the men of Nicopolis are wont to shout: “Yea, by the fortune of Caesar, we are free men!”
However, let us leave Caesar out of account, if you please, for the present, but answer me this: Were you never in love with anyone, a pretty girl, or pretty boy, a slave, a freedman? — What, then, has that to do with being either slave or free? — Were you never commanded by your sweetheart to do something you didn’t wish to do? Did you never cozen your pet slave? Did you never kiss his feet? Yet if someone should compel you to kiss the feet of Caesar, you would regard that as insolence and most extravagant tyranny. What else, then, is slavery? Did you never go out at night where you didn’t want to go? Did you never spend more than you wanted to spend? Did you never utter words with groaning and lamentation, endure to be reviled, to have the door shut in your face? Well, if you are ashamed to admit such things about yourself, observe what Thrasonides says and does, a man who had served on so many campaigns — perhaps more even than you have. First, he went out at night when Geta hasn’t the courage to go abroad, but, if the latter had been compelled by him to do so, he would have gone out crying aloud and bewailing his bitter slavery. And then what does Thrasonides say? Says he,
A cheap little wench has made of me a perfect slave.
Of me, though never a one among all my foemen might.
Sad wretch, to be the slave of a wench, and a cheap one at that! Why, then, do you call yourself free any longer? And why do you talk of your campaigns? Then he calls for a sword, and gets angry at the man who refuses out of good-will to give it to him, and sends presents to the girl who hates him, and begs, and weeps, and again, when he has had a little success, he is elated. And yet even then, so long as he had not learned to give up passionate desire or fear, could this man have been in possession of freedom?
Consider now, in the case of the animals, how we employ the concept of freedom. Men shut up tame lions in a cage, and bring them up, and feed them, and some take them around with them. And yet who will call such a lion free? Is it not true that the more softly the lion lives the more slavishly he lives? And what lion, were he to get sense and reason, would care to be one of these lions? Why, yes, and the birds yonder, when they are caught and brought up in cages, what do they suffer in their efforts to escape? And some of them starve to death rather than endure such a life, while even such as live, barely do so, and suffer and pine away, and if ever they find any opening, make their escape. Such is their desire for physical freedom, and a life of independence and freedom from restraint. And what is wrong with you here in your cage? “What a question! My nature is to fly where I please, to live in the open air, to sing when I please. You rob me of all this, and then ask, ‘What is wrong with you?’”
That is why we shall call free only those animals which do not submit to captivity, but escape by dying as soon as they are captured. So also Diogenes says somewhere: “The one sure way to secure freedom is
to die cheerfully”; and to the Persian king he writes: “You cannot enslave the Athenian State any more than you can enslave the fish.” “How so? Shall I not lay hold of them?” “If you do,” he replies, “they will forthwith leave you and escape, like the fish. And that is true, for if you lay hold of one of them, it dies; and if these Athenians die when you lay hold of them, what good will you get from your armament?” That is the word of a free man who has seriously examined the matter, and, as you might expect, had discovered truth about it. But if you look for it where it does not exist, why be surprised if you never find it?
It is the slave’s prayer that he be set free immediately. Why? Do you think it is because he is eager to pay his money to the men who collect the five per cent tax? No, it is because he fancies that up till now he is hampered and uncomfortable, because he has not obtained his freedom from slavery. “If I am set free,” he says, “immediately it is all happiness, I shall pay no attention to anybody, I talk to everybody as an equal and as one in the same station in life, I go where I please, I come whence I please, and where I please.” Then he is emancipated, and forthwith, having no place to which to go and eat, he looks for someone to flatter, for someone at whose house to dine. Next he either earns a living by prostitution, and so endures the most dreadful things, and if he gets a manger at which to eat he has fallen into a slavery much more severe than the first; or even if he grows rich, being a vulgarian he has fallen in love with a chit of a girl, and is miserable, and laments, and yearns for his slavery again. “Why, what was wrong with me? Someone else kept me in clothes, and shoes, and supplied me with food, and nursed me when I was sick; I served him in only a few matters. But now, miserable man that I am, what suffering is mine, who am a slave to several instead of one! However, if I get rings on my fingers,” he says, “then indeed I shall live most prosperously and happily.” And so, first, in order to get them he submits to — what he deserves I Then when he has got them, you have the same thing over again. Next he says, “If I serve in a campaign, I am rid of all my troubles.” He serves in a campaign, he submits to all that a jail-bird suffers, but none the less he demands a second campaign and a third. After that, when he adds the very colophon, and becomes a senator, then he becomes a slave as he enters the senate, then he serves in the handsomest and sleekest slavery.
