c. 108 AD 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Discourses into contemporary English. The original is available from Standard Ebooks. Also available as an epub.
Epictetus taught in a rented room in Nicopolis, a provincial town on the west coast of Greece, sometime around the year 108. He had been born a slave in Phrygia, owned in Rome by a freedman of Nero's, and was lame in one leg. After he was freed he taught in Rome until Domitian threw the philosophers out of the city, and he never went back. His students were the sons of Roman gentlemen, sent to acquire a little philosophy before going into public life, and much of the book is him telling them that they are the ones in chains.
He wrote none of this down. A pupil named Arrian did, and says in the covering letter that he wrote out whatever he heard as nearly as he could in the man's own words, that the notes were for himself, and that he did not publish them. Four books survive of an original eight. What that shorthand preserves is a classroom rather than a treatise: he answers hecklers, loses patience, breaks off to ask a student whether he came here to be flattered or to be improved, and tells the room that a philosopher's school is a surgery and that they should be leaving it in pain rather than in pleasure. It is where the drills of the Enchiridion come from, with the arguments left in, and it is a good deal funnier than the handbook.
The translation this edition works from is George Long's, and it is worth saying why it needed redoing, because nothing in Long sounds old. The trouble is that he renders Greek technical terms with ordinary English words that look transparent and are not. Phantasia becomes appearance, prohairesis becomes will, dogma becomes opinion. A reader who meets the phrase the right use of appearances slides past it having understood nothing, and it is one of the two or three things the whole course is about. An appearance is whatever presents itself to your mind before you have agreed to it — the thought that this is a disaster, arriving unbidden — and the work is in the pause before you assent. The will, in Long's sense, is the faculty that does the agreeing, and it is the only thing Epictetus says nobody can take from you.
His subject is freedom, argued by a man who had been somebody's property. Say what you like about a consul, he says: a man who flatters to keep his position is more a slave than one who has been sold three times. His recommendation that a life can be ended when it is no longer worth living, the open door, recurs throughout and is given here as the argument he made, with no modern note attached. So is Book Three chapter one, a long attack on a young man for plucking his body hair. Marcus Aurelius read these lectures and says so; his notebook is in this collection as the Meditations, alongside Seneca's letters and the Enchiridion.
Arrian's Letter to Lucius Gellius
Book One
Book Two
Book Three
Book Four
Very little is known about the life of Epictetus. He is said to have been born at Hierapolis in Phrygia, a town between the Maeander and one of its branches, the Lycus. Hierapolis is mentioned in Paul's letter to the Colossians (Colossians 4:13), from which it has been concluded that there was a Christian church there in the apostle's time. The date of Epictetus' birth is unknown. The only recorded fact about his early life is that he was a slave in Rome, and that his master was Epaphroditus, a dissolute freedman of the emperor Nero. There is a story that this master broke his slave's leg by torturing him; but it is better to trust the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Encheiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was physically weak and lame from an early age. How he came to be a slave is not stated, though it has been asserted in modern times that his parents sold the child. I have found no authority for that.
We may suppose that the young slave showed intelligence, since his master sent him — or allowed him to go — to the lectures of Gaius Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic philosopher. It may seem strange that such a master should have wanted his slave turned into a philosopher, but Jean-Jacques Garnier, author of a Mémoire sur les ouvrages d'Épictète, explains the matter very well in a letter to Johann Schweighäuser. Garnier writes: "Epictetus, born at Hierapolis in Phrygia of poor parents, apparently owed the advantages of a good education to a fashion common at the end of the Republic and under the first emperors, by which the great men of Rome liked to count grammarians, poets, rhetoricians and philosophers among their many slaves — much as rich financiers in later ages have been moved to assemble large and costly libraries. This is the only supposition that can explain to us how a wretched child, born as poor as Irus, came to receive a good education, and how a rigid Stoic came to be the slave of Epaphroditus, an officer of the Imperial guard. For we cannot suppose that the confidant and manager of Nero's debaucheries would have wanted such a slave out of any liking for Stoic doctrine, or for his own use."
Some writers assume that Epictetus was freed by his master, but I can find no evidence for it. Epaphroditus went with Nero when he fled from Rome before his enemies, and helped the wretched tyrant to kill himself; Domitian afterwards put Epaphroditus to death for that service (Suetonius, Domitian 14). We may conclude that Epictetus somehow obtained his freedom and began to teach at Rome; but after Domitian expelled the philosophers from the city in 89 AD, he withdrew to Nicopolis in Epirus, a city Augustus had built to commemorate his victory at Actium. There Epictetus opened a school, or lecture room, and taught until he was an old man. The date of his death is unknown. He never married, as we learn from Lucian. When Epictetus was finding fault with Demonax and advising him to take a wife and have children — since this too, Epictetus said, was a philosopher's duty, to leave another in his own place in the universe — Demonax refuted the doctrine by answering: then give me one of your daughters, Epictetus. Simplicius says that Epictetus lived alone for a long time. At last he took a woman into his house as a nurse for a child, whom one of his friends had been going to expose because he could not afford to keep it; Epictetus took the child and brought it up.
Epictetus wrote nothing. Everything we have under his name was written down by an affectionate pupil, Arrian — later the historian of Alexander the Great — who tells us himself that he took the philosopher's discourses down in writing (see Arrian's letter to Lucius Gellius). These discourses made eight books, of which only four survive, under the title Diatribai, the Discourses. Simplicius states in his commentary that the Encheiridion, or Manual, was also put together by Arrian, who picked out from the discourses whatever he thought most useful, most necessary, and most likely to move men's minds. Simplicius adds that the contents of the Encheiridion are found almost entirely, and in the same words, scattered through the Discourses. Arrian also wrote a work on the life and death of Epictetus. The events of a scholar's life were probably neither many nor remarkable, but we should have been glad if that book had survived, since — as Simplicius says — it told what kind of man Epictetus was.
Photius lists among Arrian's works Conversations with Epictetus, in twelve books. Upton thinks this is only another name for the Discourses, and that Photius has mistaken the Conversations for a different work; yet Photius counts eight books of the Discourses and twelve of the Conversations. Schweighäuser observes that Photius cannot have seen these works of Arrian at all, which he infers from how briefly Photius notices them. And in fact Photius does not say he has read them, as he generally does say of the books he lists in his Bibliotheca. The conclusion is that we cannot be certain there ever was a work by Arrian called the Conversations of Epictetus.
The Discourses, together with the Encheiridion and the fragments, were translated into English by the learned Elizabeth Carter, who is said to have lived to the age of eighty-nine. The fourth edition, of 1807, contains her last additions and alterations. That translation has an introduction giving a summary view of Stoic philosophy by way of explaining Epictetus, and notes as well. The editor of the fourth edition says that "the Introduction and notes of the Christian translator of Epictetus are, in the estimation of most readers, not the least valuable parts of the work," adding that "this was also the opinion of the late Archbishop Secker, who though he thought very highly of the philosophy of Epictetus, considered the Introduction and notes as admirably calculated to prevent any mistake concerning it, as well as to amend and instruct the world." The introduction is certainly useful, though not free from errors. The notes I do not think valuable. I have used some of them without comment, and others with remarks of my own where I thought Carter mistaken about the original text, or about other matters.
Carter's translation is a good one, and perhaps no Englishman of that time would have made a better. My first intention was to revise it and correct whatever errors I found. I had revised about half when I found I was not satisfied with the work, and a learned friend advised me to translate the whole myself. This was rather a large undertaking for an old man now past seventy-six. I have done it, however, with great care, and as well as I could. I have always compared my translation against the Latin version and against Carter's, which I think the best way of avoiding the errors any translator may fall into. A man who has never tried to translate a Greek or Latin author does not know how hard it is. What seems plain enough while you are reading it often turns very difficult when you try to say it in another language. Epictetus is generally intelligible, it is true; but the manner of the author — or rather of Arrian, who was trying to reproduce what he heard — is sometimes made obscure by the constant run of questions and answers, and for other reasons besides.
Upton remarks, in a note on Book Three, chapter 23, that "there are many passages in these dissertations which are ambiguous or rather confused on account of the small questions, and because the matter is not expanded by oratorical copiousness, not to mention other causes." The discourses of Epictetus were, it is supposed, spoken without preparation, so that one thing after another would come into the speaker's mind as he went (Wolf). Schweighäuser likewise observes that the thread of the argument is sometimes obscure because words needed to show the connection of thought have been left out. The reader will therefore find that he cannot always understand Epictetus unless he reads him very carefully, and some passages more than once. He must think and reflect as well, or he will miss the meaning. I do not say the book is worth all this trouble. Every man must judge that for himself. But I should not have translated it if I had not thought it worth studying, and I think all books of this kind need careful reading, if they are worth reading at all.
The text of Epictetus is corrupt in places, and that corruption causes a few difficulties. They are not numerous enough, however, to cause or even to allow much variety among translations. This will explain why many parts of my translation are the same, or nearly the same, as Carter's. Where that happened, I did not think it necessary to alter my version merely so that it should differ from hers. I made my translation first, and then compared it with hers and with the Latin. I hope I have not made many blunders. I do not suppose I have made none.
The last and best edition of the Discourses, the Encheiridion and the fragments is Johann Schweighäuser's, in six octavo volumes. It contains Simplicius' commentary on the Encheiridion and two volumes of useful notes on the Discourses. These notes are selected from Wolf, Upton and a few other commentators, but a large part of them are Schweighäuser's own, and he was an excellent scholar and a very sensible man. I have read all of them, and I have used them. Many of the notes to this translation are my own.
I did not write these Discourses of Epictetus the way a man writes a book, and I did not make them public myself — indeed, I say I did not write them at all. Whatever I heard him say, I tried to set down in his own words, as nearly as I could, so that I would have a record afterwards of how he thought and how freely he spoke.
They are, naturally enough, the sort of thing one man says to another on the spur of the moment, not the sort of thing anyone writes for others to read. Being what they are, I have no idea how they came into the public's hands, without either my consent or my knowledge.
It matters little to me if I am thought incompetent as a writer, and it matters not at all to Epictetus if anyone despises what he said. At the time he was speaking, it was plain that he had no other aim than to move the minds of the people listening toward the best things. If these Discourses do that, they will have done what I think the words of philosophers ought to do. If they do not, then let whoever reads them know this much: when Epictetus delivered them, the man who heard him could not help being affected exactly as Epictetus meant him to be. And if the Discourses on the page do not manage it, then perhaps the fault is mine — or perhaps it could not have been otherwise.
Farewell.
Of all our capacities, you will find not one that can examine itself — and therefore not one that can approve or disapprove of anything. Except one. I will come to it.
Take the art of grammar. How far does its power of examination reach? As far as judging what is written and spoken. And music? As far as judging melody. Does either of them examine itself? Not at all. If you have to write to your friend, grammar will tell you which words to use; whether to write at all, grammar will not tell you. The same with music and musical sound: whether this is the moment to sing and play the lyre, or to do neither, music will not tell you.
What will tell you, then? The one capacity that examines both itself and everything else. And what is that? Reason — the rational faculty, to give it its name. It is the only thing we were given that examines itself: what it is, what it can do, what such a gift is worth. And it examines every other capacity as well. What else tells us that gold is beautiful? Gold does not say so itself. Plainly it is the thing in us that judges impressions. What else judges music and grammar and the rest, works out what they are good for, and points out the moment to use them? Nothing else does.
And so, as was fitting, the one thing the gods put in our power is the thing that is best of all and rules everything else: the right use of impressions. The rest they did not put in our power. Some things are up to us, and some are not. Was that because they did not want to? For my part, I think that if they had been able to, they would have handed us the rest as well — but they could not. We are here on the earth, tied to a body like this and to companions like these. How could we possibly not be blocked by externals?
But listen to what Zeus says. "Epictetus, if it had been possible I would have made this little body of yours and this little property of yours free, and beyond anyone's reach. But do not fool yourself about this: the body is not yours. It is clay, finely mixed. Since I could not give you that, I have given you a portion of myself — this capacity to go after a thing and to refuse it, to want and to decline; in a word, the capacity to use impressions. Look after that, treat it as the only thing you own, and you will never be blocked, never stopped. You will not moan. You will not blame anyone. You will not flatter anyone."
Well? Does that strike you as a small thing? I hope not. Then be content with it, and pray to the gods.
But as it is, when we could look after one thing and attach ourselves to that alone, we would rather look after a dozen and be tied to every one of them — to the body, to property, to a brother, a friend, a child, a slave. Tied to so many things, we are weighed down and dragged under. That is why, when the weather is wrong for sailing, we sit there tormenting ourselves, forever going out to see which way the wind is blowing. North. And what is that to us? When will the west wind blow? When it decides to, my good man — or when Aeolus decides. God did not make you manager of the winds. He made Aeolus.
So what follows? That we make the best use we can of what is up to us, and take everything else as it comes. And how does it come? However God pleases.
"So am I the only man who has to lose his head?"
Why — would you have the whole world beheaded, to console you? Will you not stretch out your neck the way Lateranus did at Rome, when Nero ordered his execution? He stretched out his neck, took a feeble blow, flinched back for a moment, and stretched it out again. And a little before that, when Nero's freedman Epaphroditus came to ask him what his offense had been, he said: "If I decide to say anything, I will say it to your master."
What should a man have ready for a time like that? What else but this: what is mine and what is not mine; what I am allowed and what I am not.
I have to die. Do I have to die groaning as well? I have to be put in chains. Do I have to whine about it too? I have to go into exile. Is anyone stopping me from going with a smile, cheerful and content?
"Tell me the secret you are keeping."
I will not. That much is up to me.
"Then I will put you in chains."
Man, what are you talking about? Chain me? You can chain my leg, but not even Zeus can conquer my will.
"I will throw you in prison."
My poor body, you mean.
"I will cut your head off."
When did I ever tell you that mine was the one head that could not be cut off?
These are the things philosophers ought to be turning over. These are what they should be writing down every day. This is what they should be training on.
Thrasea used to say: I would rather be killed today than banished tomorrow. And what did Rufus say to him? "If you choose death as the heavier of the two, what a foolish choice that is. And if as the lighter — who gave you the choice at all? Why not train yourself to be content with what you have been given?"
And Agrippinus — what did he say? "I am not going to get in my own way." Word came that his trial was going on in the Senate. "I hope it turns out well," he said. "But it is the fifth hour" — the hour when he always took his exercise and then a cold bath — "let us go and take our exercise."
When he had finished, a man came and told him: you have been condemned.
"To exile," he said, "or to death?"
To exile.
"And my property?"
It has not been taken.
"Then let us go to Aricia," he said, "and have dinner."
This is what it means to have studied what a man ought to study: to have made desire and avoidance proof against being blocked, proof against everything you would rather not meet. I have to die. If now, then I am dying now. If in a little while, then I will dine, since it is the dinner hour, and die afterwards. How? Like a man handing back what was never his.
Only to a rational creature is the irrational unbearable. What is rational, he can bear. Blows are not naturally unbearable. How so? Look at the Spartans, who take a whipping calmly once they have learned that the whipping makes sense. Hanging yourself is not unbearable either: the moment you form the judgment that it is the rational thing, off you go and hang yourself. In short, if we look, we shall find that nothing gives a human being so much pain as what he finds irrational, and nothing draws him so strongly as what he finds rational.
But the rational and the irrational look different to different people, exactly as the good and the bad do, and the profitable and the unprofitable. That, above all, is why we need training: to learn how to fit our preconception of the rational and the irrational to particular cases, in line with nature. And in settling what is rational and what is not, we do not only weigh up externals; we also take into account what suits the particular person.
For one man it is perfectly rational to hold a chamber pot for someone else, looking no further than this: that if he does not hold it he will be beaten and go without food, and if he does hold it nothing hard or unpleasant will happen to him. To another man, holding the pot is unbearable for himself — and unbearable, too, that anybody else should do that service for him. So if you ask me whether you should hold the pot, I shall tell you that getting your food is worth more than not getting it, and being flogged is a worse indignity than not being flogged; so if that is the scale you measure your interests by, go and hold the pot.
"But it would be beneath me."
Then it is you who must bring that consideration into the reckoning, not I. You are the one who knows yourself — how much you are worth to yourself, and the price you sell yourself at. Men sell themselves at very different prices.
That is why, when Florus was deliberating whether to go down to Nero's shows and perform in them himself, Agrippinus told him: "Go down."
"Why don't you go down yourself?" Florus asked.
"Because I do not even deliberate about it. Once a man brings himself to deliberate about such things, and to start pricing up externals, he is very close to the people who have forgotten who they are. Why ask me whether death is preferable, or life? I say life. Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure. — But if I don't act in the tragedy, my head comes off. — Then go and act. I will not. — Why not? — Because you count yourself as one thread among the threads of a tunic. Well, then it is proper for you to see to it that you look like everyone else, just as a thread has no ambition to be anything more than the other threads. But I want to be the purple — that small bright part which makes all the rest look handsome and fine. So why tell me to make myself like the crowd? And if I do, how am I still purple?"
Priscus Helvidius saw this too, and acted on it. When Vespasian sent word forbidding him to go into the senate, he answered: "It is in your power not to let me be a senator. But as long as I am one, I have to go in."
"Go in, then," said the emperor, "but say nothing."
"Do not ask my opinion, and I will be silent."
"But I have to ask your opinion."
"And I have to say what I think is right."
"But if you do, I shall have you killed."
"When did I ever tell you I was immortal? You will do your part and I will do mine. Yours is to kill; mine is to die, and not in fear. Yours is to banish; mine is to go without grieving."
And what good did Priscus do, one man on his own? What good does the purple do for the toga? Why, just this: that it stands out in the toga as purple, and is set there as a fine example for everything else. In the same circumstances another man would have answered Caesar's ban with, "Thank you for sparing me." But Vespasian would never have troubled to forbid such a man the senate at all. He knew he would either sit there like a clay pot, or, if he did speak, would say what Caesar wanted — and throw in a little extra.
An athlete behaved the same way when he was in danger of dying unless his genitals were amputated. His brother, who was a philosopher, came to him and said: "Come, brother, what are you going to do? Are we going to cut this away and go back to the gymnasium?" The athlete would not be moved, and died.
When somebody asked Epictetus whether he had done it as an athlete or as a philosopher: As a man, he replied — a man who had been announced among the competitors at Olympia and had fought there, a man at home in such a place, and not merely rubbed with oil in Baton's training school. Another man would have let even his head be cut off, if he could have lived without it.
That is what regard for your own character amounts to, in people who are used to bringing it into their deliberations of their own accord, along with everything else.
"Come on then, Epictetus, shave off your beard."
If I am a philosopher, I say, I will not shave.
"Then I will have your head off."
If it will do you any good, take it off.
Somebody asked: how is each of us to work out what suits his own character?
How is it, he replied, that when the lion attacks, the bull alone discovers what he can do and puts himself in front of the whole herd? Plainly, having the power and knowing you have it come together; so any of us who has such power will not be in the dark about it. But a bull is not made all at once, and neither is a brave man. We have to train through the winter for the summer's campaign, and not go rushing at what is none of our business.
Only think what price you are selling your own will at. If for no other reason, then at least for this one: do not sell it cheap. The great and superior sort of thing may belong to Socrates and his like. Then why, if this is our nature too, are there not a great many more of us like him? Do all horses turn out fast? Are all dogs good on a scent? Well then — since I am naturally slow, am I to take no trouble on that account? I hope not. Epictetus is no better than Socrates; but if he is not worse, that is enough for me. I shall never be a Milo, and yet I do not neglect my body. I shall never be a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my property. And in general we do not give up looking after anything just because we despair of being the best at it.
If a man could really assent to this doctrine as he ought — that we are all descended from God in a special way, and that God is the father of men and of gods alike — I do not think he would ever have a low or shabby thought about himself again. If Caesar adopted you, nobody could stand your arrogance. And if you know that you are the son of Zeus, will you not be puffed up?
Yet we are not. Two things are mixed together in the making of a man: a body, which we share with the animals, and reason and intelligence, which we share with the gods. And most of us lean toward the wretched, mortal kinship, and only a few toward the divine and happy one.
Now, since every man necessarily deals with everything according to the judgment he holds about it, the few — the ones who think they were made for loyalty and self-respect and the sound use of impressions — never have a low or shabby thought about themselves. With the crowd it is the exact reverse. "What am I?" they say. "A poor miserable creature, and this wretched bit of flesh of mine."
Wretched it is. But you have something better than a bit of flesh. Why neglect the better thing, and cling to this?
Because of that kinship with the flesh, some of us who lean toward it turn into wolves — treacherous, faithless, out to do harm. Some turn into lions, savage and wild and untameable. But most of us turn into foxes, or something worse. What else is a slanderer, a man with malice in him, but a fox — or some meaner and more miserable animal still?
So look to it. Take care you do not become one of these wretched things.
The man who is making progress has learned from the philosophers that desire means desiring good things and avoidance means avoiding bad ones. He has learned, too, that a man gets no happiness and no peace of mind except by never failing to get what he desires and never falling into what he wants to avoid. So he strips desire away from himself altogether and puts it off for the time being, and he directs avoidance only at things that depend on his will. Because if he tries to avoid anything outside his will, he knows he will sooner or later run into the very thing he wanted to dodge, and be miserable.
Now if virtue promises good fortune and peace of mind and happiness, then progress toward virtue is certainly progress toward each of those as well. Whatever the finished thing brings us to, progress is an approach to that point.
How is it, then, that we agree virtue is this, and yet go looking for progress somewhere else, and put that on display? What does virtue produce? Peace of mind. So who is making progress? The man who has read a great many books of Chrysippus? Does virtue consist in having understood Chrysippus? Because if it does, then progress is plainly nothing but knowing a great deal of Chrysippus. Yet here we are, admitting that virtue produces one thing while declaring that getting near it is something else entirely.
"So-and-so can already read Chrysippus on his own," somebody says.
Excellent, sir, you are making great progress. Progress of what kind? Why are you mocking the man? Why are you pulling him away from noticing his own troubles? Will you not show him what virtue actually produces, so that he learns where to look for improvement? Look for it where your work is, you wretch. And where is your work? In desire and avoidance — so that you are not disappointed of what you want and do not fall into what you would rather not meet. In pursuit and refusal — so that you make no mistake. In assent and the withholding of assent — that is, in saying yes to an impression or holding back — so that you are not taken in. These come first and they matter most. If you are still trembling and moaning as you try not to fall into what you avoid, tell me: where exactly is the progress?
So show me your progress in these things. If I were talking to an athlete, I would say: show me your shoulders.
"Here are my weights."
You and your weights can look to that. I want to see what the weights have done.
"Take my treatise on impulse, and see how thoroughly I have worked through it."
Slave, that is not what I am asking. I am asking how you exercise pursuit and refusal, desire and avoidance; how you plan and intend and prepare yourself; whether all this is in line with nature or not. If it is, give me the evidence and I will say you are making progress. If it is not — off with you, and not only expound your books but write some of your own. And what will you have gained? Do you not know the whole book costs five denarii? Is the man who expounds it worth more than five denarii, then? So never look for the thing itself in one place and progress toward it in another.
Where is progress, then? If one of you turns away from externals and toward his own will — to work on it and improve it by hard labour, until it is in line with nature, lifted up, free, unrestricted, unblocked, trustworthy and self-respecting; if he has learned that a man who desires or avoids things not in his power can be neither trustworthy nor free, but must inevitably shift as they shift and be knocked about by them as in a storm, and must inevitably make himself subject to anyone with the power to give him or withhold from him what he wants; and if, finally, when he gets up in the morning he watches for these rules and keeps them, bathes like a man who can be trusted, eats like a man with self-respect — if in whatever comes up he works at his governing principles the way a runner works at running and a voice trainer at the voice — that is the man who is truly making progress, and that is the man who has not travelled here for nothing.
But if he has strained every nerve at reading books, and works at nothing else, and travelled here for that, then I tell him to go home again at once and not neglect his business there — because the thing he came for is nothing. The other thing is something: to study how a man may get the moaning and groaning out of his life, and the "poor me, wretch that I am"; how to be rid of misfortune and disappointment; to learn what death is, and exile, and prison, and hemlock, so that he can say when he is in chains, "Dear Crito, if it is the will of the gods that it be so, let it be so" — and not, "Wretched old man that I am, is this what I kept my grey hairs for?"
Who talks like that? Do you suppose I mean some nobody, some man of no standing? Does Priam not say it? Does Oedipus not say it? Every king in the plays says it. For what is tragedy but the sufferings of men who set store by externals, put into that kind of verse? If a man has to be taught by a made-up story that nothing outside his will has anything to do with him, then for my part I am glad of the story, if it lets me live happily and undisturbed. What you want is for you to decide.
So what does Chrysippus give us? The answer is: knowing that these things are not lies — the things that happiness comes from and peace of mind grows out of. Take my books and you will learn how true, how much in line with nature, are the things that leave me undisturbed.
What great good fortune! What a great benefactor, to show us the road! Men have raised temples and altars everywhere to Triptolemus, because he gave us cultivated food. But to the man who found the truth and brought it to light and passed it on to everybody — not the truth about how to stay alive, but about how to live well — which of you has built an altar for that, or a temple, or dedicated a statue, or worships God on account of it? We sacrifice to the gods because they gave us the vine and the wheat. And because they brought forth in the human mind that fruit by which they meant to show us the truth about happiness — for that we will not thank God?
If a man sets himself against plain facts, said Epictetus, it is not easy to find an argument that will change his mind. This is not because the man is strong or because the teacher is weak. When a man has been refuted and then sets hard, like stone, what argument is going to reach him?
There are two ways of setting hard: the understanding can do it, and so can the sense of shame — when a man has made up his mind neither to assent to what is obvious nor to give up contradicting it. Most of us dread the deadening of the body, and would do anything to prevent it; the deadening of the soul we do not care about. And with the soul, if a man is in such a state that he cannot take anything in or follow anything at all, we say he is in a bad way; but if his sense of shame and self-respect has gone dead, we actually call that strength.
Do you grasp that you are awake?
"No," the man says, "because I do not grasp it in my sleep either, when I am dreaming that I am awake."
Is there no difference at all, then, between the one impression and the other?
"None."
Am I still to argue with this man? What fire, what iron, am I to put to him to make him feel that he has gone dead? He does feel it, and pretends he does not. He is worse off than a corpse. One man does not see the contradiction: he is in a bad way. Another sees it and is not moved by it and does not improve: he is in a worse way still. His self-respect and his sense of shame have been cut out of him, and his reason has not been cut away but brutalised. And am I to call this strength of mind? Certainly not — unless we are also going to call it strength in men who have lost all shame about sex, and so say and do in public whatever comes into their heads.
From anything at all that exists or happens in the world it is easy to praise Providence, provided a man has two things: the capacity to see what belongs to each person and each thing and what happens to it, and a grateful temper. Without those two, one man will not see what things are good for, and another will not be thankful for them even when he does see.
If God had made colours but not made the power of seeing them, what use would they have been? None whatever. And the other way round: if He had made the power of sight but had not made objects for that power to fall on, what use would it have been then? None whatever. Well, suppose He had made both, and had not made light? No use again. Who is it, then, who fitted this to that and that to this? Who fitted the knife to its sheath and the sheath to the knife? Nobody?
From the very make of a finished thing we are in the habit of concluding that it is certainly the work of some craftsman, and was not put together for nothing. Does each of those things prove a workman, then, and do visible objects and the power of sight and the light not prove Him? And the existence of male and female, and the desire of each for the other, and the ability to use the parts that were built for it — do these not declare the workman too?
If they do not, then consider how our understanding is made. When we meet things through the senses we do not simply take in impressions of them: we select something out of them, we take something away, we add, we put this and that together by means of them, and in fact we move from some things to others that are in a way like them. Is not even that enough to shift some men, and stop them forgetting the workman? If not, let them explain to us what it is that makes each particular thing — or how things so marvellous, so like the contrivances of art, could exist by chance and by their own motion.
Well then, is all this done only in us? A great deal of it is done only in us, being what a rational creature especially needed. But you will find much that we share with the animals. Do they understand what is being done, then? Not at all. Using a thing and understanding it are two different things. God needed the animals to use impressions, and needed us to understand the use of impressions. That is why for them it is enough to eat and drink and sleep and breed and do the rest of what each of them does; whereas for us, to whom He also gave the power of thought, those things are not enough. Unless we act properly and in an orderly way, in line with the nature and make of each thing, we shall never reach our true end. For where creatures are differently made, their actions and their ends are different too. In a creature made only for use, use by itself is enough; but in a creature that can also understand the use — man — there is no reaching his proper end without the exercise of understanding.
So God makes each animal for something: one to be eaten, another to work the land, another to give cheese, another for some similar use. What need have any of those to understand impressions and tell one from another? But God brought man in to be a spectator of God and of God's works — and not only a spectator, an interpreter. That is why it is a disgrace for a man to begin and end where the animals do. He ought rather to begin where they begin, and to end where nature ends in us; and nature ends in contemplation and understanding and a way of life in line with nature. So see that you do not die without having been a spectator of these things.
You travel to Olympia to look at the work of Phidias, and every one of you counts it a misfortune to die without having seen such things. But where no travelling is needed at all — where a man already stands with the works of God in front of him — will you not want to look at them and understand them? Will you not notice what you are, or what you were born for, or what this power of sight was given to you for?
"But there are disagreeable and difficult things in life."
And at Olympia there are not? Are you not scorched there? Are you not crushed by the crowd? Have you anywhere decent to bathe? Do you not get soaked when it rains? Do you not have your fill of noise and shouting and the rest of it? But I imagine you set all that against the magnificence of the spectacle, and put up with it.
Well then — have you not been given capacities to bear whatever happens? Have you not been given greatness of spirit? Courage? Endurance? If I have greatness of spirit, why should I trouble myself over anything that can happen? What is going to distract me, or disturb me, or look painful to me? Am I not to use the power for the purpose I was given it for, instead of sitting there grieving and moaning over events?
"Yes, but my nose runs."
What have you got hands for, slave? Is it not so that you can wipe your nose?
"So is it reasonable that there should be running noses in the world at all?"
How much better it would be to wipe your nose than to find fault with the universe.
What do you suppose Hercules would have amounted to if there had been no lion, no hydra, no stag, no boar, and no brutal and criminal men for him to drive out and clear away? What would he have been doing if none of it had existed? Plainly he would have rolled himself up and gone to sleep. In the first place, then, he would never have been Hercules, dozing his whole life away in that comfort. And even if he had been, what use would he have been? What use his arms, and the strength of the rest of him, and his endurance and his noble spirit, if circumstances had never come along to rouse him and train him?
Well, is a man to lay on such training for himself, then — to import a lion into his country from somewhere, and a boar, and a hydra? That would be folly and madness. But since they did exist, and were there to be found, they served to show what Hercules was and to give him his exercise.
Come then, you too: notice this, look at the capacities you have, and when you have looked at them, say — send me now, Zeus, any difficulty you please, for I have the means you gave me and the powers to do myself honour through whatever happens.
But no. You sit there trembling in case something happens, and weeping and moaning and groaning over what does happen, and then you blame the gods. What can come of such smallness of spirit but irreverence? And God has not only given us these capacities, by which we shall be able to bear anything that happens without being crushed or broken by it: like a good king and a true father, He has given them to us unblocked, subject to no compulsion, nothing standing in their way, and put them entirely in our own power — without even keeping back for Himself any power of blocking or hindering them.
And you, who were given these powers free and for your own, do not use them. You do not even see what you were given, or who gave it. Some of you are blind to the giver and will not so much as acknowledge your benefactor; others, out of smallness of spirit, take to fault-finding and bringing charges against God.
Yet I will show you that you have powers and means for greatness of spirit and courage. What powers you have for fault-finding and making accusations — that you can show me.
Handling trick arguments and hypothetical ones, and those that draw their conclusions out of questioning — in a word, handling arguments of every such kind — has to do with the duties of life, though most people do not know it. In every matter we are asking how the wise and good man is to find the right road and the right method of dealing with it. So let people either say that a serious man will not go down into the contest of question and answer, or else that if he does go down into it, he will take no care to avoid conducting himself rashly and carelessly in the questioning and the answering. And if they will allow neither of those, they must admit that some inquiry ought to be made into the very subjects on which questioning and answering are chiefly employed.
For what is the aim of reasoning? To establish true propositions, to get rid of false ones, and to withhold assent where a thing is not plain. Is it enough, then, to have learned only that much?
"It is enough," a man may say.
Is it enough, then, for a man who wants to make no mistake in handling coin, to have heard the rule that he should take the genuine drachmas and refuse the counterfeit? It is not. What has to be added to the rule? What else but the capacity that tests genuine drachmas and counterfeit ones and tells them apart? So in reasoning too, what has been said is not enough: a man must acquire the capacity to examine the true and the false and the not-plain, and to tell them apart. He must.
And besides that, what does reasoning set out to do? That you should accept what follows from what you have properly granted. Well, is it enough here just to know that? It is not. A man has to learn how one thing is a consequence of others, and when one thing follows from one thing, and when it follows from several things taken together. Consider, then, whether this power too must not be acquired by anyone who intends to conduct himself skilfully in reasoning: the power of demonstrating for himself the various things he has put forward, the power of following other men's demonstrations, and of not being taken in by sophists who are only pretending to demonstrate. That is why the practice and exercise of valid arguments and figures has grown up among us, and it has been shown to be necessary.
But it does in fact happen sometimes that we have properly granted the premises, and something results from them which is not true, and results all the same. What am I to do then? Am I to admit the falsehood? How can I? Well then, am I to say that I did not properly grant what we agreed on? I am not allowed to do that either. Am I to say that the conclusion does not follow from what was conceded? That is not allowed either.
So what is to be done? Consider whether it is not this. Having borrowed money is not enough to make a man still a debtor: there has to be added the fact that he goes on owing it and has not paid it back. In the same way, having granted the premises is not enough to force you to admit the inference — you must also stand by what you granted. If the premises stay to the end just as they were when they were granted, then we are absolutely bound to stand by what we granted and to accept the consequences. But if the premises do not stay as they were when granted, then we are just as absolutely bound to withdraw from what we granted, and to refuse a conclusion that does not follow from the words our concession was made in. For the inference is no longer ours, and no longer results with our assent, since we have withdrawn from the premises we granted.
So we ought to examine premises of this kind, and the changes and shifts of meaning in them by which — in the course of questioning or answering, or in drawing the syllogistic conclusion, or in some other such way — the premises come to vary and give foolish men occasion to be thrown into confusion, if they do not see what the consequences are. And why ought we to examine them? So that in this matter we may not be employed improperly or in a muddle.
The same goes for hypotheses and hypothetical arguments. Sometimes it is necessary to ask that a hypothesis be granted, as a kind of bridge to the argument that follows. Must we then allow every hypothesis put to us, or not every one? And if not every one, which ones? And when a man has allowed a hypothesis, must he in every case stand by having allowed it? Or must he sometimes withdraw from it, and accept the consequences but not accept contradictions?
Yes — but suppose a man says: if you admit the hypothesis of something possible, I will drag you to something impossible. Is a man of sense to refuse to take that on, and dodge discussion and conversation with him? But who else besides the man of sense can use argument, and be skilful at questioning and answering, and impossible to cheat and deceive with false reasoning? And is he to go into the contest and then not take care to argue neither rashly nor carelessly? And if he takes no care, how is he the man we take him to be? Yet without some such training and preparation, can he keep up a continuous and consistent argument? Let them show that he can, and all these speculations become unnecessary — absurd, and out of keeping with our idea of a good and serious man.
Why are we still lazy and slack and sluggish? Why do we look for excuses to avoid working and keeping watch over our own reason?
"So if I go wrong in these matters, is it as though I have killed my father?"
Slave, where was there a father here for you to kill? What you have done is the only fault it was possible to commit here.
That is exactly the remark I made to Rufus when he found fault with me for failing to spot the one thing left out of a certain syllogism. I suppose, I said, that I have burnt down the Capitol.
Slave, he replied, was the thing left out here the Capitol? Or are these the only crimes there are — burning the Capitol and killing your father? To use the impressions put before you rashly and foolishly and carelessly; to fail to follow an argument, or a demonstration, or a piece of sophistry; in a word, not to see in questioning and answering what is consistent with what we have granted and what is not — is there no error in that?
There are as many ways of varying the forms of arguments and enthymemes in argument as there are of exchanging equivalent expressions for one another. Here is an instance. If you have borrowed and not repaid, you owe me the money. You have not borrowed and you have not repaid; therefore you do not owe me the money. To do this skilfully suits no man better than the philosopher. If an enthymeme is an incomplete syllogism, then plainly a man trained in the complete syllogism must be just as expert in the incomplete one.
Why, then, do we not train ourselves and each other in this way? Because — I answer — as things stand, even though we do not train in these matters, and even though I at least do not draw you away from the study of how to live, we still make no progress in virtue. So what are we to expect if we take this occupation on as well? Especially since it would not merely be an occupation drawing us away from more necessary things: it would also be a cause of conceit and arrogance, and no small one.
The power of arguing and the capacity to persuade are great, particularly when much exercised and given the extra polish of good language. And in general, any capacity acquired by the untrained and the weak brings with it the danger of their being puffed up and swollen by it. What means could you use to persuade a young man who excels at this that he ought not to become an appendage to it, but to make it an appendage to himself? Does he not trample on all such arguments and strut about in front of us, puffed up and swollen, refusing to let anyone correct him or remind him of what he has neglected and where he has turned aside?
"What then — was Plato not a philosopher?"
And was Hippocrates not a physician? But you see how Hippocrates writes. Does Hippocrates write like that in his capacity as a physician? Why do you jumble together things that happen to have been combined in the same men? And if Plato was handsome and strong, ought I to set about becoming handsome or strong myself, as though that were necessary for philosophy, on the ground that a certain philosopher was handsome and a philosopher at once? Will you not see the difference, and distinguish what men become philosophers in respect of from what belongs to them in other respects? And if I were a philosopher, ought you to be made lame as well?
What of it, then? Am I taking these capacities of yours away from you? Not at all — no more than I take away the power of sight. But if you ask me what the good of a man is, I can name you nothing but a certain condition of the will with regard to impressions.
If what the philosophers say about the kinship of God and man is true, what is left for men to do but what Socrates did — never, when asked what country he belonged to, answer "Athenian" or "Corinthian", but "a citizen of the world"?
Why do you say you are an Athenian, instead of saying you belong only to the little corner your poor body happened to be dropped in at birth? Plainly you name yourself Athenian or Corinthian from the wider thing that has the greater authority — the thing that takes in not only that corner and your whole household, but the entire country your ancestors came down to you from.
So a man who has watched the administration of the world intelligently, and has learned that the greatest and highest and most inclusive community is the one made up of men and God; that the seeds have come down from God not only to my father and grandfather but to everything that is begotten and born on the earth, and above all to rational beings, since these alone are formed by nature to share with God, being joined to Him by reason — why should such a man not call himself a citizen of the world? Why not a son of God? And why should he be afraid of anything that happens among men? If kinship with Caesar, or with any other of the great men at Rome, is enough to let us live in safety, above contempt and with nothing to fear at all — then to have God as your maker and father and guardian, will that not release us from griefs and fears?
"But where am I to get bread, when I have nothing?"
And how do slaves manage when they run away — what do they rely on when they leave their masters? On their estates? Their own slaves? Their silver plate? They rely on nothing but themselves, and food does not fail them. And is one of us, a philosopher, to travel abroad and depend on other people and lean on them, and take no care of himself? Is he to be worse than the animals, and more of a coward — every one of which is self-sufficient, and never fails to find its proper food, or a way of living that suits it and is in line with nature?
For my part, I think the old man sitting here ought not to be occupied with keeping you from low thoughts and low, ignoble talk about yourselves. He ought to be making sure there are no young men among us of this other mind: who, having recognised their kinship with God, and that we are shackled by these bonds — the body, I mean, and its possessions, and whatever else we need on account of them for the ordinary running and commerce of life — resolve to throw the whole lot off as an unbearable, painful burden, and go off to their relations.
This is the work your teacher and instructor ought to be at, if he really were what he ought to be. You should come to him and say: "Epictetus, we can no longer bear being tied to this poor body — feeding it, giving it drink and rest, washing it, and for its sake making up to this man and that. Are these things not indifferent, and nothing to us? Is death not no evil? Are we not in a sense relations of God, and did we not come from Him? Let us go back where we came from. Let us be released at last from these bonds that hold us down and weigh on us. Here there are robbers and thieves and law courts, and men called tyrants who think they have some power over us through the body and its belongings. Let us show them they have no power over anybody."
And I, for my part, would answer: "Friends, wait for God. When He gives the signal and releases you from this service, then go to Him. For the present, put up with living in the place where He has stationed you. The time you have to live here is short, and easy enough to bear for men in your frame of mind. What tyrant, what thief, what law court is frightening to men who have come to count the body and the body's possessions as worth nothing? Wait, then. Do not leave without a reason."
Something like that is what a teacher ought to say to well-born young men. But what actually happens? The teacher is a lifeless body and so are you. You eat your fill today, and then sit down and moan about tomorrow and where the next meal is coming from. Wretch, if you have it, you will have it; and if you do not, you will leave life. The door is open. Why grieve? What room is left for tears? Where is the occasion for flattery? Why should one man envy another? Why should anyone admire the rich or the powerful, even if they are very strong and violent-tempered? What are they going to do to us? What they can do, we shall not care about; and what we do care about, they cannot touch.
How did Socrates behave over such matters? How else than as a man who was convinced he was a relation of the gods? "If you say to me now," Socrates told his judges, "we will acquit you on condition that you stop arguing in the way you have argued up to now, and stop troubling our young men and our old ones — then I shall answer that you are making yourselves ridiculous. You think that if one of our commanders posted me somewhere it would be my duty to hold that post and keep it, and to resolve to die a thousand times rather than desert it; but that if God has put us in a certain place and a certain way of life, we ought to desert that." Socrates talks like a man who really is a relation of the gods.
But we think of ourselves as stomachs and guts and private parts. We are afraid, we want things, we flatter the people who can help us with these matters — and are afraid of them too.
A man once asked me to write to Rome on his behalf. Most people thought he had been unlucky: he had been a man of rank and rich, and had been stripped of everything, and was living here. I wrote for him in a humble tone. He read the letter, handed it back to me and said: "I wanted your help, not your pity. Nothing bad has happened to me."
In the same way Musonius Rufus used to test me by saying: this and that will be done to you by your master. And when I answered that these were the sort of things that happen in the ordinary course of human affairs — then why, he said, should I ask him for anything when I can get it from you? For in fact what a man has from himself it is pointless and foolish to take from someone else. Am I, who can get greatness of spirit and a generous temper from myself, to take land and money or public office from you? I hope not. I will not be so ignorant of what I already own.
But when a man is cowardly and small, what else is there to do for him but write letters about him as you would about a corpse? Please make us a present of the body of so-and-so, and a pint of thin blood. For such a person really is a carcass and a pint of blood, and nothing more. If he were anything more, he would know that no man is made miserable by another.
If we applied ourselves to our own work as busily as the old men at Rome apply themselves to the business they are employed on, perhaps we too might get something done.
I know a man older than myself who is now superintendent of the corn supply at Rome. I remember when he came through here on his way back from exile, and what he said as he went over the events of his earlier life — how he declared that from his return onward he would attend to nothing but spending the rest of his days in quiet and peace. How little of life is left to me, he said.
You will not do it, I told him. The moment you get a whiff of Rome you will forget every word of this; and if they let you into the imperial palace, you will shoulder your way in gladly and thank God for it.
"Epictetus," he answered, "if you ever find me setting so much as one foot inside that palace, think what you like of me."
And what did he do? Before he had even entered the city, letters from Caesar met him. He took them, forgot the lot, and has been piling one piece of business on another ever since. I wish I were standing beside him now to remind him what he said as he came through, and to point out what a much better prophet I am than he is.
Well then — am I saying that man is a creature made to do nothing? Certainly not. We are active. Take me: as soon as the day comes I remind myself briefly of what I have to go over with my pupils. Then straight away I say to myself, and what is it to me how a certain person reads? The first thing for me is to get some sleep.
And what likeness is there anyway between what they do and what we do? Look at what they do and you will see. What do they do all day long but make up accounts, hold enquiries, give and take advice about a little grain, a scrap of land and profits of that sort? Is it the same thing to receive a petition and read in it, "I beg you to allow me to export a small quantity of corn," and to read one that runs, "I beg you to learn from Chrysippus how the world is administered, and what place the rational creature holds in it; and to consider who you are, and what your good and your bad consist of"? Are these things alike? Do they call for the same amount of care? Is it as disgraceful to neglect the one as the other?
Well then — are we the only lazy ones, the only ones who love our sleep? No: much more it is you young men. When we old men see young men playing we are eager to join in and play too; and if I saw you keen and hard at work, I should be far more eager still to join you in the serious business.
A magistrate came to visit him, and Epictetus asked him about various matters, and among them whether he had a wife and children. The man said he had.
And how do you find it?
"Miserable," said the man.
In what way? Men do not marry and have children in order to be wretched — rather the opposite.
"But I am so wretched over my children," the man said, "that lately, when my little girl was ill and they thought her in danger, I could not bear to stay with her. I left the house until somebody sent word that she had recovered."
Well — do you think you did right?
"I acted naturally," the man replied.
Then satisfy me that you acted naturally, and I will satisfy you that whatever happens according to nature happens rightly.
"That is how all fathers behave," he said, "or at any rate most of them."
I do not deny it. But what we are asking is whether such behaviour is right. On your reasoning we should have to say that tumours come for the good of the body, because they do come; and generally, that doing wrong is natural, because nearly all of us do wrong, or at least most. So show me how your behaviour was natural.
"I cannot," he said. "You show me rather how it was not according to nature, and not rightly done."
Well, said Epictetus, if we were enquiring about white and black, what test would we use to tell them apart?
"Sight."
And about hot and cold, hard and soft?
"Touch."
Then since we are enquiring about what is according to nature, and what is done rightly and not rightly, what sort of test do you think we should use?
"I do not know."
And yet not knowing the test for colours and smells, or for tastes, is perhaps no great harm. But if a man does not know the test for good and bad, and for what is according to nature and against it — does that seem a small harm to you?
"The greatest harm there is."
Come, tell me: does everything that strikes some people as good and proper rightly strike them so? Is it possible that the Jews and the Syrians and the Egyptians and the Romans are all of them right in their views about food?
"How could they be?"
Well, I suppose it is absolutely necessary that if the Egyptians are right the rest must be wrong, and if the Jews are right the rest cannot be.
"Certainly."
And where there is ignorance, there is also a want of learning and training in things that matter.
He agreed.
Then you, said Epictetus, now that you know this, will from now on give your serious attention to nothing else. You will apply your mind to nothing but learning the test of what is according to nature, and to using it to settle each case as it comes. And in the present business I can help you this far. Does affection for your own family strike you as being according to nature, and good?
"Certainly."
And is such affection natural and good, while what is consistent with reason is not good?
"By no means."
Then is what is consistent with reason in conflict with affection?
"I think not."
Quite right. If it were otherwise, then of two conflicting things one being according to nature, the other would have to be against nature. Is that not so?
"It is."
So whatever we find to be both affectionate and consistent with reason, we can confidently declare right and good.
"Agreed."
Well then, to leave your sick child and go away is not reasonable, and I do not suppose you will claim it is. What is left is to enquire whether it was consistent with affection.
"Yes, let us consider that."
You had an affectionate disposition toward your child. Did you do right, then, in running off and leaving her? And has her mother no affection for the child?
"Of course she has."
Ought her mother to have left her too, then, or not?
"She ought not."
And the nurse — does she love the child?
"She does."
Ought she to have left her as well?
"By no means."
And the man who looks after her lessons, does he not love her?
"He does."
Ought he to have deserted her too? So then, should the child have been left alone and helpless, on account of all this great affection of yours and of the people around her — or should she have died in the hands of people who neither loved her nor cared for her?
"Certainly not."
Now this is unfair and unreasonable: to refuse to let people who have as much affection as you do the very thing you think proper for yourself to do, on the ground that you have affection. It is absurd. Come then: if you were ill, would you want your relatives to be affectionate in this way — all of them, children and wife too — to the point of leaving you alone and deserted?
"By no means."
And would you want to be loved by your own people in such a way that, through their excessive affection, you were always left alone when you were ill? Or would you sooner pray, if it were possible, to be loved by your enemies and deserted by them? And if that is so, what follows is that your behaviour was not an act of affection at all.
Well then — was there nothing that moved you and drove you to desert your child? How could there be nothing? But it may have been something of the kind that moved a certain man at Rome to cover his head while the horse he had backed was running; and when the horse unexpectedly won, they had to bring sponges to bring him round from his faint.
What is the thing that moves us, then? Discussing that exactly is perhaps not for now. It is enough to be convinced of this much, if what the philosophers say is true: that we must not look for it anywhere outside, but that in every case it is one and the same thing that causes us to do or not do something, to say or not say something, to be puffed up or downcast, to avoid a thing or go after it — the very thing that is at this moment the cause for me and for you: for you, of coming to me and sitting and listening, and for me, of saying what I am saying.
And what is that? Anything but our will to do so? Nothing else. If we had willed otherwise, what else would we have been doing but the thing we willed? So this was the cause of Achilles' grief — not the death of Patroclus, since another man does not behave like that when his companion dies, but the fact that Achilles chose to. And in your case this was the very cause of your running away then: that you chose to. And on the other side, if you stay with her in future, the cause will be the same. And now you are going to Rome because you choose to; and if you change your mind, you will not go.
In a word: neither death nor exile nor pain nor anything of the kind is the cause of our doing or not doing anything. Our own judgments and our own choices are.
Do I convince you of this, or not?
"You convince me."
Then as the causes are in each case, so are the effects. So from this day on, whenever we do something wrongly, we shall lay it at the door of nothing but the judgment we did it from; and that is what we shall set about removing and cutting out — more than we would cut tumours and abscesses out of the body. And in the same way we shall give the same account of the cause of the things we do rightly. We shall stop putting forward as the cause of any evil to us a slave, or a neighbour, or a wife, or children, being convinced that if we do not think things to be what we do think them, we do not perform the acts that follow from thinking so — and that thinking or not thinking is in our power, and not in externals.
"That is so," he said.
From this day, then, we shall enquire into nothing else and examine nothing else — not what quality or condition anything has, not land, not slaves, not horses, not dogs — nothing but judgments.
"I hope so."
You see, then, that you will have to become a scholar, a creature everyone laughs at, if you really mean to make an examination of your own judgments. And that this is not the work of a single hour or a single day, you know yourself.
About the gods, there are some who say no divine being exists. Others say one exists, but is idle and indifferent and takes no thought for anything. A third group say such a being exists and does take thought, but only about great things and heavenly things, and about nothing on earth. A fourth group say the divine takes thought about earthly things as well as heavenly ones, but only in a general way, not about particular cases. And there is a fifth group, to which Odysseus and Socrates belong, who say: "I do not move without your knowing it."
So before anything else we have to enquire about each of these opinions, and whether it is stated truly or not. For if there are no gods, how can following them be our proper end? And if they exist but take care of nothing, how in that case can it be right to follow them either? And even if they do exist and do look after things, if nothing is communicated from them to men — and in fact to me — how is it right even then?
The wise and good man, then, having thought all this through, submits his own mind to Him who administers the whole, as good citizens submit to the law of their state. A man coming to be taught ought to come with this intention: how am I to follow the gods in everything? How am I to be content with the divine administration? And how can I become free?
For a man is free when everything happens according to his will and no one can block him.
Is freedom madness, then? Certainly not: madness and freedom have nothing in common.
"But I want everything to turn out just as I like, and in whatever way I like."
You are mad. You are out of your senses. Do you not know that freedom is a fine and valuable thing? For me to wish thoughtlessly that things should happen as I thoughtlessly like — that is not fine at all. It is about as low as anything can be.
How do we go about writing? Do I want to write the name Dion however I choose? No: I am taught to want to write it the way it ought to be written. And with music? The same. And universally, in every art or science? Just the same. If it were otherwise, there would be no value in knowing anything, if knowledge were fitted to each man's whim. And is it in this one thing only — in the greatest and chief thing, freedom — that I am allowed to want thoughtlessly? Not at all. Being taught is precisely this: learning to want each thing to happen just as it does happen.
And how do things happen? As the one who ordered them ordered them. He appointed summer and winter, plenty and scarcity, virtue and vice, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole; and to each of us he gave a body, and parts of a body, and property, and companions.
Bearing this arrangement in mind, then, we ought to come to be taught — not so that we may change how things are constituted, since we have no power to do that, and it would not be better if we had, but so that, things around us being what they are and being so by nature, we may keep our minds in tune with what happens.
Can we escape from other men? How could we? And if we live among them, can we change them? Who gives us that power? What is left, then? What method is there for dealing with them? Is there a method by which they do whatever seems right to them, and we are no less in a state that is in line with nature?