Come, let him not be a fool, let him learn, as Socrates used to say, “What each several thing means,” and not apply his preconceptions at random to the particular cases. For this is the cause to men of all their evils, namely, their inability to apply their general preconceptions to the particular instances. But some of us think one thing and some another. One man fancies he is ill. Not at all; the fact is that he is not applying his preconceptions. Another fancies he is a beggar; another that he has a hard-hearted father or mother; still another that Caesar is not gracious to him. But this means one thing and one thing only — ignorance of how to apply their preconceptions. Why, who does not have a preconception of evil, that it is harmful, that it is to be avoided, that it is something to get rid of in every way? One preconception does not conflict with another, but conflict arises when one proceeds to apply them. What, then, is this evil that is harmful and is to be avoided? One person says it is not to be Caesar’s friend; he is off the course, he has missed the proper application, he is in a bad way, he is looking for what is not pertinent to the case in hand; because, when he has succeeded in being Caesar’s friend, he has none the less failed to get what he was seeking. For what is it that every man is seeking? To live securely, to be happy, to do everything as he wishes to do, not to be hindered, not to be subject to compulsion. When, therefore, he becomes a friend of Caesar, has he been relieved of hindrance, reheved of compulsion, does he live securely, does he live serenely? From whom shall we inquire? What better witness have we than this very man who has become Caesar’s friend? Come into the midst and tell us. When did you sleep more peacefully, now or before you became Caesar’s friend? Immediately the answer comes: “Stop, I implore you by the gods, and do not jest at my lot; you don’t know what I suffer, miserable man that I am; no sleep visits me, but first one person comes in and then another and reports that Caesar is already awake, and is already coming out; then troubles, then worries!” Come, when did you dine more pleasantly, now or formerly? Listen to him and to what he has to say on this topic. If he is not invited, he is hurt, and if he is invited, he dines like a slave at a master’s table, all the time careful not to say or do something foolish. And what do you suppose he is afraid of? That he be scourged like a slave? How can he expect to get off as well as that? But as befits so great a man, a friend of Caesar, he is afraid he will lose his head. When did you take your bath in greater peace? And when did you take your exercise at greater leisure? In a word, which life would you rather live, your present life or the old one? I can take oath that no one is so insensate or so incurable as not to lament his misfortunes the more he is a friend of Caesar.
When, therefore, neither those who are styled kings live as they will, nor the friends of these kings, what tree men are left? — Seek and you will find. For nature has given you resources to find the truth. But if you are unable of yourself, by employing these resources alone, to find the next step, listen to those who have already made the search. What do they say? Does freedom seem to you to be a good? — Yes, the greatest. — Is it possible, then, for a man who has this greatest good to be unhappy, or to fare ill? — No. — When, therefore, you see men unhappy, miserable, grieving, declare confidently that they are not free. — I do so declare. — Very well, then, we have now got away from buying and selling and arrangements of that kind in the acquisition of property. For if you are right in agreeing to these propositions, whether it be the Great King who is unhappy, or a little king, whether it be a man of consular rank, or one who has been a consul twice, he could not be free. — Granted.
Answer me, then, this further question: Does freedom seem to you to be a great and noble thing, and precious? — Of course. — Is it possible, then, for a man who achieves a thing so great and precious and noble, to be of abject spirit? — It is not. — When, therefore, you see one man cringing before another, or flattering him contrary to his own opinion, say confidently of this man also that he is not free; and that not merely if he be doing so for the sake of a paltry meal, but even if it be for a governorship or a consulship. Call rather those who do these things for certain small ends slaves on a small scale, and the others, as they deserve, slaves on a grand scale — This also I grant. — And does freedom seem to you to be something independent and self-governing? — Of course. — When, therefore, it is in another’s power to put hindrances in a man’s way and subject him to compulsion, say confidently that this man is not free. And please don’t look at his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, or look for a deed of sale or purchase, but if you hear him say “Master,” in the centre of his being and with deep emotion, call him a slave, even if twelve fasces precede him; and if you hear him say, “Alas! What I must suffer!” call him a slave; and, in short, if you see him wailing, complaining, in misery, call him a slave in a toga praetexta. However, if he does none of these things, do not call him free yet, but find out what his judgements are, whether they are in any respect subject to compulsion, to hindrance, to unhappiness; and if you find him to be that kind of a person, call him a slave on holiday at the Saturnalia; say that his master is out of town; later on he will return, and then you will learn what the fellow suffers. — Who will return? — Anyone who has control over the things which some man desires, to get these for him or to take them away. — Have we, then, so many masters? — Yes, so many. For even before these personal masters we have masters in the form of circumstances, and these are many. Hence, it needs must follow that those too who have authority over some one of these circumstances are our masters. Why, look you, no one is afraid of Caesar himself, but he is afraid of death, exile, loss of property, prison, disfranchisement. Nor does anyone love Caesar himself, unless in some way Ca
esar is a person of great merit; but we love wealth, a tribuneship, a praetorship, a consulship. When we love and hate and fear these things, it needs must be that those who control them are masters over us. That is why we even worship those persons as gods; for we consider that what has power to confer the greatest advantage is divine. And then we lay down the wrong minor premiss: “This man has power to confer the greatest advantage.” It needs must be that the conclusion from these premisses is wrong too.