But you are unwilling to put up with it, and you are discontented. If you are alone, you call it desolation; if you are with people, you call them crooks and robbers; and you find fault with your own parents and children and brothers and neighbours. When you are alone you ought to call that peace and freedom, and think yourself like the gods; and when you are with a crowd you ought not to call it a mob, or a nuisance, or a burden, but a festival and a gathering — and take it all contentedly.
What is the punishment, then, for those who refuse to accept? To be exactly what they are. Is a man dissatisfied at being alone? Let him be alone. Is a man dissatisfied with his parents? Let him be a bad son, and let him grieve. Is he dissatisfied with his children? Let him be a bad father.
Throw him into prison. What prison? The one he is in already — because he is there against his will, and wherever a man is against his will, that is a prison. So Socrates was not in prison: he was there willingly.
"Must my leg be lamed, then?"
Wretch, are you going to find fault with the universe on account of one poor leg? Will you not gladly surrender it to the whole? Will you not let it go? Will you not hand it over cheerfully to the one who gave it? And will you be annoyed and discontented at the arrangements Zeus made — the ones he settled and put in order, with the Fates standing by and spinning the thread of your birth? Do you not know how small a part of the whole you are? In respect of the body, I mean. As for intelligence, you are not the gods' inferior and not their lesser; the size of an intelligence is not measured by length or height, but by its thoughts.
Will you not choose, then, to put your good in the thing where you are the gods' equal?
"Wretch that I am, to have such a father and mother."
Well — were you allowed to step forward beforehand and make your selection and say, let this man couple with this woman at this moment, so that I may be produced? You were not. Your parents had to exist first, and then you had to be begotten. Of what sort of parents? Of the sort they were. Well then, since they are what they are, is no remedy given to you?
If you did not know what the power of sight was for, you would be unlucky and wretched if you shut your eyes when colours were put in front of them. But you possess greatness of spirit and nobility for every event that can happen, and you do not know you possess them — are you not more unlucky and wretched than that? Things are brought right up to you that match the power you have, and you turn that power away precisely at the moment when you ought to be holding it open and alert.
Why not thank the gods instead, that they have set you above the things they did not put in your power, and made you accountable only for the things that are? For your parents they have left you free of responsibility; the same for your brothers, and your body, and property, and death and life. What have they made you responsible for, then? For the one thing that is in your power: the right use of impressions. Why drag onto yourself the things you are not answerable for? That is simply making trouble for yourself.
Somebody asked how a man might eat in a way that pleases the gods. He answered:
If he can eat justly and contentedly, evenly, moderately and in good order, will that not please the gods as well? And when you have asked for hot water and the slave has not heard you, or has heard and brought it only lukewarm, or is not even to be found in the house — then not to be irritated, not to burst with temper, is that not pleasing to the gods?
"But how is a man to put up with people like that?"
Slave yourself — will you not put up with your own brother, who has Zeus for his ancestor, who is like a son sprung from the same seed and the same descent from above? And if you have been put in some higher position, are you going to make a tyrant of yourself straight away? Will you not remember who you are, and whom you are ruling? That they are your kinsmen, brothers by nature, the offspring of Zeus?
"But I bought them. They did not buy me."
Do you see which way you are looking? Toward the earth, toward the pit, toward these wretched laws of dead men — and not toward the laws of the gods.
Somebody asked him how a man could become convinced that everything he does is under God's eye. He answered:
Do you not think that all things are bound together into one?
"I do," the man replied.
Well, do you not think that earthly things are naturally in agreement and in union with heavenly ones?
"I do."
And how else, if not at God's command, do plants flower when He tells them to flower? When He tells them to put out shoots, do they not shoot? When He tells them to bear fruit, how else do they bear it? When He tells the fruit to ripen, does it not ripen? When He tells them to let the fruit fall, how else do they let it fall? When to drop their leaves, do they not drop them? And when He tells them to fold themselves up and stay quiet and rest, how else do they stay quiet and rest? And how else, as the moon waxes and wanes and the sun draws near and goes away again, do we see such great changes and reversals in the things of the earth?
Now if plants and our bodies are so tied and united to the whole, are our souls not far more so? And if our souls are tied to God and in contact with Him as parts and portions of Him, does God not feel every movement of these parts as a movement of His own, born along with Him?
Consider: you are able to think about the divine administration and about all things divine, and at the same time about human affairs; to be moved by ten thousand things at once in your senses and your understanding; to assent to some, to dissent from others, and about others again to suspend judgment. You hold in your soul so many impressions of so many different things, and, moved by them, you arrive at notions like the ones first impressed on you; you keep hold of numerous arts and the memory of ten thousand things. And is God not able to oversee everything, and to be present with everything, and to receive from everything a certain communication?
The sun can light up so large a part of the whole, and leave so little unlit — only the part the earth's shadow covers. And He who made the sun itself, and keeps it going round, and who is a small part of Him compared with the whole — can He not perceive everything?
"But I cannot take all of this in at once," the man may say.
And who told you that you have power equal to Zeus? All the same, He has set beside every man a guardian, each man's own guardian spirit, and put him in that spirit's charge — a guardian who never sleeps and is never deceived. To what better or more careful guardian could He have entrusted each of us?
So when you have shut the doors and made it dark inside, remember never to say that you are alone. You are not: God is within, and your guardian spirit is within, and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
To this God you ought to swear an oath, just as soldiers swear to Caesar. But they, who are hired for pay, swear to put Caesar's safety above everything. And you, who have received so many and such great favours — will you not swear? Or having sworn, will you not stand by it? And what will you swear? Never to disobey, never to bring charges, never to find fault with anything He has given, and never to do or suffer unwillingly anything that must be. Is this oath like the soldiers'? They swear to put no man above Caesar; here men swear to put themselves above everything.
A man was consulting him about how to persuade his brother to stop being angry with him. Epictetus replied:
Philosophy does not undertake to secure any external thing for a man. If it did, it would be taking on something outside its own province. The carpenter's material is wood; the sculptor's is bronze; and the material of the art of living is each man's own life.
"What about my brother's life, then?"
That belongs to his art. As far as yours goes, it is one of the externals — like a piece of land, like health, like reputation. And philosophy promises none of those. In every circumstance, she says, I will keep the governing part — the mind's command centre — in line with nature. Whose governing part? The one belonging to the man I am in, she says.
"So how is my brother to stop being angry with me?"
Bring him to me and I will tell him. To you I have nothing to say about his anger.
The man consulting him said: "What I want to know is this. Even if my brother is not reconciled with me, how am I to keep myself in a state that is in line with nature?"
Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced all at once — not even a grape or a fig. If you tell me now that you want a fig, I shall answer that it takes time. Let it flower first, then set fruit, then ripen. So the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to perfection suddenly, in a single hour, and you expect to have the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if I tell you that you can.
Do not be surprised that for the other animals everything the body needs is provided — not only food and drink but bedding too — and that they need no shoes, no bedclothes, no clothing, while we need all these extras. They were not made for themselves but for service, and it would not have been fitting to make them so that they needed other things. Just think what it would be for us to have to look after cattle and donkeys as well as ourselves — how they should be clothed and shod, and how they should eat and drink.
Soldiers stand ready for their commander already shod, clothed and armed; it would be a hard business for the tribune to go round shoeing and clothing his thousand men. In the same way nature has made the animals that are meant for service ready and equipped, needing no further care. So one small boy with a stick drives the cattle along.
But as it is, instead of being grateful that we do not have to take the same care over animals as over ourselves, we complain to God about our own case. And yet, in the name of Zeus and the gods, any single one of the things that exist would be enough to make a man see the providence of God — at least a man with modesty and gratitude in him. Never mind the great things: take only this, that milk is produced from grass, and cheese from milk, and wool from hides. Who made these things, or thought them up? Nobody, you say. What amazing shamelessness and stupidity.
Well, let us leave nature's main works aside and look at her side-work. Is there anything less useful than the hair on a man's chin? And has nature not put even this hair to the best possible use? Has she not marked off male from female by it? Does not each man's nature call out from a distance, "I am a man: approach me as such, speak to me as such, look for nothing else — see the signs"? And in women, just as she mixed something softer into the voice, so she left the chin bare.
Not so, you say: the human animal ought to have been left without any marks of distinction, and each of us should have had to announce, "I am a man." But is the sign not beautiful, and fitting, and worthy of respect? How much more beautiful than a cock's comb, how much more becoming than a lion's mane! And so we ought to keep the signs God has given us. We ought not to throw them away, nor to blur the distinctions between the sexes as far as we can manage it.
Are these the only works of providence in us? What words could be enough to praise them and set them out as they deserve? If we had any sense, should we be doing anything else, in company and alone, but singing hymns to the deity and blessing him and telling over his benefits? Should we not sing this hymn to God as we dig and plough and eat? "Great is God, who has given us these tools to work the ground with. Great is God, who has given us hands, and the power of swallowing, and a stomach, and growth we never feel happening, and breathing while we are asleep." This is what we ought to sing on every occasion — and to sing the greatest and most divine hymn of all for his giving us the power to understand these things and to use them in the proper way.
Well then: since most of you have gone blind, ought there not to be somebody to fill this office and sing the hymn to God on everyone's behalf? What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I would do a nightingale's part; if I were a swan, a swan's. But as it is I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work. I do it, and I will not desert this post as long as I am allowed to keep it — and I urge you to join in the same song.
Since reason is the capacity that analyses and perfects everything else, and ought not itself to go unanalysed, what is it to be analysed by? Plainly either by itself or by something else. If by something else, then that other thing is either reason too, or something superior to reason — which is impossible. And if it is reason, then who is to analyse that reason? If that reason does the job for itself, then our reason can do it for itself as well. And if we are going to need something further, the business goes on forever and never ends. So reason is analysed by itself.
Yes — but curing our judgments is more urgent, and things of that sort.
Do you want to hear about those, then? Listen. But if you say to me, "I do not know whether you are arguing truly or falsely," and if I express myself somewhere ambiguously and you say, "Draw the distinction," I shall put up with you no longer. I shall say to you: it was more urgent.
That, I suppose, is why the Stoic teachers put the logical art first — as in measuring out corn we start by examining the measure. If we do not settle first what a peck is and what a balance is, how shall we be able to measure or weigh anything at all?
So in this case, if we have not fully learned and accurately examined the test of everything else, by which everything else is learned, shall we be able to examine or learn anything accurately? How could we?
Yes, but the peck measure is only a bit of wood, and bears no fruit.
But it can measure corn.
Logic bears no fruit either.
We shall see about that. But even if a man granted it, it is enough that logic has the power of distinguishing and examining other things, and, so to speak, of measuring and weighing them. Who says so? Only Chrysippus and Zeno and Cleanthes? Does Antisthenes not say it? And who is it who wrote that the examination of names is the beginning of education? Does Socrates not say it? And of whom does Xenophon write that he began with the examination of names, and what each name meant?
Is this the great and marvellous thing, then — to understand Chrysippus, or to expound him? Who says that?
Then what is the marvellous thing?
To understand the will of nature.
Well then, do you grasp it yourself, by your own power? And what more do you need? If it is true that all men go wrong unwillingly, and you have learned the truth, then you must necessarily be acting rightly.
But in fact I do not grasp the will of nature. So who tells us what it is?
They say Chrysippus does.
I go along, and I enquire what this interpreter of nature says. I begin not to understand what he says. I look for an interpreter of Chrysippus. Well, consider how this is put — just as if it were put in Latin.
And what has the interpreter got to be haughty about? There is nothing that could fairly be charged against even Chrysippus as haughtiness, if he only interprets the will of nature and does not follow it himself — and much more so with his interpreter. For we have no need of Chrysippus for his own sake, but so that we may understand nature. We do not need a diviner for his own sake, but because we think that through him we shall know what is coming and understand the signs the gods give. We do not need the entrails of animals for their own sake, but because signs are given through them. And we do not stare in wonder at the crow or the raven, but at God, who gives signs through them.
So I go to the man who interprets these things, the sacrificer, and I say: inspect the entrails for me, and tell me what signs they give.
The man takes the entrails, opens them, and interprets. Man, he says, you have a will that is by nature free from blocking and free from compulsion. It is written here in the entrails. I will show you this first in the matter of assent. Can any man block you from assenting to the truth? No man can. Can any man force you to accept what is false? No man can. You see that in this matter your will is unblocked, uncompelled, unimpeded.
Well then, in the matter of desire and going after an object, is it any different? And what can overcome pursuit but another pursuit? What can overcome desire and avoidance but another desire and avoidance?
"But if you put the fear of death in front of me, you do compel me."
No: it is not what is put in front of you that compels, but your judgment that it is better to do such-and-such than to die. In that case it was your own judgment that compelled you — will compelled will. If God had made that part of himself which he took from himself and gave to us capable of being blocked or compelled, either by himself or by another, he would not be God, and he would not be taking care of us as he ought.
This, says the diviner, is what I find in the victims: these are the signs given to you. If you choose, you are free. If you choose, you will blame no one and bring charges against no one. Everything at once will be according to your own mind and the mind of God.
It is for the sake of that divination that I go to this diviner, and to the philosopher — not admiring the man for his interpreting, but admiring the things he interprets.
If what the philosophers say is true — that in every man there is one governing principle: in assent, the conviction that a thing is so; in dissent, the conviction that it is not; in suspending judgment, the conviction that it is uncertain; and likewise, in any movement toward a thing, the conviction that it is to the man's advantage; and if it is impossible to think one thing advantageous and want another, or to judge one thing proper and move toward another — then why are we angry with the crowd?
"They are thieves and robbers," you may say.
What do you mean, thieves and robbers? They have gone wrong about good and evil. Ought we to be angry with them, then, or to pity them? Show them their error and you will see how they give it up. If they do not see the error, they have nothing better than the opinion they hold now.
"Ought this robber and this adulterer not to be put to death, then?"
Do not put it that way. Put it like this instead: this man who has gone wrong and been deceived about the most important things of all, and been blinded — not in the power of sight that tells white from black, but in the power that tells good from bad — ought we not to destroy him? Put it that way and you will see how inhuman a thing you are saying, and that it is exactly as if you said, "Ought we not to destroy this blind and deaf man?"
If the greatest harm is being deprived of the greatest things, and the greatest thing in any man is a will that is as it ought to be, and a man is deprived of that — why are you angry with him on top of it? Man, you ought not to be affected against nature by another man's bad things. Pity him instead. Drop this readiness to take offence and to hate, and these phrases the crowd throws about: "these damned, disgusting people." How did you get so wise, all of a sudden? And how did you get so bad-tempered?
Why are we angry, then? Is it because we set such store by the things these men rob us of? Stop admiring your clothes and you will not be angry with the thief. Stop admiring your wife's beauty and you will not be angry with the adulterer. Learn that a thief and an adulterer have no foothold in what is yours, only in what belongs to others and is not in your power. Give these things up and count them as nothing, and who is left for you to be angry with? But so long as you set store by them, be angry with yourself rather than with the thief and the adulterer.
Look at it this way. You have fine clothes; your neighbour has not. You have a window; you want to air them. The thief does not know what a man's good consists in — he thinks it consists in having fine clothes, exactly what you think. Is he not bound to come and take them? When you show a cake to greedy men and then eat it all yourself, do you expect them not to snatch it? Do not provoke them. Do not have a window. Do not air your clothes.
I had an iron lamp myself the other day, standing by my household gods. I heard a noise at the door, ran down, and found the lamp gone. I reflected that the man who took it had done nothing surprising. And so? Tomorrow, I said, you will find an earthenware one — because a man only loses what he has.
I have lost my coat. Yes: the reason is that you had a coat. I have a pain in my head. Have you a pain in your horns? Then why are you upset? We lose only the things we have, and have pains only about the things we possess.
But the tyrant will chain — what? A leg. He will take away — what? A neck. What will he never chain and never take away? The will. This is why the ancients taught us the maxim: know yourself.
So we ought to train ourselves on small things, and go on from them to bigger ones. I have a pain in my head. Do not say "alas!" I have a pain in my ear. Do not say "alas!" I am not saying you are forbidden to groan — only do not groan on the inside. And if your slave is slow bringing the bandage, do not shout and put yourself in a state and say, "Everybody hates me." Who would not hate a man like that?
From now on, trusting these judgments, walk about upright and free — not relying on the size of your body, like an athlete. A man ought not to be unbeatable in the way a donkey is.
Who is the unbeatable man, then? The one whom nothing outside his will can disturb.
Then I go over his circumstances one after another, as I would with an athlete. He has come off victorious in the first bout — well then, what about the second? And what if it is very hot? And what if it is at Olympia? Just so here. Throw money in his way: he will despise it. Well, put a young girl in his way — what then? And what if it is in the dark? What if it is a little reputation? Or abuse? Or praise? Or death? He can beat all of them.
And what if it is in blazing heat? What if it is in the rain? What if he is in a black mood? What if he is asleep? He will win even then. This is my unbeatable athlete.
If a man has some advantage, or thinks he has when he has not, and if he is untrained, he is bound to be puffed up by it. The tyrant, for instance, says: "I am master of everything."
And what can you do for me? Can you give me a desire that nothing can block? How could you? Do you have the unfailing power of avoiding what you want to avoid? Do you have the power of moving toward an object without going wrong? And where did you get such a power? Come — when you are on a ship, do you trust yourself or the helmsman? And in a chariot, whom do you trust but the driver? And how is it in all the other arts? Just the same. So where does this power of yours lie?
"Everyone pays me respect."
Well, I pay respect to my dinner plate: I wash it and wipe it. And for the sake of my oil flask I drive a peg into the wall. Are these things my superiors, then? No — but they supply some of my needs, and that is why I look after them. And do I not look after my donkey? Do I not wash his feet and rub him down?
Do you not know that every man looks after himself, and looks after you exactly as he looks after his donkey? Who looks after you as a man? Show me. Who wants to become like you? Who imitates you, the way men imitate Socrates?
"But I can cut off your head."
You are right. I had forgotten that I must pay you the same regard I pay a fever or an attack of bile — and put up an altar to you, as there is an altar to Fever at Rome.
What is it, then, that disturbs and frightens the crowd? The tyrant and his bodyguards? I should hope not. It is not possible that what is free by nature can be disturbed by anything else, or blocked by anything but itself. It is a man's own judgments that disturb him. When the tyrant says, "I will chain your leg," the man who values his leg says, "Don't — have pity on me." But the man who values his own will says, "If it looks more useful to you, chain it."
"Do you not care?"
I do not care.
"I will show you that I am master."
You cannot. Zeus set me free. Do you suppose he meant to let his own son be enslaved? You are master of my carcass. Take it.
"So when you come near me, you pay me no regard?"
No — I pay regard to myself. And if you want me to say I pay regard to you as well, I tell you that I pay you the same regard I pay my cooking pot.
This is not a twisted kind of self-regard. Every creature is made so as to do everything for its own sake. Even the sun does everything for its own sake — even Zeus himself. But when Zeus chooses to be the Giver of Rain and the Giver of Fruits and the Father of Gods and Men, you see he cannot get these offices and these names unless he is useful to mankind. And in general he has made the nature of the rational creature such that it cannot get any of its own proper interests unless it contributes something to the common interest. In that sense it is not antisocial for a man to do everything for himself. What did you expect — that a man should neglect himself and his own interest? And in that case how could there be one and the same principle in all creatures, the principle of attachment to themselves?
What follows, then? When absurd notions about things outside our will lie underneath our judgments — as though those things were good or bad — we cannot help paying regard to tyrants. Though I could wish men paid regard only to tyrants, and not to their bedchamber servants as well.
How is it that a man becomes wise all at once, the moment Caesar puts him in charge of the imperial chamber pot? How is it that we say straight away, "Felicion spoke very sensibly to me"? I wish he were thrown out of the bedchamber, so that he could look like a fool to you again.
Epaphroditus had a shoemaker whom he sold because he was good for nothing. By some stroke of luck the man was bought by one of Caesar's people and became Caesar's shoemaker. You should have seen the respect Epaphroditus paid him then. "And how is my good Felicion, may I ask?" And if one of us asked what the master was doing, the answer was, "He is consulting Felicion about something." Had he not sold the man as good for nothing? Who made him wise all of a sudden?
That is what it is to value something other than the things that depend on the will.
A man has been raised to a tribuneship. Everyone who meets him offers congratulations: one kisses his eyes, another his neck, the slaves kiss his hands. He goes home and finds the torches lit. He climbs the Capitol and offers sacrifice for the occasion. Now who ever sacrificed for having had good desires? For having acted in line with nature? We thank the gods, in fact, for the things we locate our good in.
Somebody was talking to me today about the priesthood of Augustus. Man, I said, let it alone; you will spend a great deal for nothing.
"But the men who draw up contracts will write my name in them."
Are you going to stand next to everyone who reads them and say, "That is my name written there"? And even if you could be present at all of them now, what will you do when you are dead?
"My name will survive."
Carve it on a stone and it will survive. But come — what memory of you will there be outside Nicopolis?
"But I shall wear a golden crown."
If you want a crown so badly, get a crown of roses and put that on. You will look far more elegant.
Every art and every capacity has certain things it particularly examines. When the capacity is of the same kind as the objects it examines, it necessarily examines itself as well; when it is of a different kind, it cannot. The shoemaker's art, for instance, works on leather, but is itself something entirely distinct from leather, and so it does not examine itself. The grammarian's art works on speech; is the art itself speech? Not at all — and that is why it cannot examine itself.
Now reason: what has nature given it for? For the right use of impressions. And what is reason itself? A system built out of certain impressions. So by its own nature it also has the capacity of examining itself.
And good sense — what does it belong to us to examine with it? Good and evil, and things that are neither. And what is good sense itself? Good. And the want of sense? Evil. Do you see, then, that good sense necessarily examines both itself and its opposite?
This is why the first and chief work of a philosopher is to test impressions, and tell them apart, and let none in untested. Look at coin, where our interests seem to be somewhat involved: see what an art we have invented, and how many ways the assayer uses to test the value of a coin — sight, touch, smell, and finally hearing. He throws the coin down and listens to the ring, and is not satisfied with hearing it ring once; by sheer attention he turns himself into a musician. So where we think it makes a great difference whether we are mistaken or not, there we apply great attention to spotting whatever can deceive us. But over our poor governing part we yawn and doze, and let in every impression without question — because the harm goes unnoticed.
So when you want to know how careless you are about good and evil, and how energetic about things that are neither, look at how you feel about losing your eyesight, and how you feel about being deceived. You will find you are a long way from feeling as you ought about good and evil.
But this is a matter that needs much preparation and much labour and study. Well — did you expect to acquire the greatest of all the arts with a small effort? And yet the chief doctrine of the philosophers is very short. Read Zeno's writings if you want to see. How few words it takes to say that man's end is to follow the gods, and that the nature of the good is the right use of impressions.
But if you say, "What is God? What is an impression? What is particular nature, and what is universal nature?" — then a great many words are needed. And if Epicurus turns up and says the good must be in the body, then again many words are needed, and we have to be taught what the leading thing in us is, the fundamental and substantial thing. As it is not likely that a snail's good lies in its shell, is it likely that a man's good lies in his body?
But you yourself, Epicurus, possess something better than that. What is it in you that deliberates? What is it that examines everything? What is it that forms the judgment about the body itself, that the body is the principal part? And why do you light your lamp and work for us and write so many books? Is it so that we shall not be ignorant of the truth — who we are and what we are in relation to you? So the discussion takes a great many words.
When a man holds the position in life that properly belongs to him, he does not stand about gaping after things outside it. Man, what is it you want to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid in line with nature, if I move toward a thing and away from it as I am naturally formed to do, and likewise in my intentions and my plans and my assent.
Then why do you strut in front of us as though you had swallowed a spit?
"What I have always wanted is that the people who meet me should admire me, and the people following me should exclaim: what a great philosopher."
And who are these people you want to be admired by? Are they not the very people you are in the habit of calling mad? Well then — do you want to be admired by madmen?
Preconceptions are common to all men, and one preconception does not contradict another. Which of us does not take it that the good is useful and worth choosing, and that in all circumstances we ought to follow it and go after it? Which of us does not take it that justice is beautiful and fitting?
So where does the contradiction come in? It comes in fitting the preconceptions to particular cases. When one man says, "He did well, he is a brave man," and another says, "Not at all — he acted like a fool," that is where the quarrels between men begin.
This is the quarrel among the Jews and the Syrians and the Egyptians and the Romans: not whether holiness should be preferred to everything and pursued in every case, but whether eating pork is holy or unholy.
You will find the same quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. Call them up. What do you say, Agamemnon — ought the proper and right thing not to be done?
"Certainly."
And you, Achilles: do you not agree that what is good ought to be done?
"I do, most certainly."
Then fit your preconceptions to the case in front of you. And there the quarrel starts. Agamemnon says, "I ought not to give Chryseis back to her father." Achilles says, "You ought." Plainly one of the two is fitting the preconception of "ought" to the case wrongly. Then Agamemnon says, "Well, if I have to give Chryseis back, it is only right that I take one of your prizes." Achilles answers, "You would take the girl I love?" "Yes — the one you love." "And am I to be the only man who goes without? The only one with no prize at all?" And so the quarrel begins.
What is education, then? Education is learning how to fit our natural preconceptions to particular things in line with nature; and then to distinguish that some things are in our power and others are not. In our power are the will and every act that depends on the will. Not in our power are the body, the parts of the body, property, parents, brothers, children, country — and in general everybody we live among.
So where should we locate the good? What sort of thing shall we fit it to? To the things in our power?
Is health not a good thing, then, and having sound limbs, and life itself? And are children and parents and country not good? Who will put up with you if you deny it?
Well, let us transfer the notion of good over to those things, then. Is it possible for a man to be happy when he suffers loss and does not get the good things? It is not. And can he keep up proper behaviour toward the people around him? He cannot. For I am naturally formed to look after my own interest. If it is in my interest to have an estate, it is also in my interest to take my neighbour's. If it is in my interest to have a coat, it is also in my interest to steal one at the baths. This is where wars come from, and civil disorder, and tyrannies, and conspiracies.
And how shall I still be able to keep up my duty toward Zeus? If I suffer loss and come off badly, then he is taking no care of me. What is he to me if he cannot help me? And what is he to me, further, if he lets me stay in the state I am in? At that point I begin to hate him. Then why do we build temples and set up statues to Zeus, as men do to evil spirits like Fever? How is he the Saviour, and the giver of rain, and the giver of fruits? And in truth, if we locate the nature of the good in things of that kind, all this follows.
So what are we to do? This is the question the true philosopher is in labour with. As things stand I do not see what the good is or what the bad is. Am I not mad? Yes.
But suppose I put the good somewhere among the things that depend on the will. Everyone will laugh at me. Some grey-haired man will come along with a lot of gold rings on his fingers, and shake his head and say: listen, my boy. It is quite right that you should study philosophy; but you ought to have some brains as well. All this you are doing is silly. You learn the syllogism from philosophers — but you know better than any philosopher how to behave.
Man, if I know it, then why are you blaming me? What am I to say to this slave? If I say nothing he will burst. I have to put it like this: forgive me, as you would forgive a man in love. I am not my own master. I am mad.
Even Epicurus sees that we are social by nature; but having once located our good in the husk, he cannot go on to say anything else. On the other side he strongly maintains that we ought not to admire or accept anything cut off from the nature of the good — and he is right to maintain it.
How is it, then, that we feel any misgiving, if we have no natural affection for our children? Why do you advise the wise man not to bring up children? Why are you afraid he may fall into trouble that way? Does he fall into trouble on account of the mouse that lives in his house? What does he care if a little mouse in the house squeaks at him?
But Epicurus knows that once a child is born it is no longer in our power not to love it and care about it. That is why he says that a man with any sense does not go into politics either — he knows what a man in politics has to do. If you mean to behave among men as you would among a swarm of flies, what is stopping you?
And knowing this, Epicurus still dares to say that we should not bring up children. But a sheep does not desert its young, nor does a wolf. And is a man to desert his child? What do you mean — that we should be as stupid as sheep? They do not desert their young. As savage as wolves? Not even wolves desert their young.
Come now: who would take your advice if he saw his child fall on the ground and start crying? For my part I think that even if your own mother and father had been told by an oracle that you would say what you have just said, they would not have thrown you away.
It is circumstances that show what men are. So when a difficulty falls on you, remember that God has matched you, like a wrestling coach, against a rough young opponent.
"What for?" you may say.
So that you may become an Olympic champion. And it is not done without sweat. In my opinion no man has ever had a more useful difficulty than the one you have had, if you choose to use it the way an athlete uses a young opponent.
We are sending a scout to Rome at the moment. But nobody sends a cowardly scout — one who hears a noise and sees a shadow somewhere and comes running back in terror, reporting that the enemy is at the gates. So if you come now and tell us, "Things at Rome are frightful. Death is terrible, exile is terrible, slander is terrible, poverty is terrible — run, my friends, the enemy is close," we shall answer: get out. Prophesy for yourself. Our one mistake was sending a scout like you.
Diogenes was sent out as a scout before you, and brought back a different report. He says that death is no evil, since there is nothing shameful in it. He says that reputation is the noise of madmen. And what did this spy have to say about pain, and pleasure, and poverty? He says that being naked is better than any purple robe, and that sleeping on bare ground is the softest bed there is. And as proof of every claim he makes he offers his own courage, his peace of mind, his freedom, and the healthy, solid look of his body. "There is no enemy near," he says. "All is quiet."
"How so, Diogenes?"
"Look," he answers. "Have I been struck? Have I been wounded? Have I run from anybody?"
That is what a scout ought to be. But you come to us with one thing after another. Go back, and take another look with the fear laid aside.
"So what am I to do?"
What do you do when you get off a ship? Do you carry away the tiller, or the oars? What do you take? What is yours — your bottle and your bag. And now, if you keep in mind what is yours, you will never lay claim to what belongs to somebody else.
The emperor says: "Take off your senator's stripe." Very well: I put on the narrower one. "Take that off too." Very well: I have only my toga. "Take off the toga." See — I am naked now. "But you still make me envious." Then take my poor body too. If I can throw away my body at a man's command, am I still afraid of him?
But a certain person will not leave me his estate. Well — had I forgotten that none of it was ever mine? Why do we call such things ours, then? The way we call a bed at an inn ours. If the innkeeper dies and leaves you the beds, well and good. If he leaves them to someone else, that man will have them, and you will look for another bed. And if you cannot find one, you will sleep on the ground. Only sleep willingly, and snore; and remember that tragedies belong among the rich and among kings and tyrants, and that no poor man has a part in a tragedy except in the chorus.
Kings begin in prosperity — "hang the palace with garlands!" — and then about the third or fourth act they cry out, "O Cithaeron, why did you receive me?" Slave, where are your crowns? Where is your diadem? Your bodyguards are no use to you at all.
So when you go up to one of these men, remember that you are going up to a tragic figure — not to the actor, but to Oedipus himself.
"But such a man is happy: he walks about with a crowd around him." And I place myself among the crowd and walk about with them too.
In sum, remember this: the door is open. Do not be more timid than small children. When a thing does not please them they say, "I won't play any more." So you: when things look to you like that, say, I won't play any more, and be off. But if you stay, do not complain.
If these things are true, and if we are not being silly or acting a part when we say that a man's good is in the will and his evil too, and that everything else has nothing to do with us — why are we still disturbed? Why are we still afraid? The things we have been busy about are in nobody's power, and the things that are in other people's power we do not care about. What sort of trouble have we left?
"Give me instructions."
Why should I give you instructions? Has Zeus not given you instructions? Has he not given you what is your own, free from blocking and hindrance, and what is not your own, subject to blocking and hindrance? What instructions did you bring with you, then, when you came from him? Hold on to what is yours by every means; do not desire what belongs to others. Trustworthiness is your own. Self-respect is your own. Who can take these things from you? Who but yourself will block you from using them?
And what do you do? When you go after what is not your own, you lose what is. With such prompting and such orders from Zeus, what more do you want from me? Am I more powerful than he is? More to be trusted? If you keep to his, do you need any others?
"But he did not give those orders."
Produce your preconceptions. Produce the philosophers' proofs. Produce what you have often heard, and what you have said yourself; produce what you have read and what you have thought over. Then you will see that all of it comes from God.
How long is it right to keep to these instructions from God, and not break up the game? As long as the game is played properly. At the Saturnalia a king is chosen by lot, since it has been the custom to play at this. The king gives orders: you drink, you mix the wine, you sing, you go, you come. I obey, so that the game shall not be broken up because of me. But if he says, "Consider yourself in a bad way," I answer, I do not consider myself so — and who is going to force me to?
Again, we agreed to play Agamemnon and Achilles. The man appointed to play Agamemnon says to me, "Go to Achilles and take Briseis from him." I go. He says, "Come," and I come.
We ought to behave in life as we behave with hypothetical arguments. "Suppose it is night." I suppose it is night. "Well then, is it day?" No, because I granted the hypothesis that it was night. "Suppose you think it is night." Suppose I do. "But also think that it is night." That does not follow from the hypothesis.
So it is in this case too. "Suppose you are unlucky." Well, suppose I am. "Are you unhappy, then?" Yes. "Well, are you troubled by an unfavourable fortune?" Yes. "But think also that you are in misery." That does not follow from the hypothesis — and Another forbids me to think it.
How long, then, must we obey such orders? As long as it pays; and that means, as long as I keep what is fitting and consistent. Some men are sour and bad-tempered, and say, "I cannot dine with this man and have to listen to him telling me every day how he fought in Mysia. I told you, brother, how I climbed the hill — and then the siege started again." Another man says, "I would rather get my dinner and let him talk as much as he likes." And you must weigh these judgments up. Only do nothing in a downcast mood, nor as a man afflicted, nor as one who thinks himself miserable — because nobody forces you into that.
Has somebody made smoke in the room? If it is moderate, I shall stay. If it is too much, I go out. For you must always remember this and hold on to it: the door is open.
"Do not live in Nicopolis," you say to me. I will not live in Nicopolis. "Nor in Athens." I will not live in Athens. "Nor in Rome." I will not live in Rome. "Live on Gyarus." I will live on Gyarus — but living on Gyarus seems like a great deal of smoke to me, and I depart to the place where nobody will block me from living, since that dwelling is open to everyone. And as to the last garment, which is this poor body, nobody has any power over me beyond it.
This was why Demetrius said to Nero: "You threaten me with death, and nature threatens you."
If I fix my admiration on the poor body, I have handed myself over as a slave. If on my little property, the same: I show at once what I can be caught by. When a snake pulls in his head I tell you to strike the part he is guarding — and you may be sure that whatever part you choose to guard is the part your master will attack. Remember that, and whom will you go on flattering, or fearing?
"But I should like to sit where the senators sit."
Do you see that you are hemming yourself in, squeezing yourself?
"How else am I going to get a good view in the amphitheatre?"
Man, do not be a spectator at all, and you will not be squeezed. Why give yourself trouble? Or wait a little, and when the show is over sit down in the seats reserved for senators and sun yourself.
Remember this general truth: it is we who squeeze ourselves and hem ourselves in — that is, our judgments squeeze us and hem us in. What is it to be insulted? Stand by a stone and insult it; what will you get out of it? So if a man listens like a stone, what has the insulter gained? But if the insulter has the weakness of the insulted man as a foothold, then he does accomplish something.
"Strip him." What do you mean, him? Take hold of his coat and strip that off. "I have insulted you." Much good may it do you.
This was Socrates' practice, and it is why he always had the same face. But we would rather practise and study anything at all than the means by which we might be unblocked and free.
"Philosophers talk in paradoxes," you say. And are there no paradoxes in the other arts? What is more paradoxical than puncturing a man's eye so that he may see? If somebody said that to a man who knew nothing of surgery, would he not laugh at him? So where is the wonder if in philosophy too many things that are true look paradoxical to the inexperienced?
While somebody was reading out hypothetical arguments, Epictetus said:
This too is a hypothetical law — that we must accept what follows from the hypothesis. But long before that law comes the law of life: that we must act in line with nature. If we want to observe what is natural in every matter and every circumstance, then plainly in everything we ought to aim at not letting the consequence escape us, and at not admitting the contradictory.
So philosophers train us first in theory, which is easier, and then lead us on to the harder things; because in theory there is nothing pulling us away from following what we are taught, whereas in the business of living there are a great many distractions. A man is ridiculous, then, who says he wants to start with the business of real life, since it is not easy to start with the harder things.
And this is the argument to use on parents who are annoyed at their children studying philosophy. Am I doing wrong, then, father? Do I not know what is suitable and proper for me? If this can neither be learned nor taught, why do you blame me? And if it can be taught, then teach me; and if you cannot, let me learn from the men who say they know how to teach it. What do you suppose — that I fall into evil and miss the good on purpose? I hope not. What is the cause of my going wrong, then? Ignorance. Do you not want me to be rid of my ignorance? Who was ever taught the pilot's art, or music, by anger? Do you suppose I shall learn the art of living by means of your anger?
Only a man who really has that intention is entitled to talk this way. But if a man reads these arguments and attends the philosophers merely to make a display at a dinner party and show that he knows about hypothetical arguments, what other object has he than that some senator sitting beside him should admire him? For that is where the really great opportunities are, and the wealth here at Nicopolis looks like small change there. This is why it is hard for a man to master his impressions where the things that upset his judgment are so large.
I know a man who complained, clutching Epaphroditus by the knees, that he had only a million and a half denarii left. And what did Epaphroditus do? Laugh at him, as we slaves of Epaphroditus did? No — he cried out in astonishment: "Poor man! How did you keep quiet about it? How did you bear it?"
When Epictetus had pulled up the man who was reading the hypothetical arguments, and the teacher who had set the reading was laughing at the reader, Epictetus said to the teacher: "You are laughing at yourself. You did not prepare the young man, and you did not find out whether he was able to follow this material; perhaps you are only using him as a reader."
Well then, said Epictetus: if a man has not the ability to follow a complex argument, do we trust him when he gives praise? Do we trust him when he gives blame? Do we allow that he is able to form a judgment about good or bad? And if such a man blames somebody, does the man care about the blame? And if he praises somebody, is that man puffed up — when in so small a matter as a hypothetical syllogism the man praising him cannot see what follows from the hypothesis?
This, then, is where philosophy begins: a man's perception of the state of his own governing part. When a man knows it is weak, he will not use it on the hardest things. But as it is, men who cannot swallow a mouthful buy whole volumes and try to bolt them down; and so they vomit them up again, or get indigestion, and then come the cramps and the running colds and the fevers. They ought to have considered what they were capable of.
In theory it is easy to convince an ignorant man; in the business of real life nobody offers himself up to be convinced, and we hate the man who has convinced us. But Socrates advised us not to live a life that goes unexamined.
Impressions come to us in four ways. Either things are as they appear; or they are not, and do not appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. And in all four cases hitting the mark is the business of an educated man.
Whatever it is that troubles us, that is what we must apply the remedy to. If the sophisms of Pyrrho and the Academics are what trouble us, we must apply the remedy there. If it is the persuasiveness of impressions, by which some things look good when they are not, then let us look for a remedy for that. If it is habit that troubles us, we must try to find help against habit. And what help is there against habit? The opposite habit.
You hear the ignorant say: "That poor man is dead. His father and mother are overwhelmed with grief. He was cut off before his time, and in a foreign country." Listen to the opposite way of talking. Tear yourself away from these phrases. Set one habit against the other. Against sophistry set reason, and the exercise and drilling of reason. Against persuasive impressions we ought to have plain preconceptions ready to hand, cleaned of every impurity.
When death appears an evil, we ought to have this rule ready: that it is proper to avoid evil things, and that death is a necessary thing. What am I to do, and where shall I escape it? Suppose I am not Sarpedon, son of Zeus, and cannot speak in that noble way: I will go, and I am resolved either to act bravely myself or to give another man the chance of doing so; and if I cannot manage anything myself, I will not grudge another man the doing of something fine.
Suppose acting that way is beyond our power. Is reasoning that way beyond it? Tell me where I can escape death. Find me the country, show me the men I must go to, whom death never visits. Find me a charm against death. If I have none, what do you want me to do? I cannot escape death. Am I not to escape the fear of it either? Am I to die moaning and trembling?
For this is where being thrown comes from: wanting something, and that thing not happening. So if I can change externals to suit my wish, I change them; and if I cannot, I am ready to tear out the eyes of the man in my way. It is not in a man's nature to bear being deprived of the good, or to bear falling into the bad. Then at last, when I can neither change the circumstances nor tear out the eyes of the man in my way, I sit down and groan and abuse whoever I can — Zeus and the rest of the gods. If they take no care of me, what are they to me?
"Yes, but you will be an irreverent man."
And how will I be worse off than I am now?
To sum up: remember this, that unless reverence and your own interest lie in the same place, reverence cannot be kept up in any man. Do these things not seem necessarily true?
Let the followers of Pyrrho and the Academics come and raise their objections. For my own part I have no leisure for these disputes, and I am not able to undertake the defence of common consent. If I had a lawsuit about so much as a bit of land, I would call in somebody else to defend my interests.
What evidence satisfies me, then? The evidence that belongs to the matter in hand. How perception works — whether through the whole body or through a part — I perhaps cannot explain; both opinions perplex me. But that you and I are not the same, I know with perfect certainty.
"How do you know it?"
When I mean to swallow something I never carry it to your mouth, always to my own. When I mean to take bread I never take hold of a broom; I go straight to the bread as to a target. And you yourselves, who do away with the evidence of the senses — do you behave any differently? Which of you, meaning to go into a bath, ever walked into a mill?
What follows, then? Ought we not to hold on with all our strength to this too — maintaining the common view, and fortifying ourselves against the arguments aimed at it? Who denies that we ought? Well, the man who is able should do it, the man who has the leisure. But the man who trembles and is thrown and is broken inside had better spend his time on something else.
What is the cause of assenting to anything? The fact that it appears true. So it is not possible to assent to what appears untrue. Why? Because this is the nature of the understanding: to lean toward the true, to be dissatisfied with the false, and to withhold assent where things are uncertain.
What is the proof? Persuade yourself, if you can, that it is night now. You cannot. Take away your conviction that it is day. You cannot. Persuade yourself, or unpersuade yourself, that the stars are even in number. Impossible.
So when a man assents to something false, be sure he did not mean to assent to it as false. Every soul is deprived of the truth unwillingly, as Plato says: the falsehood looked true to him.
Well — in actions, what have we that corresponds to true and false here? We have the fitting and the unfitting, the profitable and the unprofitable, what suits a person and what does not, and the like. Can a man think a thing useful to him and not choose it? He cannot.
Remember how Medea puts it.
I know the evil that I am about to do, but passion is stronger than my better judgment.
She thought that indulging her passion and taking revenge on her husband was more profitable than sparing her children. It was — to her. But she was deceived. Show her plainly that she is deceived and she will not do it; but so long as you do not show her, what can she follow but the way things look to her? Nothing else.
Why are you angry with the unhappy woman, then, for having gone astray about the most important things and become a viper instead of a human being? Why not rather pity her — as we pity the blind and the lame — since she has been blinded and crippled in the highest of her capacities?
Whoever clearly holds on to this — that a man's measure for every act is how the thing appears to him, whether it appears good or bad; that if it is good he is free from blame, and if bad he suffers the penalty himself, since it is impossible that the man deceived should be one person and the man who suffers another — whoever holds on to that will never be angry with anybody, or vexed with anybody, or insult or blame anybody, or hate or quarrel with anybody.
So do all these great and terrible deeds have their origin in how things appear? Yes: that origin and no other.
The Iliad is nothing but impressions and the use of impressions. It appeared to Paris that he should carry off the wife of Menelaus; it appeared to Helen that she should go with him. Now if it had appeared to Menelaus that being rid of such a wife was a gain, what would have happened? Not only would the Iliad have been lost, but the Odyssey too.
So did such great things hang on so small a matter? But what do you mean by "such great things"? Wars and civil disorder, and the destruction of many men and many cities. And what is so great about that? Is it nothing?
Well — what is so great about the death of many oxen and many sheep, or the burning and wrecking of many nests of swallows and storks? Are those things like these? Very like. Men's bodies are destroyed, and so are the bodies of oxen and sheep. Men's dwellings are burned, and so are storks' nests. What is great or terrible in it? Show me the difference between a man's house and a stork's nest, as far as each is a dwelling — except that a man builds his little house out of beams and tiles and bricks, and the stork builds hers out of sticks and mud.
Are a stork and a man alike, then? What do you say? In body they are very much alike.
Does a man differ from a stork in no respect at all? Do not suppose I say that. There is no difference in the respects I have mentioned. Where is the difference, then? Search and you will find it lies elsewhere. See whether it is not in a man's understanding of what he does; in his fellowship with others; in trustworthiness; in self-respect; in steadiness; in intelligence.
Where is the great good and the great evil in men, then? Where the difference is. If the difference is preserved and stays walled in — if self-respect is not destroyed, nor trustworthiness, nor intelligence — then the man is preserved too. But if any of these is destroyed and stormed like a city, then the man perishes; and this is what the great things consist of.
Paris suffered great damage, you say, when the Greeks invaded and sacked Troy and his brothers died. Not at all: no man is damaged by an act that is not his own. What happened then was only the destruction of storks' nests. The ruin of Paris was when he lost self-respect, trustworthiness, regard for hospitality and decency. And when was Achilles ruined? When Patroclus died? No. It happened when he began to be angry, when he wept over a girl, when he forgot that he was at Troy not to collect mistresses but to fight. These things are the ruin of men; this is being besieged; this is the destruction of cities — when right judgments are destroyed, when they are corrupted.
"But when women are carried off, and children taken captive, and the men killed — are these not evils?"
And how is it that you add these opinions to the facts? Explain that to me too.
"No — you explain how you can say they are not evils."
Let us come to the rules. Produce your preconceptions. It is because this is neglected that we cannot wonder enough at what men do. When we mean to judge weights, we do not judge by guesswork. Where we mean to judge straight from crooked, we do not judge by guesswork. In every case where it is in our interest to know the truth of a matter, not one of us ever does anything by guesswork. But in the things that depend on the first and only cause of doing right or wrong, of happiness or unhappiness, of good luck or bad — there alone we are careless and reckless. There we have nothing like a balance and nothing like a rule: an impression turns up, and straight away I act on it.
Am I to suppose I am better than Achilles or Agamemnon, then — that they, by following their impressions, do and suffer such great evils, while for me the impression is quite good enough?
And what tragedy has any other beginning? The Atreus of Euripides — what is it? An impression. The Oedipus of Sophocles? An impression. The Phoenix? An impression. The Hippolytus? An impression. What sort of a man do you suppose he is, then, who pays no attention to this matter? And what do we call the people who follow every impression? We call them madmen. And are we behaving any differently?
The nature of the good is a certain kind of will; the nature of the bad is a certain kind of will. What are externals, then? Materials for the will, which the will works on and by which it gets its own good or evil. How does it get the good? By not overvaluing the materials. Judgments about the materials, if they are right, make the will good; twisted and distorted judgments make it bad.
God has laid down this law, and says: if you want anything good, get it from yourself. You say: no, I will have it from somebody else. Do not. Get it from yourself.
So when the tyrant threatens me and summons me, I say: whom are you threatening? If he says, "I will put you in chains," I say, you are threatening my hands and my feet. If he says, "I will cut off your head," I say, you are threatening my head. If he says, "I will throw you into prison," I say, you are threatening the whole of this poor body. And if he threatens exile, I say the same.
Is he not threatening you at all, then? If I feel that none of these things concerns me, he is not threatening me at all. If I fear any of them, then it is me he is threatening. Whom do I fear, then? The master of what? The master of things in my own power? There is no such master. Do I fear the master of things not in my power? And what are they to me?
"So do you philosophers teach us to despise kings?"
I hope not. Which of us teaches you to claim against them the power over things they actually possess? Take my poor body, take my property, take my reputation, take the people around me. If I advise anybody to claim these things, let him accuse me and welcome.
"Yes, but I intend to command your judgments as well."
And who gave you that power? How are you going to conquer another man's judgment? "By putting terror on it," he says. "That will conquer it." Do you not know that a judgment is conquered by itself and not by anything else? Nothing can conquer the will except the will itself.
This is why the law of God is the most powerful and the most just: let the stronger always prevail over the weaker. Ten are stronger than one. For what? For chaining, for killing, for dragging a man where they please, for taking away what he has. So the ten conquer the one in the thing they are stronger in. And where are the ten weaker? Where the one has right judgments and they have not. Can the ten conquer in that? How could they? If we were put in the scales, must not the heavier pull its own scale down?
"How strange, then, that Socrates should have been treated so by the Athenians."
Slave, why do you say Socrates? Say the thing as it is: how strange that the poor body of Socrates should have been seized and dragged off to prison by stronger men; that somebody should have given hemlock to the poor body of Socrates, and that it should breathe its life out. Do these things seem strange? Do they seem unjust? Do you blame God for them? Had Socrates nothing to set against them? Where did the nature of good lie, for him? Whom shall we listen to, you or him? And what does Socrates say? Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot harm me. And further: if it so pleases God, so let it be.
Show me the man with the inferior principles overpowering the man whose principles are superior. You will never show it, or come anywhere near showing it. This is the law of nature and of God: the superior always overpowers the inferior. In what? In the thing it is superior in. One body is stronger than another. Many are stronger than one. A thief is stronger than a man who is not a thief. That is why I lost my lamp too: the thief was better than me at staying awake. But he bought the lamp at a price — for a lamp he became a thief, a man who cannot be trusted, a wild animal. It looked like a good bargain to him. Very well.
But suppose a man has taken hold of my cloak and is dragging me to the marketplace, and the others start shouting: "Philosopher, what good have your judgments done you? Look, you are being dragged to prison, you are going to have your head cut off."
And what introduction to philosophy could I have put together so that if a stronger man took hold of my cloak I should not be dragged off, and if ten men laid hold of me and threw me into prison I should not be thrown in? Have I learned nothing else, then? I have learned to see that everything which happens, if it is outside my will, is nothing to me. Have you not gained by that? Then why do you look for advantage anywhere but where you have learned advantage lies?
And then, sitting in prison, I say: the man who shouts like that neither hears what words mean nor understands what is said, and does not care in the least to know what philosophers say or what they do. Leave him alone.
But now he says to the prisoner: come out of your prison. If you have no further need of me in prison, I come out. If you should need me there again, I will go back in.
"How long will you go on like this?"
As long as reason requires me to stay with the body. When reason does not require it, take the body away, and goodbye to you. Only we must not do it thoughtlessly, or weakly, or on some slight excuse — because on the other side, God does not want it done, and He has need of a world like this and inhabitants like these in it. But if He sounds the retreat, as He did to Socrates, we must obey the one who gives the signal, as we would a general.
Well then — ought we to say such things to the crowd? Why should we? Is it not enough for a man to be convinced himself? When children come clapping their hands and shouting, "Today is the good Saturnalia," do we say to them, "The Saturnalia are not good"? Not at all: we clap along with them. So you too, when you cannot make a man change his mind, be sure that he is a child, and clap along with him; and if you would rather not do that, keep quiet.
A man must keep this in mind, and when he is called to any such difficulty he should know that the moment has come to show whether he has been taught anything. A man who has come into a difficulty is like a young man fresh from school who has practised resolving syllogisms: if somebody sets him an easy one he says, set me a properly complicated syllogism instead, so that I can exercise myself. Even athletes are dissatisfied with slight young opponents — "he cannot lift me." There is a young man of noble disposition.
But you do not behave so. When the moment of trial comes, one of you has to weep and say, "I wish I had learned more." More of what? If you did not learn these things in order to show them in practice, why did you learn them?
I think there is somebody among you sitting here who is in labour like a woman, saying to himself: I only wish a difficulty would come to me like the one that has come to this man. Am I to waste my life in a corner when I might be crowned at Olympia? When will anyone announce such a contest for me? That is how every one of you ought to be disposed.
Even among Caesar's gladiators there are men who complain bitterly that they are not brought forward and matched, and who pray to God and go to their trainers begging to be allowed to fight. And will none of you show himself such a man? I would gladly take a voyage to Rome to see what my athlete is doing, and how he is studying his subject.
"I do not want a subject of this kind," he says.
Why — is it in your power to take whatever subject you choose? You have been given the body you have, the parents you have, the brothers, the country, the position in your country. And then you come to me and say, change my subject. Have you not the abilities to manage the subject you were given? What you ought to say is: it is your business to set the subject, and mine to work at it well. But you do not say that. You say: do not set me that mode of argument, set me this one; do not press that objection on me, press this one.
There will come a time, perhaps, when tragic actors think that they are nothing but masks and high boots and a long robe. Man, these things are your material and your subject. Say something, so that we can tell whether you are a tragic actor or a clown — because everything else you both have in common. If somebody takes away the tragic actor's boots and his mask and brings him on stage as a mere shadow of himself, is the tragic actor lost, or is he still there? If he has a voice, he is still there.
Here is another example. "Take the governorship of a province." I take it, and having taken it, I show how a man who has been taught behaves. "Now put off the senator's stripe, put on rags, and come forward in that character." And what of it? Have I lost the power of showing a good voice?
How do you appear now, then? As a witness summoned by God. "Come forward, you, and give evidence for me — you are worthy to be brought forward by me as a witness. Is anything outside the will good or bad? Do I harm any man? Have I made each man's interest depend on anybody but himself? What evidence do you give for God?"
I am in a wretched state, Lord, and I am unlucky. Nobody cares about me, nobody gives me anything, everybody blames me, everybody speaks ill of me.
Is this the evidence you mean to give? Will you disgrace the summons of the one who did you such honour, and thought you worthy to be called to give such testimony?
But suppose the man with the power has pronounced: "I judge you to be irreverent and unholy." What has happened to you? I have been judged irreverent and unholy. Nothing else? Nothing else.
Now if the same man had passed judgment on a hypothetical syllogism and declared, "the conclusion that if it is day it is light — I pronounce that false," what has happened to the syllogism? Who is being judged here? Who has been condemned — the syllogism, or the man who was deceived about it?
Does the man who has power to make a declaration about you know what is holy and unholy? Has he studied it? Has he learned it? Where? From whom? A musician pays no attention to a man who declares that the lowest string of the lyre is the highest, and neither does a geometer if the man declares that the lines from the centre of a circle to the circumference are unequal. And is a man who has really been taught to pay attention to an untaught man passing judgment on what is holy and unholy, just and unjust? What a signal wrong the educated do. Was this what they learned here?
Will you not leave these little arguments about such matters to other people — to lazy fellows, so that they can sit in a corner and collect their miserable fees, or grumble that nobody gives them anything — and come forward and use what you have learned? It is not little arguments that are wanted now: the writings of the Stoics are full of them. What is wanted, then? A man who will apply them; a man who by his acts will bear witness to his words. Take on that character, I beg you, so that we need no longer use the ancients as our examples in the schools, but may have an example of our own.
And whose business is it to think about these matters? The man who has leisure — for man is a creature that loves contemplation. But it is shameful to contemplate them the way runaway slaves do. We should sit as we sit in a theatre, undistracted, listening now to the tragic actor and now to the lute player, and not behave as slaves do. The slave takes his place and praises the actor, and at the same time looks over his shoulder; and then if somebody calls out his master's name he is frightened and thrown at once. It is shameful for philosophers to contemplate the works of nature like that.
For what is a master? A man is not another man's master. Death is, and life, and pleasure and pain. Bring Caesar to me without these things and you will see how steady I am. But when he comes with them, thundering and lightening, and I am afraid of them — what am I doing then but recognising my master, like the runaway slave? So long as I have any respite from these terrors I stand as the runaway slave stands in the theatre: I bathe, I drink, I sing — and I do all of it in terror and unease. But if I once free myself from my masters — that is, from the things that make masters formidable — what trouble have I left? What master have I now?
Well then: ought we to announce all this to everybody? No. We ought to accommodate ourselves to the untaught and say: this man is recommending to me what he thinks good for himself. I excuse him.
Socrates excused the jailer too, the man who had charge of him in prison and wept when Socrates was about to drink the poison. How generously he grieves for us, he said. Does he say to the jailer that this is why we sent the women away? No: he says that to his friends, who were able to take it in. The jailer he treats as a child.
When you are going in to see some great man, remember that somebody else is watching what happens from above, and that it is him you ought to please rather than the other. So the one who watches from above asks you:
"In the schools, what did you use to say about exile and chains and death and disgrace?"
I used to say they are indifferent — neither good nor bad.
"And what do you say about them now? Have they changed at all?"
No.
"Have you changed, then?"
No.
"Tell me, then: what things are indifferent?"
The things outside the will.
"And tell me what follows from that."
That the things outside the will are nothing to me.
"Tell me about the good, too. What was your view?"
A will such as it ought to be, and the right use of impressions.
"And the end — what is it?"
To follow you.
"Do you still say this now?"
I say the same now.
Then go in to the great man boldly, remembering these things, and you will see what a young man who has studied them looks like among men who have not. For my part I imagine you will be thinking something like this: why do we make such great and elaborate preparations for nothing? Is this the thing men call power? Is this the antechamber? These the chamberlains? These the armed guards? Was it for this that I listened to so many lectures? All this is nothing — and I had been preparing myself as though for something great.
The philosophers' view may strike some people as a paradox, but let us examine as best we can whether it is true that everything can be done both cautiously and confidently. Caution looks in a way like the opposite of confidence, and opposites are never consistent with each other.
What seems to many a paradox in this matter is, I think, of this kind. If we asserted that we ought to use caution and confidence about the same things, men could fairly accuse us of joining what cannot be joined. But as it is, where is the difficulty in what has been said? If it is true — as has often been said and often proved — that the nature of good lies in the use of impressions, and the nature of evil likewise, and that things outside our will admit of neither, what paradox are the philosophers asserting when they say that where things do not depend on the will you should use confidence, and where they do depend on the will you should use caution?
If the bad consists in a bad exercise of the will, then caution ought to be used only where things depend on the will. And if things outside the will and not in our power are nothing to us, then toward those we must use confidence. So we shall be both cautious and confident — indeed confident because of our caution. By being cautious about things that are really bad, we shall end up confident about the things that are not.
We behave like deer bolting in fright from the hunters' feathers. Where do they turn, and where do they look for safety? They run into the nets — and so they die, having confused what they ought to fear with what they ought not.
We do exactly the same. What do we fear? Things outside the will. What do we treat with confidence, as though there were no danger in it? Things that depend on the will. To be deceived, to act rashly or shamelessly, to chase after something out of low desire — none of that concerns us at all, so long as we hit the mark in things outside our will. But where there is death, or exile, or pain, or disgrace, there we try to run, there we are struck with terror.
So, as one would expect of men who go wrong in the greatest matters, we turn our natural confidence into recklessness, desperation, rashness, shamelessness; and we turn our natural caution and self-respect into cowardice and meanness, full of fear and confusion. If a man moved his caution over to the will and the acts of the will, then simply by willing to be careful he would also have the power of avoiding what he chose. But if he moves it to things not in his power and not in his will, and tries to avoid what is in other people's power, then he must fear, he must be unsteady, he must be thrown. For death and pain are not the terrible things; the fear of death and pain is.
This is why we approve the poet who said:
Death is not the evil, but a shameful death.
Confidence, then, ought to be used against death, and caution against the fear of death. As it is, we do the reverse: against death we use flight, and toward our judgment about it we use carelessness, rashness and indifference.
Socrates rightly used to call these things tragic masks. Masks look frightening and terrible to children because they have no experience of them, and we are affected by events for exactly the same reason. What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of knowledge. Once a child knows these things, he is no worse off than we are.
What is death? A tragic mask. Turn it round and look at it. See — it does not bite. The poor body has to be separated from the spirit, now or later, as it was separated before. So why are you upset if it happens now? If it does not happen now, it will happen afterwards. Why? So that the cycle of the universe may be completed, since it needs the present, and the future, and the past.
What is pain? A mask. Turn it round and look. The poor flesh is moved roughly, and then smoothly again. If that does not satisfy you, the door is open; if it does, put up with it. The door ought to be open on every occasion, and then we have no trouble.
What is the fruit of these judgments, then? Exactly what ought to be the finest and most fitting fruit for men who are really educated: release from being thrown about, release from fear, freedom.
On these matters we must not believe the crowd, who say only free men ought to be educated; we should rather believe the philosophers, who say only the educated are free.
"How is that?"
Like this. Is freedom anything but the power of living as we choose? "Nothing else." Then tell me, men: do you want to live in error? "We do not." So nobody who lives in error is free. Do you want to live in fear? In grief? Thrown about? "By no means." Then nobody who is in fear or grief or turmoil is free; and whoever is delivered from griefs and fears and turmoil is at the same moment delivered from slavery.
So how can we go on believing you, most excellent lawgivers, when you say, "We allow only free men to be educated"? For the philosophers say: we allow nobody to be free except the educated — that is, God does not allow it.
"So when a man has turned his own slave round in front of the praetor, has he done nothing?"
He has done something.
"What?"
He has turned his own slave round in front of the praetor.
"Nothing more?"
Yes — he is also liable to pay the five per cent tax on him.
"Well then, has the man who went through that ceremony not become free?"
No more than he has become free of being thrown about. You, who are able to turn other men round and free them — have you no master? Is money not your master, or a girl, or a boy, or some tyrant, or some friend of a tyrant? Why do you tremble, then, when you go off to face a trial of that kind?
This is why I say so often: study and keep ready the principles by which you may settle what things you ought to be confident about and what things you ought to be cautious about — brave about what does not depend on your will, careful about what does.
"But have I not read to you? Do you not know what I have been doing?"
In what? In your little essays. Show me how you stand with regard to desire and avoidance. Show me that you do not fail to get what you want and do not fall into what you would avoid. As for those long, laboured sentences, you will take them and rub them out.
"What then — did Socrates not write? And who wrote so much?"
But how? Since he could not always have somebody at hand to argue against his principles, or to be argued against in turn, he used to argue with himself and examine himself, and he was always working through some subject in a practical way. These are the things a philosopher writes. Little essays and the method I am talking about he leaves to others — to the stupid, or to those happy men who are free from disturbance and have time on their hands, or to men too foolish to reckon consequences.
And are you now, when the opportunity invites, going to go off and display what you have, and recite it, and make an idle show, and say, "See what dialogues I can make"? Do not do it, man. Say instead: see how I am not disappointed of what I want. See how I do not fall into what I would avoid. Set death in front of me and you will see. Set pain in front of me, and prison, and disgrace, and a sentence.
That is the proper display for a young man who has come out of the schools. Leave the rest to others; let nobody ever hear a word from you about it; and if anyone praises you for it, do not accept it — think yourself nobody and think you know nothing. Show only that you know this one thing: how never to be disappointed of your desire and never to fall into what you would avoid.
Let other men labour at court cases and problems and syllogisms. You labour at thinking about death, chains, the rack, exile — and do it all with confidence, relying on the one who called you to these sufferings, who judged you worthy of the post where, being stationed, you will show what the rational governing power can do when it takes its stand against forces outside our will.
And then this paradox will no longer look impossible or paradoxical: that a man ought to be cautious and courageous at once — courageous toward things that do not depend on the will, and cautious in the things that are within its power.
Consider, you who are going into court, what it is you want to keep hold of and what you want to succeed in. If you want to keep a will that is in line with nature, you have complete security, complete ease, no troubles at all. If you want to keep what is in your own power and is naturally free, and you are content with that, what else is there to worry about? Who is master of such things? Who can take them away? If you choose to be self-respecting and trustworthy, who will not allow it? If you choose not to be restrained or compelled, who is going to force you to desire what you think you should not desire, or to avoid what you do not think fit to avoid?
But what do you say? The judge will decide something against you that looks frightening. But how can he make you suffer in trying to avoid it as well? So when the pursuit of things and the avoiding of them is in your power, what else is there to worry about? Let this be your opening, your statement of the case, your proof, your victory, your closing speech, and your applause.
This is why Socrates said to the man who was reminding him to prepare for his trial: "Do you not think I have been preparing for it all my life?"
With what kind of preparation?
"I have kept hold of what was in my own power."
And how was that?
"I have never done anything unjust, in private life or in public."
But if you want to hold on to externals as well — your poor body, your little property, your little reputation — then I advise you to start making every possible preparation this minute, and then to study both the character of your judge and the character of your opponent. If you have to clasp his knees, clasp his knees; if you have to weep, weep; if you have to groan, groan. When you have made what is your own subject to externals, then be a slave and stop resisting. Do not choose to be a slave one moment and not the next; be one thing or the other with your whole mind — free or a slave, educated or uneducated, a well-bred fighting cock or a cheap one. Either take the beating until you die, or give in at once; do not let it happen that you take a great many blows and then give in anyway.
But if that is shameful, then settle the question now. Where is the nature of good and evil? Where truth is. Where truth is and where nature is, there is caution; where truth is, there is courage.
What do you think? If Socrates had wanted to preserve externals, would he have come forward and said, "Anytus and Meletus can certainly kill me, but they cannot harm me"? Was he such a fool that he could not see this road leads somewhere other than to the preservation of life and property? Why does he take no account of his opponents, and even provoke them?
Just as my friend Heraclitus did. He had a small suit at Rhodes about a piece of land, and when he had proved to the judges that his case was just, he said in his closing speech: "I shall not beg you, and I do not care what verdict you give — and it is you who are on trial rather than I." And that was the end of that.
What need was there for it? Simply do not beg. But do not say "I do not beg" either, unless there is a proper occasion for deliberately provoking the judges, as there was with Socrates. And you — if you are preparing a closing speech like that, why are you waiting? Why do you obey the summons to stand trial at all? If you want to be crucified, wait and the cross will come. But if you choose to submit and plead your case as well as you can, then you must do what is consistent with that aim — provided you keep hold of what is your own.
For the same reason it is ridiculous to say, "Suggest something to me."
What should I suggest? "Well, shape my mind so that it can adapt to any event." That is exactly as if a man who could not read said, "Tell me what to write when a name is put to me." If I tell him to write Dion, and then somebody comes along and puts to him not Dion but Theon, what will happen? What will he write? But if you have practised writing, you are ready to write whatever is called for. If you have not, what can I suggest now? If the circumstances call for something else, what will you say, or what will you do?
Remember this general rule, then, and you will need no suggestions. But if you stand gaping after externals, you must of necessity wander up and down at your master's will. And who is the master? Whoever has power over the things you are trying to get or trying to avoid.
Diogenes answered a man who asked him for a letter of recommendation very well. "That you are a man," he said, "he will know as soon as he sees you. Whether you are good or bad he will know if he has the experience to tell the good from the bad; and if he has not, he will never know it, though I write to him ten thousand times."
It is exactly as if a silver coin asked to be recommended to somebody for testing. If the man is skilled at testing silver, he will know what you are — you will recommend yourself.
So in life too we ought to have a skill of the same sort as with coin, so that a man can say, as the assayer of silver says: bring me any coin you like and I will test it. With syllogisms I could say: bring me any man you please and I will pick out for you the man who knows how to resolve syllogisms from the man who does not. Why? Because I know how to resolve syllogisms myself. I have the very power a man must have if he is to identify the men who have it.
But in life, how do I behave? At one moment I call a thing good, and at the next I call it bad. What is the reason? The opposite of what holds with syllogisms: ignorance and inexperience.
Epictetus was saying that a man is made for trustworthiness, and that whoever undermines trustworthiness undermines the very thing that makes a man a man, when in came one of those who pass for men of letters — a man who had once been caught in adultery in the city. Epictetus went on:
If we lay aside the trustworthiness we were made for, and start scheming after our neighbour's wife, what are we doing? What but pulling down and destroying? Destroying whom? The man who can be trusted, the man with self-respect, the man who keeps what is holy. Is that all? Are we not also pulling down neighbourliness, and friendship, and the community? And where does that put us?
How am I to regard you, man? As a neighbour? As a friend? What sort of friend? As a fellow citizen? What am I to trust you in?
If you were a pot so worthless that nobody could use you, you would be thrown out on the dung heap and no one would pick you up. And if, being a man, you cannot fill any place that suits a man, what are we to do with you? Suppose you cannot hold the place of a friend: can you hold the place of a slave? And who will trust you? So should you not be content to be thrown out on some dung heap yourself, as a useless pot, a piece of dung?
And then will you say, "Nobody cares about me, a man of letters"? No, they do not — because you are bad and useless. It is exactly as if the wasps complained that nobody cares about them, that everyone runs from them, and that a man will strike one down if he can. You have a sting of that kind: whoever you wound with it, you throw into trouble and pain. What would you have us do with you? There is nowhere to put you.
"What of it? Are women not common property by nature?"
I say so too. A suckling pig at a dinner is common property to all the guests. But once the portions have been handed out, go and snatch up the portion of the man next to you, if you think that is right — or steal it slyly, or slide your hand over and get hold of it, and if you cannot tear off a piece of the meat, then grease your fingers and lick them. A fine companion over the wine you are, a real Socratic guest.
"Well, is the theatre not common property to the citizens?"
Then when they have taken their seats, go and throw one of them out, if you think that is proper. Women are common by nature in just this way. When the lawgiver, like the host at a feast, has distributed them, will you not look for your own portion instead of pilfering and pawing what belongs to somebody else?
"But I am a man of letters, and I understand Archedemus."
Then understand Archedemus, and be an adulterer, and a man nobody can trust; and instead of a man, be a wolf or an ape. What difference is there?
The materials themselves are indifferent; the use of them is not. So how is a man to keep his firmness and his peace of mind, and at the same time be careful, and neither reckless nor slack? By copying men who play at dice. The counters are indifferent, the dice are indifferent. How do I know what the throw will be? But to use the throw carefully and skilfully — that is my business.
So in life too the chief business is this: distinguish things and separate them out, and say: externals are not in my power; the will is in my power. Where am I to look for good and bad? Inside, in what is my own. And in what does not belong to you, never use the words good or bad, or profit or loss, or anything of the kind.
What follows? Should we handle such things carelessly? Not at all: that is bad for the will, and so against nature. We should act carefully, because the use is not indifferent; and we should also act firmly and undisturbed, because the material is indifferent. Where the material is not indifferent, nobody can block me or compel me. Where I can be blocked and compelled, getting the thing is not in my power, and is neither good nor bad; but the use is good or bad, and the use is in my power.
It is difficult to mix these two things together — the carefulness of a man who is engaged with the material, and the steadiness of a man who does not care about it. Difficult, but not impossible; and if it is impossible, then happiness is impossible.
We should do as we do on a voyage. What can I do? I can choose the master of the ship, the crew, the day, the moment. Then a storm comes. What more is there for me to care about? My part is done. The business belongs to somebody else — the master.
But the ship is going down. What am I to do then? The only thing I can: not drown full of fear, not screaming, not blaming God, but knowing that what has come into being must also perish. I am not immortal. I am a man, a part of the whole, as an hour is part of a day. I must arrive like the hour and pass like the hour. So what does it matter to me how I pass — whether by suffocation or by fever? I have to go by some such means.
You will see the same thing in men who are good at ball. Nobody cares about the ball as being good or bad; they care about throwing and catching. That is where the skill lies, and the art, the speed, the judgment — so that I may not be able to catch it even if I spread out my coat, while another man catches it when I throw. But if we take the ball and throw it in fear and agitation, what sort of game is that? How is a man to keep steady, and how is he to see the pattern of the play? One will say "throw" and another "do not throw", and a third "you have already thrown once". That is quarrelling, not play.
Socrates knew how to play ball. How? By joking in the court where he was tried. "Tell me, Anytus," he says, "how do you say I do not believe in God? Who do you think the spirits are? Are they not sons of gods, or a mixture of gods and men?" And when Anytus admitted it, Socrates said, "Then who do you think can believe that there are mules and no donkeys?" He said it as though he were playing ball.
And what was the ball in that game? Life, chains, exile, a draught of poison, being taken from his wife, leaving his children orphans. Those were the things he was playing with — and he still played, and threw the ball skilfully.
So we should behave. We must bring all the care of the players and show the same indifference about the ball. We ought by all means to apply our art to some external material — not valuing the material, but showing our art in whatever it happens to be. The weaver does not make the wool; he practises his art on the wool he is given. Somebody else gives you food and property, and is able to take them away again, and your poor body with them. So when you have been given the material, work on it.
Then if you come out of the trial having suffered nothing, everyone who meets you will congratulate you on your escape. But the man who knows how to look at such things, if he sees you have behaved properly, will praise you and be glad; and if he finds you owe your escape to behaving badly, he will do the opposite. Where there is reason to rejoice, there is reason to congratulate.
How is it said, then, that some external things are according to nature and others contrary to it? It is said as it would be said if we were cut off from society. To a foot I shall say that it is according to nature for it to be clean; but if you take it as a foot, and not as something detached, it will be fitting for it to step into mud and tread on thorns, and sometimes to be cut off for the good of the whole body — or else it is not a foot at all.
We ought to think about ourselves in some such way. What are you? A man. If you consider yourself as detached from other men, it is according to nature to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you consider yourself as a man and a part of a certain whole, then for the sake of that whole it is fitting that at one time you should be ill, at another take a voyage and run into danger, at another be in want, and in some cases die before your time.
Why are you troubled, then? Do you not know that as a foot is no longer a foot once it is detached from the body, so you are no longer a man once you are separated from other men? For what is a man? A part of a state — first of the state that is made up of gods and men, and then of the one we call next to it, which is a small copy of the universal one.
"What — must I be brought to trial? Must this man have a fever, and that man go to sea, and another die, and another be condemned?"
Yes. In such a body, in such a universe of things, among so many living together, it is impossible that such things should not happen, some to one and some to another. Your duty, since you have come here, is to say what you ought and to arrange these matters as is fitting.
Then somebody says: "I shall charge you with doing me wrong." Much good may it do you. I have done my part; whether you have done yours, you must see to. And there is some danger there too — that it may escape your notice.
A hypothetical proposition is indifferent; the judgment about it is not — that is either knowledge or opinion or error. In the same way life is indifferent, and the use of it is not.
So when somebody tells you that these things too are indifferent, do not become slack; and when somebody urges you to be careful about them, do not become abject and struck with admiration for material things.
It is good for you to know your own preparation and your own strength, so that in matters where you have not been prepared you can keep quiet and not be annoyed if others have the advantage of you. In syllogisms you will claim the advantage over them yourself; and if they are annoyed at that you will console them by saying, I have learned this and you have not. In the same way, wherever some practice is needed, do not go looking for what that practice brings; give way there to the men who have had it, and be content yourself with steadiness of mind.
"Go and pay your respects to so-and-so."
And how am I to do it?
Not meanly.
"But I was shut out. I never learned to get in through the window; and when I found the door shut I had either to come away or go in by the window."
Still, speak to him.
"In what way?"
Not meanly.
But suppose you did not get what you wanted. Was that your business, or his? Why do you claim what belongs to somebody else? Always remember what is your own and what belongs to another, and you will not be disturbed.
So Chrysippus put it well: "So long as what is coming is uncertain, I always hold to the things that are better suited to getting what is according to nature; for God himself gave me the power of making that choice. But if I knew it was fated for me to be ill, I would move toward the illness." The foot too, if it had understanding, would move to step into the mud.
Why are the ears of corn produced? Is it not so that they may ripen and dry? And do they not dry so that they may be reaped? They are not cut off from their fellowship with everything else. If they had feeling, then, ought they to wish never to be reaped? But never being reaped is a curse on ears of corn. And so we must understand that with men too it is a curse not to die — just as it is a curse not to ripen and not to be reaped.
But since we have to be reaped, and know that we are being reaped, we are annoyed about it; because we neither know what we are, nor have we studied what belongs to a man, as men who study horses know what belongs to horses.
Chrysantas, when he was on the point of striking his enemy, checked himself on hearing the trumpet sound the retreat: it seemed better to him to obey the general's order than to follow his own impulse. But not one of us is willing to obey readily, even when necessity summons; we suffer what we suffer weeping and groaning, and we call it "circumstances".
What kind of circumstances, man? If you give the name of circumstances to the things around you, then everything is circumstances. But if you mean hardships by the word, what hardship is there in the dying of something that came into being? And the thing that does the destroying is a sword, or a wheel, or the sea, or a roof tile, or a tyrant. Why do you mind which road you take down to Hades? They are all the same length. And if you will listen to the truth, the road the tyrant sends you by is shorter. No tyrant ever took six months to kill a man; a fever often takes a year over it. All this is only sound, and the noise of empty names.
"I am in danger of my life from Caesar."
And am I not in danger, living in Nicopolis where there are so many earthquakes? And when you cross the Adriatic, what do you risk? Is it not your life?
"But I am in danger about opinion too."
Your own? How? Who can force you to hold an opinion you do not choose to hold? Somebody else's, then? And what danger is it to you if other men hold false opinions?
"But I am in danger of being exiled."
What is it to be exiled? To be somewhere other than Rome.
"Yes — and what if they send me to Gyara?"
If it suits you, you will go there. And if it does not, you can go somewhere else instead of Gyara — where the man who sends you to Gyara will also go, whether he likes it or not.
Why do you go up to Rome, then, as though it were something great? It is not worth all this preparation, that a well-born young man should say afterwards, "It was not worth listening to so much, and writing so much, and sitting so long beside an old man who is not worth much."
Only remember the division by which what is yours is separated from what is not. Never claim anything that belongs to others. A tribunal and a prison are each a place, one high and one low; but the will can be kept the same in both, if you choose to keep it the same. And we shall be imitators of Socrates when we are able to write hymns in prison.
But in the state we are in now, consider whether we could bear to have somebody in prison say to us: would you like me to read you some hymns? "Why are you bothering me? Do you not know the troubles I am in? Can I listen to hymns in circumstances like these?" What circumstances? "I am going to die." And are other men going to be immortal?
Out of an unreasonable regard for divination, many of us leave many duties undone. What more can the diviner see than death, or danger, or disease, or things of that general kind? So if I have to expose myself to danger for a friend, and if it is my duty even to die for him, what need have I of divination?
Have I not a diviner inside me, who has told me the nature of good and evil and explained the signs of both? What need have I to consult the entrails of victims or the flight of birds? And why do I submit when he says, "It is in your interest"? Does he know what is in my interest? Does he know what good is? Has he learned the signs of good and evil as he learned the signs in the entrails? If he knows those signs, then he knows the signs of the beautiful and the ugly too, and of the just and the unjust.
Tell me, man, what is being signified for me — life or death, poverty or wealth? But whether these things are in my interest or not, I do not intend to ask you. Why do you not give your opinion on points of grammar? And why do you give it here, on the very things we are all in error about and quarrelling with one another over?
So the woman who meant to send a month's provisions by ship to Gratilla in her exile gave a good answer to the man who told her Domitian would only confiscate them. "I would rather," she said, "that Domitian confiscated it all than that I did not send it."
What is it that makes us resort to divination so often, then? Cowardice — the dread of what is coming. That is why we flatter the diviners. Please, master, shall I inherit my father's property? "Let us see; let us sacrifice about it." Yes, master, as fortune decides. And when he has said, "You will inherit," we thank him as though we had the inheritance from him. And the result is that they play with us.
What should we do, then? We ought to come to divination without desire and without avoidance — as a traveller asks a man he meets which of two roads leads where he is going, with no wish for it to be the right-hand one rather than the left, since he has no wish to take any road but the one that leads to his destination.
That is how we ought to come to God as our guide: as we use our eyes, not asking them to show us the things we would prefer, but taking the appearances of things as the eyes present them.
But as it is, we take the augur's hand trembling, and while we call on God we plead with the augur: "Master, have mercy on me. Let me come safely out of this trouble." Wretch, would you have anything other than what is best? And is there anything better than what pleases God? Why do you do your utmost to corrupt your judge and lead your adviser astray?
God is beneficial. And the good is beneficial too. So it follows that where the nature of God is, there the nature of the good is also.
What is the nature of God, then? Flesh? "Certainly not." An estate in land? "By no means." Fame? "No." Is it intelligence, knowledge, right reason? "Yes."
Then look for the nature of the good simply here. I take it you do not look for it in a plant. "No." Do you look for it in an animal without reason? "No." Then if you look for it in a rational creature, why do you go on looking anywhere except in what makes rational creatures superior to irrational ones?
Plants have not even the power of using impressions, and that is why you do not call them good. So the good requires the use of impressions. Does it require only that? If you say it requires only that, then say that good, and happiness and unhappiness, exist in animals too. But you do not say so, and you are right. Even if they have the use of impressions in the highest degree, they do not have the power of understanding that use — and with good reason, since they exist to serve others and exercise no superiority.
The donkey, I take it, does not exist for any superiority over others. No: we needed a back that could carry something, and in truth we needed him to be able to walk as well, and for that he was given the power of using impressions, since without it he could not have walked. And there the matter stopped. If he had also been given the power of understanding that use, then plainly, and reasonably, he would not have been subject to us and would not have done us these services; he would have been our equal and our like.
Will you not look for the nature of good in the rational creature, then? If it is not there, you will not want to say it exists in anything else.
"What of it? Are plants and animals not God's works too?"
They are; but they are not superior things, and they are not parts of the gods. You are a superior thing. You are a portion broken off from the divine. You have in yourself a certain portion of him.
Why, then, are you ignorant of your own high descent? Why do you not know where you came from? Will you not remember, when you are eating, who you are who eat, and whom you are feeding? When you lie with a woman, will you not remember who you are who do it? When you are in company, when you are exercising, when you are arguing, do you not know that you are feeding a god, that you are exercising a god? Wretch, you are carrying a god about with you and you do not know it.
Do you suppose I mean some god of silver or gold, outside you? You carry him inside yourself, and you do not notice that you are defiling him with unclean thoughts and dirty acts. If an image of God were standing here you would not dare to do any of the things you do; but when God himself is present inside you, seeing everything and hearing everything, you are not ashamed to think such things and do such things — ignorant of your own nature, and lying under the anger of God.
Then why are we afraid, when we send a young man out of the school into active life, that he may do something improper, eat improperly, sleep with women improperly? Afraid that the rags he is wrapped in may debase him, or that fine clothes may make him proud? A young man who behaves so does not know his own God; he does not know who set out with him.
And can we bear it when he says, "I wish I had God with me"? Have you not got God with you? And do you look for another when you have him? Or would God tell you anything different from this?
If you were a statue by Phidias — an Athena or a Zeus — you would think both of yourself and of the artist; and if you had any power of perception you would try to do nothing unworthy of the man who made you, or of yourself, and try not to appear in an unfitting posture to the people looking at you. And now, because Zeus made you, is that a reason for not caring how you will appear?
And is the one artist anything like the other? Is the one work anything like the other? What work of any artist has in itself the powers the artist shows in making it? Is it not marble, or bronze, or gold, or ivory? Phidias' Athena, once she has stretched out her hand and taken the figure of Victory into it, stands in that attitude forever. But the works of God have the power of movement, they breathe, they can use impressions and examine them.
Being the work of such an artist, will you dishonour him? And what shall I say — not only that he made you, but that he entrusted you to yourself and made you a deposit in your own keeping? Will you not think of that either? Will you dishonour your guardianship too?
If God had put an orphan into your care, would you neglect him like this? He has handed you over to your own care, and says: I had nobody fitter to entrust him to than yourself. Keep him for me as he is by nature — self-respecting, trustworthy, upright, unterrified, free from passion and free from being thrown about.
And then you do not keep him so.
But some will say: where has this fellow got his arrogance and these superior looks? I have not yet the gravity that suits a philosopher; I have not yet any confidence in what I have learned and assented to; I am still afraid of my own weakness. Let me get the confidence, and then you shall see the face I ought to have and the bearing I ought to have. Then I will show you the statue, when it is finished and polished.
What do you expect — a superior look? Does the Zeus at Olympia raise his eyebrow? No: his look is fixed, as befits one who is ready to say
Irrevocable is my word, and it shall not fail. — Iliad, i 526.
That is how I will show myself to you: trustworthy, self-respecting, noble, undisturbed.
What, and immortal too, and exempt from old age and sickness? No — dying as a god dies, falling sick as a god falls sick. This power I have; this I can do. The rest I do not have, and cannot do.
I will show you the sinews of a philosopher. What sinews are those? A desire that is never disappointed. An avoidance that never lands on the thing it would avoid. An impulse that is proper, a purpose that is careful, an assent that is not rash. These you shall see.
It is no small thing just to do this one thing: to fulfil the promise a man's nature makes. For what is a man? The answer is: a rational and mortal creature. And by the rational part, what are we separated from? From wild beasts. And from what else? From sheep and animals like them.
So take care to do nothing like a wild beast. If you do, you have lost the character of a man; you have not kept your promise. See that you do nothing like a sheep — and if you do, in that case too the man is lost.
When do we behave like sheep? When we act out of greed, out of lust, rashly, filthily, thoughtlessly — what have we sunk to? To sheep. What have we lost? Our reason. And when we act quarrelsomely and harmfully and in a rage and violently, what have we sunk to? To wild beasts. So some of us are great wild beasts and others little ones, mean and small — which is why a man may say, let me at least be eaten by a lion.
In all these ways the promise a man makes by acting as a man is destroyed. When is a compound proposition maintained? When it does what its nature promises — so a compound proposition is preserved when it is a conjunction of truths. When is a disjunctive proposition maintained? When it does what it promises. When are flutes preserved, or a lyre, a horse, a dog? When each keeps its promise.
Is it any wonder, then, that a man is preserved and lost in the same way? Every man is improved and preserved by the acts that correspond to him: the carpenter by acts of carpentry, the grammarian by acts of grammar. But if a man gets into the habit of writing ungrammatically, his art must be corrupted and destroyed.
So acts of self-respect preserve the self-respecting man, and shameless acts destroy him; acts of good faith preserve the trustworthy man, and the contrary acts destroy him. And on the other side, contrary acts strengthen contrary characters: shamelessness strengthens the shameless man, faithlessness the faithless man, abuse the abusive man, anger the bad-tempered man; and taking more than he gives makes the greedy man greedier.
This is why philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with learning only, but to add study to it, and then practice. We have been used to doing the opposite for a long time, and we put into practice judgments that are the opposite of the true ones. So if we do not also put the right judgments into practice, we shall be nothing but expounders of other men's opinions.
Which of us cannot already discourse by the rules of the art about good and bad things? That some things are good and some bad and some indifferent; that the good are the virtues and what shares in the virtues, the bad their opposites, and the indifferent things are wealth, health, reputation.
And then, if in the middle of our talk there is some louder noise than usual, or somebody present laughs at us, we are thrown. Philosopher, where are the things you were talking about? Where did you get them and bring them out from? From your lips, and nowhere else. So why do you spoil the help other men provided? Why do you treat the weightiest matters as though you were playing at dice?
It is one thing to store bread and wine in a storehouse and another to eat them. What has been eaten is digested and distributed, and has become sinew, flesh, bone, blood, good colour, good breathing. What is stored up you can take out and show whenever you like — but you have no other advantage from it than seeming to possess it.
For what is the difference between expounding these doctrines and expounding those of men who hold the opposite? Sit down now and expound the opinions of Epicurus by the rules of the art, and perhaps you will expound them more usefully than Epicurus himself. Why call yourself a Stoic, then? Why deceive the crowd? Why act the part of a Jew when you are a Greek?
Do you not see on what grounds each man is called a Jew, or a Syrian, or an Egyptian? When we see a man leaning both ways we are used to saying, this man is no Jew, he is only acting the part. But when he takes on the feelings of a man who has been steeped in the doctrine and has adopted that sect, then he is one in fact, and he is called one.
So we too, dipped falsely, are Jews in name and something else in fact. Our feelings do not match our words. We are a long way from practising what we say, and from what we are proud of as though we knew it. And so, being unable to fulfil even what the character of a man promises, we take on the profession of a philosopher as well — a burden as heavy as if a man who cannot carry ten pounds tried to lift the stone that Ajax lifted.
Consider who you are. In the first place, a man — that is, one who has nothing superior to his own will, and everything else subject to it, while the will itself he holds unenslaved and free.
So consider what reason has separated you from. It has separated you from wild beasts; it has separated you from the flocks. Beyond that, you are a citizen of the world and a part of it — not one of the parts that serve, but one of the parts that rule, since you are capable of following the divine administration and of thinking about how things are connected.
And what does the character of a citizen promise? To hold nothing as profitable to himself alone; to deliberate about nothing as though he were cut off from the community, but to act as the hand or the foot would act if they had reason and understood how nature is constituted — never setting themselves in motion or wanting anything except with reference to the whole.
So the philosophers say rightly that if the good man knew in advance what was going to happen, he would work along with his own sickness and death and maiming, knowing that these things are allotted him by the arrangement of the whole, and that the whole is superior to the part and the state to the citizen. But as it is, since we do not know the future, it is our duty to hold to the things that are by their nature more suitable to choose — because that too is one of the things we were made for.
After this, remember that you are a son. And what does that character promise? To count everything the son has as belonging to the father; to obey him in everything; never to blame him to anybody else; never to say or do anything that harms him; to give way to him in everything and yield, working with him as far as you can.
After this, know that you are a brother too, and that this character calls for making concessions, for being easily persuaded, for speaking well of your brother, for never claiming against him any of the things outside the will but readily giving them up, so as to have the larger share in what is inside it. See what a thing it is to gain a good disposition in exchange for a lettuce, if it comes to that, or a seat. What an advantage.
Next, if you are a councillor of some city, remember that you are a councillor; if a young man, that you are young; if an old man, that you are old. Each of these names, when it is examined, marks out its proper duties.
But if you go and blame your brother, I say to you: you have forgotten who you are and what your name is. If you were a smith and used the hammer wrongly, you would have forgotten the smith. And if you have forgotten the brother, and instead of a brother have become an enemy, will you seem to have exchanged nothing for nothing? And if instead of a man — a tame and social creature — you have become a mischievous wild animal, treacherous and given to biting, have you lost nothing?
Must you lose a little money, then, in order to have suffered damage? Does the loss of nothing else damage a man? If you lost your grasp of grammar or of music, would you count the loss a damage? And if you lose self-respect, restraint and gentleness, do you think that is no loss at all?
And yet the first things are lost through some external cause outside the will, while the second are lost by our own fault. Neither having the first nor losing them is shameful; but not having the second, and losing them, is shameful, and a reproach, and a misfortune.
What does a man lose who lets himself be used for another man's pleasure? He loses being a man. And what does the man lose who uses him so? A great many things — and he loses being a man no less than the other does. What does the adulterer lose? He loses the self-respecting man, the moderate man, the decent man, the citizen, the neighbour. What does the angry man lose? Something else. What does the coward lose? Something else.
No man is bad without suffering some loss and damage. So if you look for the damage only in lost money, then none of these men suffers any harm or damage at all — it may even be that they profit and gain, if they pick up a little money by any of these acts.
But consider: if you refer everything to a small coin, then not even the man who loses his nose is damaged, in your view. "Yes he is," you say, "he is mutilated in his body." Well — and does the man who has only lost his sense of smell lose nothing? Is there no energy of the soul, then, that is an advantage to the man who has it and a damage to the man who has lost it?
"Tell me what sort of energy you mean."
Have we not a natural sense of shame? "We have." And does the man who loses that suffer no damage? Is he deprived of nothing? Does he part with nothing that belonged to him? Have we not natural good faith, natural affection, a natural readiness to help others, a natural readiness to bear with them? Can the man who lets himself be damaged in these matters be unharmed and uninjured?
"What of it? Am I not to hurt the man who has hurt me?"
First consider what hurt is, and remember what you have heard from the philosophers. If the good lies in the will and the bad in the will too, then see whether what you are saying does not come to this: since that man has hurt himself by doing me an injustice, am I not to hurt myself by doing him one?
Why do we not put it to ourselves in some such way? Where there is any injury to the body or to our property, there we find harm; but where the same thing happens to the will, there — you suppose — there is no harm. The man who has been deceived, or who has done an unjust act, suffers nothing in his head, or his eye, or his hip, and he does not lose his estate; and we want nothing except that these things should be safe.
But whether we shall have a will that is self-respecting and trustworthy, or shameless and faithless, we do not care in the least — except in the school, and there only as far as a few words go. And that is why our progress is limited to those few words, and beyond them does not exist in the slightest degree.
Philosophy begins — for the man who comes to it the right way, through the door — with an awareness of his own weakness and inability in the things that matter.
We come into the world with no innate notion of a right-angled triangle, or of a quarter tone, or of a semitone; we learn each of these by a sort of instruction according to an art, and that is why men who do not know them do not think they know them. But as for good and evil, beautiful and ugly, fitting and unfitting, happiness and misfortune, proper and improper, what we ought to do and what we ought not — who ever came into the world without an inborn idea of these?
So we all use the words, and try to fit our preconceptions to particular cases: he did well, he did not do well; he did as he ought, not as he ought; he has been unlucky, he has been lucky; he is unjust, he is just. Which of us does not use these words? Which of us puts off using them until he has learned them, as he puts off using the words for lines or for musical notes?
The reason is that we come into the world already taught something on this subject by nature, so to speak — and starting from that, we have added conceit on top.
"Why should I not know the beautiful and the ugly?" a man says. "Have I not the notion of it?"
You have.
"Do I not fit it to particulars?"
You do.
"Then do I not fit it properly?"
There lies the whole question, and there is where the conceit comes in. Starting from what is agreed, men go on by an unsuitable fitting to what is in dispute. If they had this power of fitting as well as the notions, what would stop them being perfect?
But since you think you fit your preconceptions to particulars properly, tell me where you get that from.
"Because I think so."
But somebody else does not think so, and he thinks he is fitting them properly too. Or does he not think so?
"He does think so."
Is it possible, then, that you can both be fitting your preconceptions properly to things you hold contrary opinions about?
"It is not possible."
Then can you show us anything better as regards fitting the preconceptions than your thinking that you do? Does the madman do anything other than what seems right to him? Is that test enough for him too?
"It is not enough."
Then come to something better than seeming.
"And what is that?"
Notice: here is the beginning of philosophy. A perception that men disagree with one another; an enquiry into the cause of the disagreement; a condemnation of mere seeming and a distrust of it; a certain investigation of what seems, to see whether it seems rightly; and the discovery of some standard — as we discovered the balance for settling weights, and the carpenter's rule for straight and crooked. This is where philosophy begins.
Must we say that everything is right which seems right to everybody? And how can contradictions be right? So not everything, then — only what seems right to us. And why more than what seems right to the Syrians? Why more than what seems right to the Egyptians? Why more than what seems right to me, or to any other man? Not more at all.
So what seems so to each man is not sufficient for settling what is so. With weights and measures we are not satisfied with the bare appearance either; in each case we have found a standard. And in this matter, then, is there no standard better than seeming? How could it be that the most necessary things among men should have no mark, and be impossible to find out?
So there is a standard. Then why do we not look for it and find it, and afterwards use it without ever departing from it — never so much as stretching out a finger without it? For this, I think, is the thing which, once found, cures the madness of men who use mere seeming as their measure and misuse it; so that from then on, starting from certain known and settled principles, we may use in particular cases the preconceptions we have clearly fixed.
What is the matter put before us for enquiry? Pleasure, let us say. Put it to the standard; throw it into the balance. Ought the good to be the sort of thing we can properly have confidence in? Yes. And the sort of thing we ought to trust? It ought to be. Is it right to trust anything insecure? No. And is pleasure secure? No. Then take it and throw it out of the scale, and drive it far away from the place where the good things stand.
And if you are not sharp-sighted and one balance is not enough for you, bring another. Is it right to be lifted up over what is good? Yes. Is it proper, then, to be lifted up over a present pleasure? Take care not to say that it is; and if you do say it, I shall not think you worth even the balance.
This is how things are tested and weighed, when the standards are ready. And philosophising is this: examining the standards and establishing them. Using them once they are known is the work of a wise and good man.
What a man must learn in order to practise the art of argument has been set out accurately by our philosophers. But as for the proper use of it, we have no practice at all.
Give any one of us you like an uneducated man to argue with, and he cannot find out how to handle him. He shifts the man a little, and then if the man answers off the point he does not know what to do with him, and either abuses him or laughs at him and says, "He is uneducated; you can do nothing with him."
But a guide, when he has found a man off the road, leads him into the right one; he does not laugh at him and abuse him and walk away. So do you show the uneducated man the truth, and you will see that he follows. And as long as you do not show it to him, do not laugh at him — feel your own incapacity instead.
How did Socrates behave? He used to make his opponent in an argument bear witness for him, and he wanted no other witness. So he could say: I do not care about other witnesses; I am always satisfied with the evidence of the man I am arguing with. I do not ask other people's opinion, only the opinion of the man disputing with me.
He used to make the conclusions that follow from our natural notions so plain that every man saw the contradiction, if there was one, and backed out of it. Like this. Does the envious man feel joy? "By no means — he feels pain." Well, do you take envy to be pain over evils? "And what envy is there of evils?" So he brought his opponent to say that envy is pain over good things. Well then, would any man envy people who are nothing to him? "By no means."
And having completed the notion and fixed it clearly, he would go away — without saying to his opponent, "Define envy for me"; and if the man had defined it, without saying, "You have defined it badly, the terms of the definition do not answer to the thing defined."
Those are technical phrases, and for that reason unpleasant and barely intelligible to uneducated men — and we philosophers cannot do without them. But that the uneducated man himself, following the impressions put before him, should be able to concede a point or reject it, we shall never move him to by using such phrases. And so, conscious of our own inability, we do not attempt it — those of us with any caution, at least. But most men, the rash ones, go into such arguments, confuse themselves and confuse others, and finally walk away abusing their opponents and abused in turn.
Now this was the first and chief thing about Socrates: never to be irritated in argument, never to say anything abusive or insulting, but to bear with abusive people and put an end to the quarrel. If you want to know how great his power was in this, read Xenophon's Symposium and see how many quarrels he ended. That is why the poets too praise this power so highly:
Quickly and skilfully he settles great disputes. — Hesiod, Theogony v 87.
Well then — the business is not very safe nowadays, and particularly at Rome. Anyone who attempts it must not do it in a corner, you may be sure; he must go to a man of consular rank, if it so happens, or to a rich man, and ask him:
Sir, can you tell me who you have put in charge of your horses? "I can tell you." You have not entrusted them to just anybody, to a man with no experience of horses? "By no means." Well, can you tell me who you entrust your gold and silver to, or your clothes? "I do not entrust even those to just anybody." Well — and your own body: have you thought about who to trust the care of it to? "Certainly." To a man of experience, I suppose — a trainer, or a doctor? "Without doubt."
And are these the best things you have, or do you possess something else better than all of them? "What sort of thing do you mean?" I mean the thing that uses all these, and tests each of them, and deliberates. "Do you mean the soul?" You are right, that is what I mean. "In truth I do think the soul is a far better thing than anything else I possess."
Then can you show us how you have taken care of the soul? It is hardly likely that a man as wise as you, with a reputation in the city, would thoughtlessly and carelessly let the most valuable thing he owns go neglected and perish. "Certainly not." But have you taken care of it yourself? And did you learn how from somebody else, or work out the means on your own?
And here comes the danger. First, that he may say, "What business is this of yours, my good man? Who are you?" And then, if you go on bothering him, that he may raise his hands and hit you. I was an admirer of this method of teaching myself once, until I fell into these dangers.
When I see a man anxious I say: what does this man want? If he did not want something outside his power, how could he be anxious?
This is why a lute player singing on his own has no anxiety, but is anxious when he comes into the theatre, even if he has a good voice and plays well. He wants not only to sing well but to be applauded — and that is not in his power. Where he has skill, he has confidence. Bring him any single person who knows nothing about music and the musician does not care. But where he knows nothing and has had no practice, there he is anxious.
What is he ignorant of? He does not know what a crowd is, or what the praise of a crowd is. He has learned to strike the lowest string and the highest; but what the praise of the many is, and what power it has in life, he neither knows nor has thought about. So he must tremble and turn pale.
Now I cannot say a man is not a lute player when I see him afraid; but I can say something else, and not one thing but several. First of all I call him a stranger, and say: this man does not know what part of the world he is in. He has been here all this time and is ignorant of the laws of the state and its customs, of what is allowed and what is not; and he has never employed a lawyer to tell him and explain the laws to him.
A man does not draw up a will if he does not know how a will ought to be drawn; or else he employs somebody who does. He does not seal a bond carelessly, or write a guarantee. But he uses his desire without legal advice — and his avoidance, and his pursuit, and his intention, and his purpose.
"What do you mean, without legal advice?"
He does not know that he is willing what is not allowed, and not willing what must be; and he does not know what is his own and what is another man's. If he did know, he would never be blocked, never hindered, never anxious.
"How so?"
Is any man afraid of things that are not evils? No. Is he afraid of things that are evils, but so far in his own power that they need not happen? Certainly not. So if the things outside the will are neither good nor bad, and everything that does depend on the will is in our power, and nobody can either take them from us or give them to us unless we choose — where is there room left for anxiety?
But we are anxious about our poor body, our little property, about what Caesar wills; and not anxious about anything inside us. Are we anxious about not forming a false judgment? No — because that is in my power. About not making a movement contrary to nature? No, not about that either.
So when you see a man pale, then — as the doctor says, judging by the complexion, this man's spleen is disordered and that man's liver — you too should say: this man's desire and avoidance are disordered; he is not on the right road; he is in a fever. Nothing else changes a man's colour, or makes him tremble, or sets his teeth chattering, or makes him
sink at the knees and shift from foot to foot. — Iliad, xiii 281.
This is why Zeno was not anxious when he was going to meet Antigonus: Antigonus had no power over anything Zeno valued, and Zeno did not care about the things Antigonus did have power over. But Antigonus was anxious when he was going to meet Zeno, because he wanted to please him — and that was an external. Zeno did not want to please Antigonus, since no man skilled in an art wants to please a man who has no skill in it.
Am I to try to please you? Why? I suppose you know the measure by which one man is judged by another. Have you taken any trouble to learn what a good man is and what a bad man is, and how a man becomes either? Then why are you not good yourself?
"How am I not good?" he replies.
Because no good man laments or groans or weeps; no good man turns pale and trembles, or says, "How will he receive me? How will he listen to me?" Slave, just as it pleases him. Why do you care about what belongs to somebody else? Is it not his fault now if he takes badly what comes from you? "Certainly." And can the fault be one man's and the evil in another? "No." Then why are you anxious about what belongs to another?
"That is a fair question. But I am anxious about how I shall speak to him."
Can you not speak to him as you choose?
"But I am afraid of being put out."
If you were going to write the name Dion, would you be afraid of being put out? "By no means." Why not? Is it not because you have practised writing the name? "Certainly." And if you were going to read the name, would you not feel the same? Why? Because every art has a certain strength and confidence in the things belonging to it.
Have you not practised speaking, then? What else did you learn at school — syllogisms and trick propositions? What for? Was it not for the purpose of arguing skilfully? And is arguing skilfully not the same as arguing at the right time, and carefully, and intelligently, and without making mistakes and without getting blocked, and on top of all that, with confidence? "Yes."
Well then, when you are mounted on a horse and ride out onto the plain, are you anxious at being matched against a man on foot — anxious in a matter you have practised and he has not?
"Yes, but the man I am going to speak to has power to kill me."
Then tell the truth, unhappy man, and stop bragging, and stop claiming to be a philosopher, and stop refusing to admit who your masters are. So long as you offer this handle in your body, follow every man who is stronger than you.
Socrates used to practise speaking — he who talked as he did to the tyrants, to the jurymen, and in his prison. Diogenes had practised speaking — he who spoke as he did to Alexander, to the pirates, to the man who bought him. These men were confident in what they had practised.
But you go off to your own affairs and never leave them. Go and sit in a corner and weave syllogisms and set them to somebody else. There is no man in you who can govern a state.
A certain Roman came in with his son and listened to one reading. Epictetus said: This is the method of instruction — and stopped. When the Roman asked him to go on, he said:
Every art, while it is being taught, is laborious to a man who does not know it and has no skill in it. The things that come out of the arts show their use at once, in the purpose they were made for, and most of them have something attractive and pleasing about them. It is no pleasure to stand and watch a shoemaker learning his trade; but the shoe is useful, and not unpleasant to look at either. Watching a smith at his training is very disagreeable to a bystander who knows nothing of the art; but the work shows what the art is for. And you will see this much more clearly with music: if you are present while somebody is learning, the drill will seem thoroughly disagreeable, and yet the results of music are pleasant and delightful even to people who know nothing about it.
Here too we conceive the work of a philosopher to be something of this kind: he must fit his wishes to what happens, so that nothing that does happen happens against our wish, and nothing that fails to happen fails when we wish it would. And the result, for men who have arranged the work of philosophy in this way, is not to fail in their desires, and not to fall into what they would avoid; to pass through life themselves without unease, without fear, without being thrown about — and along with their companions to keep up every relation, natural and acquired: son, father, brother, citizen, man, wife, neighbour, fellow traveller, ruler, subject.
This is roughly what we conceive the work of a philosopher to be. It remains to enquire how it is to be accomplished.
Now we see that a carpenter becomes a carpenter by learning certain things, and a pilot becomes a pilot by learning certain things. Is it not likely, then, that in philosophy too it is not enough simply to wish to be wise and good, and that there are certain things one must learn? So we enquire what those things are.
The philosophers say we ought to learn first that God exists and provides for everything, and that it is not possible to hide our acts from him — nor even our intentions and thoughts. The next thing is to learn what the nature of the gods is; because whatever they are found to be, a man who wants to please them and obey them must try with all his power to be like them. If the divine is trustworthy, a man must be trustworthy. If it is free, a man must be free; if generous, generous; if great in spirit, great in spirit. So as an imitator of God he must do and say everything consistently with that.
Where must we begin, then? If you will go into the discussion, I will tell you: you must first understand words.
"So you are saying I do not understand words now."
You do not understand them.
"Then how do I use them?"
The way the illiterate use writing, the way cattle use impressions. Using and understanding are two different things. But if you think you understand them, produce any word you please and let us test whether we understand it.
"It is a disagreeable thing for a man to be refuted when he is old, and has perhaps served his three campaigns."
I know it. You have come to me as a man in want of nothing — and what could you even imagine yourself to be short of? You are rich; you have children, and perhaps a wife, and many slaves; Caesar knows you; you have many friends at Rome; you pay everybody their dues; you know how to repay a man who does you a favour and to pay back in kind a man who does you a wrong. What are you lacking?
Now suppose I show you that you lack the most necessary things of all, the chief things for happiness; that so far you have attended to everything except what you ought; and, to crown it, that you know neither what God is nor what man is, nor what good is nor what bad. If I say you are ignorant of the other matters, that might perhaps be borne. But if I say that you know nothing about yourself — how could you possibly bear with me and stand the proof and stay here? It is not possible; you go off at once in a bad temper.
And yet what harm have I done you? Unless the mirror harms an ugly man too, by showing him himself as he is. Unless the doctor insults the sick man when he tells him: man, do you think there is nothing wrong with you? You have a fever. Go without food today and drink water. Nobody says, "What an insult!" But say to a man, "Your desires are inflamed, your avoidances are low, your intentions are inconsistent, your impulses are not in line with nature, your judgments are rash and false" — and off he goes at once saying, "He insulted me."
Our way of doing things is like a crowded fair. Cattle and oxen are brought to be sold, and most of the men come to buy and sell; and there are a few who come to look at the market and enquire how it is run, and why, and who fixed the day of the meeting and for what purpose.
So it is in this assembly of ours too. Some, like cattle, trouble themselves about nothing but their fodder. To all of you who are busy about property and land and slaves and public office, these things are nothing but fodder.
But there are a few who attend the fair as men who love to look on and consider: what is the world? Who governs it? Has it no governor? How is it possible that a city or a household cannot last even the shortest time without an administrator and a guardian, and that a system so great and so beautiful should be run in such good order and yet without purpose, by chance? So there is an administrator. What kind, and how does he govern? And who are we, whom he produced, and what for? Have we some connection with him and some relation to him, or none?
That is how these few are affected; and then they apply themselves to this one thing only, to examine the meeting, and then to go away.
And what of it? They are laughed at by the crowd, as the sightseers at a fair are laughed at by the traders. And if the cattle had any understanding, they would laugh at anybody who admired anything but fodder.
When some people have heard that a man ought to be firm, and that the will is naturally free and not subject to compulsion while everything else is subject to blocking and to slavery and lies in other men's power, they suppose they ought to hold without deviation to everything they have decided.
But in the first place what has been decided ought to be sound. I want tone in a body — but the tone a healthy body has, an athlete's body. If it is plain to me that you have the tone of a man in a frenzy, and you boast of it, I shall tell you: man, go and find a doctor. That is not tone; that is the loss of it.
Something of the same kind, in a different way, happens to men who listen to these lectures the wrong way. One of my own companions decided for no reason to starve himself to death. I heard of it on the third day of his fast and went to ask what had happened.
"I have decided," he said.
Still — tell me what made you decide. If you decided rightly, we shall sit with you and help you on your way; but if the decision was unreasonable, change your mind.
"We ought to keep to our decisions."
Man, what are you doing? Not to all our decisions — to the right ones. If you are now convinced that it is night, do not change your mind, if you think fit; hold on and say, we ought to stand by our decisions. Will you not begin at the beginning and lay the foundation — an enquiry into whether the decision is sound or unsound — and then build firmness and security on top of it? If you lay a rotten and crumbling foundation, will your miserable little building not come down all the faster, the more and the heavier the materials you pile on it?
Would you take a man out of life for no reason at all — a friend and a companion, a fellow citizen of the same city, both the great city and the small one? And then, while you are committing murder and destroying a man who has done no wrong, do you say you must stand by your decisions? And if it ever somehow came into your head to kill me, would you have to stand by that decision too?
Now this man was persuaded to change his mind, though with difficulty. But there are some you cannot convince at all these days; so that I feel I now know what I did not know before — the meaning of the saying that you can neither persuade a fool nor break him. May it never be my lot to have a wise fool for a friend: there is nothing harder to deal with.
"I have made up my mind," the man says. So have madmen; and the more firmly they form a judgment about things that do not exist, the more hellebore they need to bring them round.
Will you not behave like a sick man and call in the doctor? "I am ill, master; help me. Consider what I must do; it is my part to obey you." So it is here too: I do not know what I ought to do, and I have come to learn. "Not at all — talk to me about something else. On this I have decided."
About what else? What is greater or more useful than convincing you that it is not enough to have made your decision and to refuse to change it? This is the tone of madness, not of health.
"I will die if you force me to this."
Why, man? What has happened?
"I have decided."
I have had a lucky escape, then, that you did not decide to kill me.
"I will take no money."
And why is that?
"I have decided."
You may be sure that with the very same energy you are now using to refuse it, there is nothing to stop you at some point leaning without any reason toward taking money, and then saying: I have decided. As in a diseased body full of fluxes the humour flows now to these parts and now to those, so a sick soul does not know which way to lean; and if to that leaning and that movement obstinacy is added as well, then the trouble is past help and past cure.
Where is the good? In the will. Where is the evil? In the will. Where is neither of them? In the things outside the will.
Well then — does anybody among us think about these lessons outside the schoolroom? Does anybody practise on his own, giving answers to things as he would to questions? Is it day? Yes. Is it night? No. Well, is the number of the stars even? I cannot say.
When money is held out to you, have you practised making the proper answer, that money is not a good thing? Have you drilled yourself in those answers, or only against sophisms? Why be surprised, then, if in the cases you have studied you have improved, and in the cases you have not studied you are exactly as you were?
When the public speaker knows that he has written well, that he has learned by heart what he wrote, that he brings a pleasant voice with him — why is he still anxious? Because he is not satisfied with having studied. What does he want? To be praised by the audience. So he has been trained for the purpose of being able to declaim; but as to praise and blame, he has not been trained at all. When did he ever hear from anybody what praise is, and what blame is, and what the nature of each is, and what kind of praise should be sought and what kind of blame avoided? And when did he go through the drill that follows from all that?
Why be surprised, then, if in the matters a man has learned he surpasses everybody, and in the matters he has never been trained in he is just like the crowd? So the lute player knows how to play, sings well, has a fine costume — and still trembles when he comes on stage. He understands his own business, but he does not know what a crowd is, or the shouting of a crowd, or what ridicule is. He does not know what anxiety is either, whether it is his own work or somebody else's, whether it can be stopped or not. And so if he is praised he leaves the theatre puffed up, and if he is laughed at, the swollen bladder is punctured and goes down.
It is the same with us. What do we admire? Externals. What are we busy about? Externals. And then do we still wonder why we are afraid and anxious?
What happens when we take the things coming toward us to be evils? It is not in our power not to be afraid; it is not in our power not to be anxious. And then we say: "Lord God, how am I not to be anxious?" Fool, have you not got hands? Did God not make them for you? Sit down now and pray that your nose may not run. Wipe it instead, and stop blaming him.
Well then — has he given you nothing for the present case? Has he not given you endurance? Has he not given you greatness of spirit? Has he not given you courage? When you have hands like these, are you still looking for somebody to wipe your nose for you?
But we neither study these things nor care about them. Give me a man who cares how he does a thing — not about getting the thing, but about his own activity in doing it. Who cares about his own activity while he is walking about? Who, when he is deliberating, cares about his own deliberating rather than about getting the thing he is deliberating over? If he gets it he is puffed up and says, "How well we deliberated! Did I not tell you, brother, that when we have thought a thing out it cannot turn out otherwise?" And if it turns out otherwise, the poor wretch is humbled and does not even know what to say about what has happened.
Which of us ever consulted a seer about this matter? Which of us ever went sleepless over his own acts? Which? Name me one, so that I may see the man I have been looking for so long, who is truly noble and well-born, young or old. Name him.
Why are we still surprised, then, that we are well practised at thinking about a subject, and in our actions are low, indecent, worthless, cowardly, unwilling to work, altogether bad? We do not care about these things and we do not study them.
If we had feared not death or exile but fear itself, we should have studied not to fall into the things that look like evils to us. As it is, in the schoolroom we are quick-tempered and full of words, and if some small question comes up about any of these matters we are quite able to go through it. But drag us out into practice and you will find us miserably shipwrecked. Let one disturbing impression come at us and you will know what we have been studying and what we have been training at.
And so, for want of discipline, we are always adding something to the impression and making things out to be bigger than they are. When I am at sea and look down into the deep, or look around and see no land, I go out of my mind and imagine I shall have to drink up the whole of it if I am wrecked — and it does not occur to me that three pints are enough. So what is disturbing me? The sea? No: my own judgment. And when there is an earthquake, I imagine the city is going to fall on me; but is one small stone not enough to knock my brains out?
What are the things that lie heavy on us and disturb us, then? What but judgments? What but judgments lies heavy on the man who goes away and leaves his companions and friends and places and habits?
Little children, for instance, cry when the nurse leaves them for a moment, and forget their grief the moment they are given a small cake. Would you like us to compare you with little children? No, by Zeus — I do not want to be quieted with a small cake, but with right judgments.
And what are those? What a man ought to study all day long: not to be affected by anything that is not his own, not by a companion, not by a place, not by the gymnasium, not even by his own body; but to remember the law and keep it in front of his eyes.
And what is the divine law? To keep hold of your own; not to lay claim to what belongs to others; to use what is given, and not to want it when it is not given; and when something is taken away, to give it up readily and at once, and to be grateful for the time you had the use of it — unless you would rather cry for your nurse and your mother.
For what difference does it make what a man is mastered by, and what he depends on? How are you better than the man who cries over a girl, if you grieve over a little gymnasium and some little colonnades and young men and places of amusement? Another man comes and laments that he will no longer drink the water of Dirce. Is the Marcian water worse than Dirce's? "But I was used to the water of Dirce." And you will get used to the other in turn. And then if you become attached to that too, cry over it as well, and try to make a line of verse in Euripides' manner:
The hot baths of Nero and the Marcian water.
See how tragedy is made, when ordinary things happen to silly men.
"When shall I see Athens again, and the Acropolis?" Wretch, are you not content with what you see every day? Have you anything better or greater to look at than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the sea? And if you really understand the one who administers the whole, and carry him about inside you, do you still hanker after little stones and a handsome rock?
What will you do, then, when you are going to leave the sun and the moon themselves? Sit and weep like a child?
Well — what have you been doing in the school? What did you hear? What did you learn? Why did you write yourself down a philosopher when you might have written the truth: "I made some introductory studies and I read Chrysippus, but I never even came to the door of a philosopher"?
How could I have anything of the kind Socrates had, who died as he died and lived as he lived? Or anything of the kind Diogenes had? Do you suppose either of those men ever wept or grieved because he was not going to see a certain man, or a certain woman, or because he would be not in Athens or Corinth but, as it might happen, in Susa or Ecbatana? If a man can leave the banquet whenever he chooses and stop amusing himself, does he stay and complain? Does he not stay, as at any entertainment, only so long as he is enjoying it? A man like that, I take it, would put up with exile for life, or with a death sentence.
Will you not be weaned now, like children, and take more solid food, and stop crying after mothers and nurses — which are old women's laments?
"But if I go away, I shall cause them grief."
You cause them grief? By no means. What causes you grief is what will cause them grief: judgment. So what have you to do? Take away your own judgment; and if these women are wise they will take away theirs, and if they do not, they will lament through their own fault.
Man, as the proverb says, make one desperate effort for peace of mind, for freedom, for greatness of spirit. Lift up your head at last, like a man released from slavery. Dare to look up to God and say: deal with me from now on as you will. I am of one mind with you; I am yours. I refuse nothing that pleases you. Lead me where you will. Dress me in whatever clothes you choose. Is it your will that I should hold office, or live as a private man; stay here, or go into exile; be poor, or be rich? I will defend you before men on account of every one of these conditions. I will show what the nature of each thing is.
You will do no such thing. You will sit in the belly of an ox and wait for your mother to come and feed you.
What would Hercules have been if he had sat at home? He would have been Eurystheus, not Hercules. And in his travels through the world, how many close friends did he have? But nothing was dearer to him than God. That is why he was believed to be the son of God — and he was. In obedience to God he went about clearing away injustice and lawlessness.
But you are not Hercules and cannot clear away other men's wickedness; and you are not Theseus either, able to clear the evils out of Attica. Clear away your own. Out of yourself, out of your own thoughts, cast — instead of Procrustes and Sciron — sadness, fear, desire, envy, spite, greed, softness, lack of self-control.
And it is not possible to throw these things out except by looking to God alone, fixing your affections on him alone, and being consecrated to his commands. If you choose anything else, you will follow with sighs and groans whatever is stronger than yourself, always looking for peace of mind and never able to find it — because you look for it where it is not, and neglect to look where it is.
What is the first business of the man who takes up philosophy? To throw away conceit. It is impossible for a man to begin learning what he thinks he already knows.
As to what ought to be done and ought not to be done, and good and bad, and beautiful and ugly, we all talk about them at random and then go to the philosophers. On these matters we praise, we censure, we accuse, we blame, we pass judgment about what is honourable and dishonourable. And why do we go to the philosophers? Because we want to learn what we do not think we know. And what is that? Theorems. We want to learn what philosophers say, as something elegant and sharp; and some want to learn so as to profit by it.
It is ridiculous to suppose that a man wants to learn one thing and will learn another, or that he will make progress in what he does not learn.
But most men are taken in by what took in Theopompus the rhetorician, when he blames even Plato for wanting everything defined. What does he say? "Did none of us use the words good or just before you? Or did we utter the sounds meaninglessly and emptily, without understanding what each of them signified?"
Now who tells you, Theopompus, that we had no natural notions of these things, no preconceptions? But it is not possible to fit preconceptions to the objects that answer to them unless we have analysed them and enquired what object has to be put under each preconception.
You could bring the same charge against doctors. Which of us did not use the words healthy and unhealthy before Hippocrates lived? Did we utter them as empty sounds? We have a certain preconception of health too — but we are not able to fit it. That is why one man says "go without food", another says "give food", another says "bleed him", and another "use cupping". What is the reason? What but that a man cannot properly fit the preconception of health to particular cases?
So it is here too, in the matters that concern living. Which of us does not talk about good and bad, useful and useless? Which of us has not a preconception of each? And is it a clear and complete preconception? Show me. How shall I show it? By fitting the preconception properly to particular things.
Plato, for instance, puts definitions under the preconception of the useful, and you put them under the preconception of the useless. Is it possible that you are both right? How could it be? Does one man not fit the preconception of good to wealth, and another not to wealth but to pleasure, or to health? In general, if all of us who use these words know each of them well enough and need take no trouble over making the notions distinct, why do we differ? Why do we quarrel? Why do we blame one another?
And why am I bringing up this quarrelling with each other at all? If you fit your own preconceptions properly, why are you unhappy? Why are you blocked?
Let us leave aside for the moment the second topic, about impulses and the study of the duties belonging to them. Let us leave aside the third as well, about assent. I make you a present of those two. Let us stay with the first, which offers an almost obvious proof that we do not fit our preconceptions properly.
Do you now desire what is possible, and possible for you? Then why are you blocked? Why are you unhappy? Do you not now try to avoid the unavoidable? Then why do you fall into anything you would avoid? Why are you unlucky? Why, when you desire a thing, does it not happen; and when you do not desire it, does it happen? This is the greatest proof of unhappiness and misery: I wish for something and it does not happen. What is more wretched than I am?
It was because she could not bear this that Medea came to murder her children — an act of a great spirit, at least in this respect: she had a correct view of what it is for a thing one wishes for not to come off. And then she says: so I shall be avenged on the man who wronged and insulted me. And what do I gain if he is punished so? How is it to be done? I will kill my children — but I shall be punishing myself as well. And what do I care?
This is the wandering of a soul with great energy in it. She did not know where the power of doing what we wish actually lies — that you cannot get it from outside, nor by rearranging things and refitting them. Do not desire the man, and nothing you desire will fail to happen. Do not obstinately desire that he live with you. Do not desire to stay in Corinth. In a word, desire nothing but what God wills. And who will block you then? Who will compel you? No man will compel you, any more than he will compel Zeus.
When you have such a guide, and your wishes and desires are the same as his, why do you still fear disappointment? Hand your desire over to wealth and your avoidance to poverty, and you will be disappointed of the one and fall into the other. Hand them over to health, and you will come off badly. Hand them over to public office, honours, country, friends, children — in a word to anything not in a man's power — and you will come off badly.
But hand them over to Zeus and the rest of the gods. Surrender them to the gods; let the gods govern; let your desire and your avoidance be ranged on the gods' side — and where will you be unhappy any longer?
But if, you lazy wretch, you envy and complain and are jealous and afraid, and never let a single day pass without complaining both of yourself and of the gods, why do you still talk of being educated? What kind of education, man? Do you mean that you have busied yourself with shifting syllogisms? Will you not, if it is possible, unlearn all that and begin at the beginning — and see at the same time that so far you have not even touched the matter? And then, starting from that foundation, will you not build up everything that comes after, so that nothing happens that you do not choose, and nothing fails to happen that you do?
Give me one young man who has come to the school with this intention, who has become a champion for this cause and says: I give up everything else, and it is enough for me if it ever comes into my power to pass my life unblocked and untroubled, to hold out my neck to everything like a free man, and to look up to heaven as a friend of God and fear nothing that can happen.
Let any of you point such a man out to me, so that I may say: come, young man, into possession of what is your own. It is your destiny to be an ornament to philosophy. Yours are these possessions, yours these books, yours these discourses.
And then, when he has laboured enough and trained himself in that part of the matter, let him come to me again and say: I want to be free of passion and free of disturbance; and I want, as a devout man and a philosopher and a careful one, to know what my duty is to the gods, to my parents, to my brothers, to my country, to strangers. Come to the second matter as well, I shall say; this too is yours.
"But I have studied the second part enough now, and I would gladly be secure and unshaken — not only awake, but asleep too, and when I am full of wine, and when I am low."
Man, you are a god. Your designs are great.
No: "what I want is to understand what Chrysippus says in his treatise on the Liar." Will you not go and hang yourself, wretch, with an intention like that? And what good will it do you? You will read the whole thing in sorrow, and speak about it to others trembling.
And this is just what you do. "Would you like me to read to you, brother, and you to me?" You write excellently, my man. And you, excellently, in the style of Xenophon; and you in Plato's style; and you in the style of Antisthenes. And then, having told each other your dreams, you go back to exactly the same things: the same desires, the same avoidances, the same pursuits, the same plans and purposes; you want the same things and work for the same things.
And after that you do not even look for anybody to give you advice — you are annoyed if you hear the sort of thing I am saying. Then you say: "A bad-tempered old fellow. When I was leaving he did not weep, and he did not say, 'What danger you are going into! If you come through safe, my child, I will light lamps for it.' That is what a kindly man would do."
It will be a great thing indeed if you do come back safe, and well worth lighting lamps over — for such a person as you. You ought to be immortal, of course, and exempt from disease.
So, as I say, throwing away this conceit of thinking we know something useful, we must come to philosophy as we come to geometry and to music. Otherwise we shall not so much as approach making progress, though we read every collection and commentary of Chrysippus, and Antipater's and Archedemus' as well.
Every habit and every capacity is kept up and increased by the acts that correspond to it: the habit of walking by walking, the habit of running by running. If you want to be a good reader, read; if a writer, write. But when you have not read for thirty days running and have done something else instead, you will see the result. In the same way, lie down for ten days and then get up and try to take a long walk, and you will see how weak your legs have got.
So, in general, if you want to make anything a habit, do it; and if you do not want to make it a habit, do not do it — get into the way of doing something else instead.
It is the same with the states of the soul. When you have been angry, you must understand that not only has this evil happened to you, but that you have also strengthened the habit, and thrown fuel on the fire, so to speak. When you have been beaten by the desire to sleep with somebody, do not count it as a single defeat: count that you have also fed and increased your own lack of self-control. It is impossible for habits and capacities not to be produced by the corresponding acts where they did not exist before, or not to be increased and strengthened by them where they did.
This is certainly how diseases of the mind grow up, as the philosophers say. Once you have desired money, if reason is applied so as to bring you to see the evil, the desire is stopped and the governing part of the mind is restored to its original authority. But if you apply no cure, it does not go back to the same state; roused again by the corresponding impression, it takes fire into desire quicker than before. And when this happens over and over, the mind grows callous, and the disease of the mind fixes the love of money in place.
A man who has had a fever and been relieved of it is not in the state he was in before, unless he has been completely cured. Something of the kind happens with diseases of the soul as well. Certain traces and blisters are left behind, and unless a man rubs them out completely, the next time the lash falls on the same spot it will raise not blisters but open sores.
So if you do not want to be a bad-tempered man, do not feed the habit. Throw nothing on it that will make it grow. At first keep quiet, and count the days on which you have not been angry. I used to lose my temper every day; then every other day; then every third, then every fourth. And if you have gone thirty days without, sacrifice to God. For the habit is weakened at first, and then destroyed altogether.
"I was not vexed today, nor the day after, nor on any day since, for two or three months — but I was careful when provoking things happened." Be sure you are on a good road.
Today, when I saw a handsome woman, I did not say to myself, I wish I could have her, and happy is her husband — because a man who says that is saying, happy is her lover too. Nor do I picture the rest of it: the woman there, undressing, lying down beside me. I stroke my own head and say: well done, Epictetus, you have solved a fine little puzzle, much finer than the one they call the Master Argument. And if the woman is willing as well, and makes signs and sends messages, and if she even touches me and comes close, and I hold off and win — that would be a puzzle solved beyond the Liar and the Quiescent. A man may fairly be proud of a victory like that, and not of setting the Master Argument.
How is it to be done, then? Be willing at last to have your own approval. Be willing to look beautiful to God. Set your heart on being pure, in company with your own pure self and with God.
Then, when any such impression visits you, Plato says: turn to rites of purification, go as a suppliant to the temples of the gods who avert evil. And it is even enough to go into the company of noble and just men and compare yourself with them, whether you can find one living or dead.
Go to Socrates, and see him lying beside Alcibiades and making fun of the young man's beauty. Think what a victory he found in the end that he had won over himself — what an Olympic victory; what his place was in the list running back to Hercules — so that a man might justly greet him, by the gods: hail, extraordinary man; you have beaten not these poor boxers and wrestlers, nor men like them, the gladiators.
Put these things on the other side of the scale and you will beat the impression; you will not be dragged off by it. But first of all, do not be swept away by the speed of it. Say: impression, 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 let the impression lead you on and paint vivid pictures of what will follow, or it will carry you off wherever it likes. Bring in some other impression instead, a beautiful and noble one, and throw this low one out.
If you get used to training in this way, you will see what shoulders you have, what sinews, what strength. As it is, you have nothing but trifling words.
This is the true athlete — the man who trains himself against impressions like these. Stay, wretch; do not be carried off. The fight is great, the work divine: it is for kingship, for freedom, for happiness, for peace of mind. Remember God. Call on him as your helper and protector, as men at sea call on the Dioscuri in a storm.
And what greater storm is there than the one that comes from violent impressions that drive reason out? What is the storm itself but an impression? Take away the fear of death and bring on as much thunder and lightning as you please, and you will find what calm and clear weather there is in the governing part.
But if you are once beaten and say you will win next time, and then say the same thing again, be sure that you will end in such a wretched and feeble condition that you will not even notice afterwards that you are doing wrong; you will start making excuses for it. And then you will prove the truth of Hesiod's line:
The man who puts things off wrestles with troubles all his life.
The argument called the Master Argument seems to have been put forward from principles of this sort. There is a general contradiction between these three propositions, any two of them being in contradiction with the third. The propositions are: that everything past must necessarily be true; that an impossibility does not follow from a possibility; and that something is possible which neither is true nor ever will be.
Diodorus, noticing this contradiction, used the force of the first two to prove that nothing is possible which is not true and never will be. Another man will hold the other two — that something is possible which is neither true nor ever will be, and that an impossibility does not follow from a possibility — but will not allow that everything past is necessarily true; which is what the followers of Cleanthes seem to think, and Antipater defended them at length. Others again maintain the other pair — that something is possible which is neither true nor will be, and that everything past is necessarily true — and then have to maintain that an impossibility can follow from a possibility. But holding all three is impossible, because of the contradiction between them.
So if anybody asks me which of these propositions I maintain, I shall answer that I do not know; all I have is the story that Diodorus held one opinion, and the followers of Panthoides, I think, and Cleanthes another, and Chrysippus' people a third.
"And what is your own opinion?"
I was not made for this purpose — to examine my own impressions, compare what other men say, and form an opinion of my own on the question. So I am no different from a grammarian. Who was Hector's father? Priam. Who were his brothers? Paris and Deiphobus. Who was their mother? Hecuba. That is the story I have heard. Heard from whom? From Homer. And Hellanicus writes about the same things too, I think, and perhaps others like him.
And what more have I to say about the Master Argument? Nothing. But if I am a vain man, especially at a dinner party, I can astonish the guests by listing everybody who has written on the subject. Chrysippus has written marvellously in his first book On Possibilities; and Cleanthes has written a special treatise on it, and so has Archedemus. Antipater has written on it not only in his work On Possibilities but separately in his work on the Master Argument.
"Have you not read the book?"
I have not.
"Read it."
And what good will it do a man? He will be more trifling and more of a nuisance than he already is. What else have you gained by reading it? What opinion have you formed on the question? None. But you will tell us about Helen and Priam and the island of Calypso, which never was and never will be.
In that case it does not much matter if you keep the story and have formed no opinion of your own. But in questions of how to live, this happens to us far more than in the matters we are talking about.
"Talk to me about good and evil." Listen:
The wind from Ilium carried me to the shores of the Cicones. — Odyssey, ix 39.
Of things, some are good, some bad, and others indifferent. The good are the virtues and what shares in the virtues; the bad are the vices and what shares in them; the indifferent are the things lying between the virtues and the vices — wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, pain.
"And how do you know this?"
Hellanicus says so in his Egyptian History. And what difference does it make whether I say that, or say that Diogenes has it in his Ethics, or Chrysippus, or Cleanthes? Have you examined any of it and formed your own opinion?
Show me how you behave in a storm at sea. Do you remember this distinction when the sail is rattling and you are screaming, and some man who knows nothing about timing stands beside you and says: tell me, in the gods' name, what you were saying just now — is being shipwrecked a vice? Does it have any share in vice? Will you not pick up a stick and lay it across his head? "What have we to do with you, man? We are dying and you come to make fun of us."
And if Caesar sends for you to answer a charge, do you remember the distinction then? If, as you are going in pale and trembling, somebody comes up and says: why are you trembling, man? What is this business you are engaged in? Does Caesar, sitting in there, hand out virtue and vice to the men who go in to him? — you answer, "Why do you mock me too, and add to my troubles?"
"Still, tell me, philosopher, why are you trembling? Is it not death that you are risking, or prison, or bodily pain, or exile, or disgrace? What else is there? Is any of it a vice, or does any of it share in vice? And what did you use to say about these things?"
"What have you to do with me, man? My own evils are enough for me."
And you are right. Your own evils are enough for you: your meanness, your cowardice, the boasting you did sitting in the school. Why did you decorate yourself with what belonged to other men? Why did you call yourself a Stoic?
Watch yourselves like this in your actions and you will find out which school you really belong to. You will find that most of you are Epicureans, and a few Peripatetics — and feeble ones at that. Where will you show that you really regard virtue as equal to everything else, or superior to it?
Show me a Stoic, if you can. Where? How? You can show me any number of men who recite the little arguments of the Stoics. But do the same men recite the Epicurean opinions any worse? And the Peripatetic ones — do they not handle those just as exactly?
So who is a Stoic? We call a statue Phidian when it is made according to the art of Phidias; so show me a man made according to the doctrines he recites. Show me a man who is sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show me. By the gods, I want to see a Stoic.
You cannot show me one finished; then show me at least one being formed, one who has turned in that direction. Do me this favour. Do not grudge an old man the sight of something he has never yet seen. Do you suppose you have to show me the Zeus of Phidias, or the Athena, a work of gold and ivory? Let one of you show me a human soul that is ready to think as God thinks; that does not blame God or man; that is not disappointed of anything; that does not count itself damaged by anything; that is not angry, not envious, not jealous — and why should I not say it straight out? — that wants to change from a man into a god, and that in this poor dead body is thinking of its fellowship with Zeus.
Show me the man. But you cannot. Then why do you deceive yourselves and cheat other people? Why do you put on a costume that is not yours, and walk about as thieves and pilferers of names and things that do not belong to you?
And now I am your teacher, and you are being taught in my school. And I have this purpose: to make you free of restraint, compulsion and blocking; to make you free, prosperous, happy, looking to God in everything great and small. And you are here to learn these things and practise them.
Why do you not finish the work, then, if you also have the purpose you ought to have, and if I, besides the purpose, have the qualifications I ought to have? What is missing?
When I see a craftsman with his material lying beside him, I expect the work. Well, here is the craftsman and here is the material — what are we short of? Is the thing not teachable? It is. Is it not in our power, then? It is the only thing of all things that is in our power. Wealth is not in our power, nor health, nor reputation, nor in a word anything else except the right use of impressions. That alone is by nature free of restraint; that alone is free of obstruction.
So why do you not finish the work? Tell me the reason. It is either my fault that you do not finish it, or your own, or it lies in the nature of the thing. The thing itself is possible, and the only thing in our power. So it remains that the fault is in me, or in you — or, nearer the truth, in both.
Well then: are you willing that we should at last start bringing such a purpose into this school, and take no notice of the past? Only let us make a beginning. Trust me, and you will see.
Propositions that are true and evident have to be used even by the men who contradict them; and perhaps the greatest proof that a thing is evident is that even the man who denies it turns out to need it at the same moment.
For instance, if a man denies that anything is universally true, plainly he has to make the contradictory statement: that nothing is universally true. Wretch, will you not admit even this? For what is it but affirming that whatever is universally affirmed is false?
Again, suppose a man comes forward and says: know that nothing can be known, and that nothing admits of sure evidence. Or another says: believe me — you will be the better for it — that a man ought not to believe anything. Or another: learn from me, man, that it is not possible to learn anything; I am telling you so, and I will teach you if you like.
How do these differ from — whom shall I name? — the men who call themselves Academics? "Gentlemen, agree with us that nobody agrees with anybody. Believe us that nobody believes anybody."
In the same way Epicurus, when he sets out to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind, uses the very thing he is destroying. What does he say? "Do not be deceived, men, do not be led astray, do not be mistaken. There is no natural fellowship among rational creatures. Believe me. The men who say otherwise are deceiving you and leading you on with false reasoning."
What is it to you? Let us be deceived. Will you be any worse off if all the rest of us are convinced that there is a natural fellowship between us and that it ought by all means to be preserved? It will be much better and safer for you.
Man, why do you trouble yourself about us? Why do you lie awake for us? Why do you light your lamp? Why do you get up early? Why do you write so many books — so that not one of us shall be deceived about the gods and believe they take care of men, or suppose the nature of the good to be anything other than pleasure?
If that is how things are, then lie down and sleep and live the life of a worm, which is what you judged yourself fit for. Eat and drink and enjoy women, and relieve yourself, and snore. What is it to you how the rest of us think about these matters, rightly or wrongly? What have we to do with you?
You take care of sheep because they give us wool and milk, and their flesh in the end. Would it not be a fine thing if men could be lulled and enchanted by the Stoics and sleep and present themselves to you and your kind to be sheared and milked? This is what you ought to be saying to your fellow Epicureans — and ought you not to keep it from everybody else, and above all persuade them that we are naturally fitted for fellowship and that self-control is a good thing, so that everything may be kept safe for you?
Or ought we to keep up this fellowship with some men and not with others? With whom, then? With those who keep it up on their side, or with those who violate it? And who violates it more than you, who lay down doctrines like these?
What was it, then, that woke Epicurus from his sleep and forced him to write what he wrote? What but the strongest thing in men — nature, which drags a man to her own will though he is unwilling and complaining? Since you think, she says, that there is no community among mankind, write this opinion down and leave it for others, and break your sleep for it, and by your own practice condemn your own opinions.
Shall we say that Orestes was driven by the Furies and roused out of his deep sleep — and that fiercer Furies and Pains did not rouse Epicurus and refuse to let him rest, but forced him to publish his own troubles, as madness and wine forced the priests of Cybele to publish theirs?
So strong and unconquerable is a man's nature. How can a vine be moved to behave like an olive tree, or an olive tree like a vine? It is impossible; it cannot even be imagined. So it is not possible for a man to lose the movements of a man completely — and even men who have been castrated cannot rid themselves of a man's desires. In the same way Epicurus cut away all the offices of a man, of a head of a household, of a citizen and of a friend; but he did not cut away human desires, because he could not — any more than the lazy Academics can throw away their own senses or blind them, though they have tried with all their might.
What a shameful thing it is, when a man has been given by nature measures and standards for knowing the truth, that he should not try to add to them and improve them, but do the exact opposite and try to take away and destroy whatever lets us discern the truth.
What do you say, philosopher? Piety and holiness — what do you take them to be? "If you like, I will prove that they are good things." Very well, prove it, so that our citizens may turn round and honour the divine and stop neglecting the things of highest value. "And do you have the proofs?" I have, and I am thankful for them.
"Well then, since you are so pleased with them, hear the opposite: that there are no gods, and that if there are, they take no care of men, and there is no fellowship between us and them; and that this piety and holiness people talk of is the lying of braggarts and sophists — or, certainly, of lawgivers, for the purpose of frightening wrongdoers and holding them back."
Well done, philosopher. You have done something for our citizens. You have brought all the young men round to contempt for things divine.
"What — does that not satisfy you? Learn now that justice is nothing, that self-respect is folly, that a father is nothing, a son nothing."
Well done, philosopher. Keep at it. Persuade the young men, so that we may have more people holding your opinions and saying what you say. It was from principles like these that our well-ordered states grew. Sparta was founded on these; Lycurgus fixed these opinions in the Spartans by his laws and his education — that slavery is no more shameful than honourable, and that the condition of free men is no more honourable than shameful; and it was from these opinions that the men who died at Thermopylae died. And what other opinions were they that made the Athenians leave their city?
And then the men who talk like this marry and have children, and busy themselves in public affairs, and get themselves made priests and interpreters. Of what? Of gods who do not exist. And they consult the priestess at Delphi so as to hear lies, and report the oracles to other people. Monstrous impudence and imposture.
Man, what are you doing? Refuting yourself every day? And will you not give up these chilly efforts? When you eat, where do you carry your hand — to your mouth or to your eye? When you wash, what do you get into? Do you ever call a pot a dish, or a ladle a spit?
If I were the slave of one of these men, even if I had to be flogged for it daily, I would torment him. If he said, "Boy, throw some olive oil in the bath," I would take fish pickle and pour it over his head. "What is this?" he would say. An impression came to me, I swear by your guardian spirit, that could not be told from oil and was exactly like it. "Bring me the barley drink," he says. I would fill a dish with sharp sauce and carry it to him. "Did I not ask for the barley drink?" Yes, master — this is the barley drink. "Take it and smell it; take it and taste it." And how do you know our senses do not deceive us?
If I had three or four fellow slaves of the same mind, I would drive him to hang himself in a rage, or else to change his opinion. As it is, these men make fun of us: they use everything nature gives, and destroy it in words.
Grateful men indeed, and modest, who if they do nothing else eat bread every day and still have the effrontery to say we do not know whether there is any Demeter, or her daughter Persephone, or any Pluto — to say nothing of their enjoying the night and the day, the seasons of the year, the stars, the sea, the land, and the cooperation of mankind, and not being moved in the least by any of it to give it any attention. They only want to belch out their little problem, and having exercised their stomachs, to go off to the baths.
But what they are going to say, and about what, and to whom, and what their hearers will learn from the talk — that they do not care about in the smallest degree. Nor whether some well-born young man, after hearing such talk, may take harm from it; nor whether, having taken harm, he may lose every seed of his own good nature. Nor whether we are helping an adulterer to be shameless in what he does; nor whether some public embezzler may find a clever excuse in these doctrines; nor whether another man who neglects his parents may be confirmed in his boldness by this teaching.
So what, in your view, is good or bad? This, or that?
Why should a man say anything more in answer to people like these, or give them any reason, or listen to any reason from them, or try to convince them? By Zeus, one might much sooner expect to change the minds of men who have lost all shame about sex than of men who have gone this deaf and this blind to their own troubles.
There are some things men admit readily and others they do not. Nobody will admit that he is a fool or that he lacks understanding; quite the contrary — you will hear every man saying, "I wish my luck were equal to my understanding."
But men readily admit that they are timid. "I am rather timid, I confess; but in other respects you will not find me a fool." A man will not readily admit that he lacks self-control, and that he is unjust he will not admit at all. He will certainly not admit that he is envious or a busybody. Most men will admit that they are soft-hearted.
What is the reason? The chief thing is inconsistency and confusion about good and evil. But different men have different reasons, and in general they will not admit at all what they take to be shameful. They suppose timidity is a mark of a good disposition, and so is pity; but stupidity they take to be the absolute mark of a slave. And they will not admit at all the faults that are offences against society.
With most errors, the reason they are brought to admit them is that they imagine there is something involuntary in them, as with timidity and pity. And if a man does admit to a lack of self-control, he pleads love as his excuse, as though it were involuntary. But men do not imagine injustice to be involuntary at all. In jealousy too, they suppose, there is something involuntary, and so they admit to jealousy as well.
Living among men as confused as this, then — so ignorant of what they are saying, and of what evils they have and have not, and where they came from and how they are to be rid of them — I think it worth a man's trouble to keep watch on himself constantly and ask: am I one of them too? What do I imagine about myself? How am I conducting myself? Am I conducting myself as a sensible man? As a self-controlled man? Do I ever say this — that I have been taught to be ready for whatever may happen?
Have I the consciousness a man who knows nothing ought to have, that I know nothing? Do I go to my teacher as men go to an oracle, prepared to obey? Or do I go to school like a snivelling boy, to learn some history and understand books I did not understand before, and, if it turns out that way, to explain them to other people too?
Man, you have had a fight at home with a wretched slave, you have turned the household upside down, you have frightened the neighbours — and then you come to me as though you were a wise man, and take your seat and pass judgment on how I explained some word, and on how I babbled whatever came into my head.
You come full of envy and humbled, because you bring nothing from home; and you sit through the discussion thinking about nothing but how your father and your brother feel about you. "What are they saying about me back there? They think I am doing well now; they are saying he will come back knowing everything. I wish I could learn it all before I go back — but that takes a lot of work, and nobody sends me anything, and the baths at Nicopolis are filthy. Everything is bad at home and bad here."
And then they say nobody gets any profit from the school. Why — who comes to the school? Who comes for the purpose of being improved? Who comes to hand over his judgments to be cleaned? Who comes to learn what he lacks?
Why be surprised, then, if you carry away from the school exactly what you brought into it? You do not come to lay your principles aside, or correct them, or take on others in their place. Nothing of the kind. What you look to instead is whether you already have what you came for.
You want to prattle about theorems? Well then — do you not become a greater trifler? Do your little theorems not give you some opportunity for showing off? You solve trick syllogisms. Do you not examine the premises of the syllogism called the Liar? Do you not examine hypothetical syllogisms? Then why are you still annoyed, if you get the things you came to the school for?
"Yes — but if my child dies, or my brother, or if I have to die or be racked, what good will these things do me?"
Well, is that what you came for? Is that what you sit beside me for? Did you ever light your lamp or stay awake for that? Or, when you went out to the walking-place, did you ever put up an impression you had been struck by instead of a syllogism, and go through it with your friends? Where? When?
And then you say theorems are useless. Useless to whom? To men who make bad use of them. Eye ointment is not useless to men who use it as they should and when they should. Hot compresses are not useless. Dumbbells are not useless — but they are useless to some men and useful to others.
If you ask me now whether syllogisms are useful, I shall say they are, and prove it if you like.
"And how are they going to be useful to me?"
Man, did you ask whether they are useful to you, or whether they are useful in general? Let a man with dysentery ask me whether vinegar is useful; I shall say it is. "Will it be useful to me, then?" I shall say: no. First get the discharge stopped and the ulcers closed.
And you, gentlemen — first cure your ulcers and stop your discharge. Get your mind quiet, bring it into the school free of distraction, and then you will know what power reason has.
Whatever a man applies himself to seriously, he naturally loves. Do men apply themselves seriously to things that are bad? Not at all. To things that do not concern them in any way? Not to those either. So it remains that they apply themselves seriously only to things that are good; and if they apply themselves seriously to them, they love them too.
So whoever understands what good is can also know how to love. But the man who cannot tell good from bad, and cannot tell what is neither good nor bad from either — how can he have the power of loving? To love, then, is in the power of the wise alone.
"How can that be?" a man may say. "I am a fool, and I love my child all the same."
I am surprised that you have begun by admitting you are a fool. What are you lacking? Can you not use your senses? Do you not tell one impression from another? Do you not use food that suits your body, and clothing, and a house? Why do you admit you are a fool, then?
In truth it is because you are often thrown by impressions and perplexed by them, and their power of persuasion often beats you; and sometimes you think these same things good, and then bad, and finally neither; and in short you grieve, fear, envy, are disturbed, are changed about. That is why you confess you are a fool.
And are you not changeable in loving too? Wealth and pleasure — in a word, things themselves — do you not think them good sometimes and bad at others? And do you not think the same men good at one moment and bad at another? Do you not feel friendly toward them at one time and hostile at another? Do you not praise them at one time and blame them at another?
"Yes, I have these feelings too."
Well then: do you think a man who has been deceived about somebody is that person's friend? "Certainly not." And a man who chooses somebody for a friend and is of a changeable disposition — has he good will toward him? "He has not." And a man who abuses somebody now and admires him later? "He has no good will either."
Well then, did you never see little dogs fondling each other and playing, so that you would say there is nothing more affectionate? But to learn what their friendship is worth, throw a bit of meat between them, and you will find out.
Throw a small estate between you and your son, and you will discover how soon he will want to bury you, and how soon you want your son dead. Then you will change your tune and say: what a son I have brought up. He has been wanting to bury me for a long time. Throw a pretty girl between you, and let the old man love her and the young one love her too. Let a little reputation come between, or dangers, and it will be just the same. You will say what Admetus' father said:
Life is sweet to you: and why not to your father?
Do you suppose Admetus did not love his own child when the boy was small? That he was not in agony when the child had a fever? That he did not often say, I wish I had the fever instead of the child? And then when the test came and was close at hand, see what words they use.
Were Eteocles and Polynices not sons of the same mother and the same father? Had they not been brought up together, lived together, drunk together, slept together, kissed each other often? So that if any man had seen them, I think, he would have laughed at the philosophers for the paradoxes they utter about friendship. But when a quarrel arose between them over the throne, like dogs over a bit of meat, see what they say:
Polynices: Where will you take your station before the towers? Eteocles: Why do you ask me that? Polynices: I will place myself opposite you and try to kill you. Eteocles: I want to do the same.
Those are the wishes they utter.
For do not be deceived: in general every creature is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest. Whatever seems to it to stand in the way of that interest — brother, father, child, the one it loves or the one who loves it — it hates, and shoves aside, and curses. Its nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest; that is father and brother and kinsman and country and God to it. And so when the gods look to us like an obstacle to it, we abuse them and throw down their statues and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of Asclepius burned when his dear friend died.
So if a man puts his interest and his holiness and his goodness and his country and his parents and his friends all in the same place, then all of them are safe. But if he puts his interest in one place and his friends and his country and his family and justice itself in another, all these give way, borne down by the weight of interest.
For wherever the I and the Mine are put, that is the way the creature must lean. If they are in the flesh, the governing power is there; if in the will, it is there; if in externals, it is there. So if I am where my will is, then and only then shall I be the friend I ought to be, and the son, and the father — because it will then be in my interest to keep the character of a man who is trustworthy, self-respecting, patient, restrained, ready to help, observing my relations toward everyone. But if I put myself in one place and honesty in another, then the doctrine of Epicurus grows strong, which says either that there is no such thing as honesty, or that it is whatever opinion holds it to be.
It was through this ignorance that the Athenians and the Spartans quarrelled, and the Thebans with both; and the great king with Greece, and the Macedonians with both; and the Romans with the Getae. And earlier still the Trojan war happened for the same reasons. Paris was the guest of Menelaus, and if anybody had seen how friendly they were, he would not have believed a man who told him they were not friends. But a bit of meat was thrown between them — a handsome woman — and war came out of it.
So now, when you see brothers who seem to be friends and of one mind, do not conclude anything about their friendship from that, not even if they swear to it and say it is impossible for them ever to be parted. The governing part of a bad man cannot be trusted; it is insecure, it has no fixed rule to steer by, and it is overpowered now by one impression and now by another.
Do not examine what other men examine — whether they were born of the same parents and brought up together and under the same tutor. Examine this only: where they put their interest, in externals or in the will. If in externals, do not call them friends, any more than you would call them trustworthy or steady or brave or free. Do not even call them men, if you have any judgment.
For it is no principle of human nature that makes men bite one another and abuse one another and occupy waste places or public squares as if they were mountains, and in the law courts put on the performance of robbers; nor that makes them intemperate, adulterers, corrupters; nor that makes them do anything else men do against each other — nothing but this one opinion, that they place themselves and their interests among the things outside the will.
But if you hear that these men truly think the good is only where the will is and where impressions are rightly used, then do not trouble yourself about whether they are father and son, or brothers, or have been companions for a long time. Once you have established that one thing, declare confidently that they are friends, as you declare that they are trustworthy and just. For where else is friendship but where there is good faith and self-respect, and a sharing of honest things and of nothing else?
"But so-and-so treated me with regard all these years — did he not love me?" How do you know, slave, whether he regarded you as he regards the sponge he wipes his shoes with, or the way he takes care of his beast? How do you know whether, when you have stopped being useful as a pot, he will not throw you out like a broken dish?
"But this woman is my wife, and we have lived together so long." And how long did Eriphyle live with Amphiaraus, and bear him children, and many of them? But a necklace came between them. And what is a necklace? It is the opinion about such things. That was the brutish principle; that was what broke the friendship of husband and wife apart; that was what would not let the wife be a wife or the mother be a mother.
So let every man among you who has seriously resolved either to be a friend himself or to have another man as a friend cut these opinions out, hate them, and drive them out of his soul. And then, first of all, he will not reproach himself, or be at odds with himself, or change his mind, or torture himself. And in the second place, to another man like himself he will be altogether and completely a friend. And with a man unlike himself he will be patient, kind, gentle, ready to pardon him for his ignorance and for being mistaken in the greatest matters; but he will be harsh to nobody, being thoroughly convinced of Plato's doctrine that every mind is deprived of truth unwillingly.
If you cannot do that, you can still do everything else that friends do — drink together, lodge together, sail together. You may even be born of the same parents; so are snakes. But neither they nor you will be friends, so long as you keep these brutish and accursed opinions.
Every man reads a book with more pleasure, or at least more easily, if it is written in a finer hand. So every man will also listen more readily to what is spoken, if it is put in fitting and becoming words. We must not say, then, that there is no such thing as a capacity for expression. To say so is the mark of an irreverent man, and of a cowardly one as well.
Of an irreverent man, because he undervalues the gifts that come from God — as if he were doing away with the usefulness of sight or hearing. Has God given you eyes for nothing? Has he put into them for nothing a spirit so strong and so cunningly contrived that it reaches a long way off and shapes the forms of what is seen? What messenger is so swift and so watchful? And has he made the air in between so efficient and so elastic for nothing, that vision passes through it when it is set moving? And has he made light for nothing, without which nothing else would be of any use?
Man, be neither ungrateful for these gifts nor forgetful of the things that are better than they are. Give thanks to God for sight and hearing, and indeed for life itself and the things that support it — for dried fruits, for wine and oil. But remember that he has given you something better than all of them: the power of using them, testing them, and estimating what each is worth.
For what is it that gives you information about each of these powers, and what each is worth? Is it the capacity itself? Did you ever hear the capacity of sight say anything about itself? Or hearing? Or wheat, or barley, or a horse, or a dog? No: they are appointed as servants and slaves to serve the capacity that has the power of using impressions.
And if you enquire what each thing is worth, whom do you enquire of? Who answers you? How can any other capacity be more powerful than this one, which uses the others as its servants and tests each of them itself and pronounces on them? Which of them knows what it is itself, and what it is worth? Which of them knows when it ought to employ itself and when not?
What is the capacity that opens and shuts the eyes, and turns them away from things they ought not to be applied to, and applies them to others? Is it the capacity of sight? No — it is the will. What capacity closes and opens the ears? What makes them curious and enquiring, or on the other hand unmoved by what is said? Is it hearing? It is nothing but the will.
Here is a capacity standing among all the others, which are blind and dumb and unable to see anything except the very acts they are appointed to in order to serve it — and this one alone sees sharply and sees what each of the rest is worth. Will this capacity tell us that something else is best, and not itself?
And what else does the eye do, when it is opened, but see? But whether we ought to look at a certain man's wife, and in what manner — who tells us that? The will. And whether we ought to believe what is said or not; and if we do believe it, whether we ought to be moved by it — who tells us? Is it not the will?
And this capacity of speaking and of ornamenting words, if there really is any such special capacity — what else does it do, when there happens to be talk about something, than ornament the words and arrange them, as hairdressers arrange hair? But whether it is better to speak or keep silent, and better to speak this way or that, and whether this is becoming or not, and the right moment for each and the use of it — what tells us that but the will? Would you have it come forward and condemn itself?
What then? the will says: if that is how things stand, can the servant be superior to the one it serves? Can the horse be superior to the rider, or the dog to the huntsman, or the instrument to the musician, or the servants to the king?
What is it that makes use of the rest? The will. What takes care of everything? The will. What destroys the whole man — sometimes by starvation, sometimes by hanging, sometimes by a cliff? The will. Is anything in men stronger than this, then? And how can things that are subject to restraint be stronger than what is not?
What things are naturally formed to block sight? Both the will and things outside the will. It is the same with hearing, and the same with speaking. But what has a natural power of blocking the will? Nothing outside the will — only the will itself, when it is twisted. And that is why the will alone is vice, or alone is virtue.
Then, being so great a capacity and set over all the rest, let it come forward and tell us that the most excellent of all things is the flesh. Not even if the flesh itself declared it was the most excellent would anybody put up with hearing it say so.
But what is it, Epicurus, that pronounces this? What wrote about the End of our being, and about the Nature of Things, and about the Standard of truth? What made you grow a beard? What wrote, as it was dying, that it was spending its last day, and a happy one? Was that the flesh, or the will? Then do you admit that you possess something superior to it — and are you not mad? Are you really so blind and so deaf?
What of it, then? Does anybody despise the other capacities? I should hope not. Does anybody say there is no use or excellence in the capacity for speaking? I should hope not. That would be foolish, irreverent, ungrateful toward God.
A man gives each thing its due value. There is some use in a donkey, but not as much as in an ox. There is use in a dog, but not as much as in a slave. There is use in a slave, but not as much as in citizens; and use in citizens, but not as much as in magistrates. And because some things are superior we must not undervalue the use the others have.
There is a certain value in the power of speaking, but not as great as in the power of the will. So when I talk like this, let nobody think I am asking you to neglect the power of speaking — any more than I ask you to neglect your eyes, or your ears, or your hands or feet, or your clothes and shoes.
But if you ask me what is the most excellent thing of all, what must I say? I cannot say the power of speaking. I must say the power of the will, when it is straight. For it is this that uses the other, and all the rest, great and small. When the will is set straight, a man who was not good becomes good; and when it fails, a man becomes bad. It is through this that we are unlucky and that we are lucky, that we blame one another and are pleased with one another. In a word, it is this which, neglected, makes unhappiness, and which, carefully looked after, makes happiness.
But to do away with the capacity of speaking and say that there is no such thing in reality is the act not only of a man ungrateful to those who gave it, but of a cowardly man. Such a person seems to me to be afraid that if there is any such capacity we shall not be able to despise it.
It is the same with men who say there is no difference between beauty and ugliness. Then a man would be affected in the same way by the sight of Thersites and the sight of Achilles; in the same way by Helen and by any other woman. These are stupid, boorish notions, the notions of men who do not know the nature of each thing but are afraid that if a man sees the difference he will be seized and carried off, beaten, on the spot.
But this is the great thing: to leave each thing the capacity it has, and, leaving it that, to see what the capacity is worth; and to learn what is the most excellent thing of all, and to pursue that always, and be diligent about it, counting everything else of secondary value in comparison — while still, as far as we can, not neglecting those other things. We must take care of the eyes too, not as being the most excellent thing, but for the sake of the most excellent thing, since that will not be in its true natural condition unless it uses the other capacities rightly and prefers some things to others.
And what usually happens? Men behave like a traveller on his way home who comes to a good inn and, finding it pleasant, stays there. Man, you have forgotten your purpose. You were not travelling to this inn; you were passing through it. "But it is a pleasant inn." And how many other inns are pleasant? How many meadows are pleasant? Yet only to pass through. Your purpose is to get back to your own country, to relieve your family's anxiety, to do a citizen's duties, to marry, to have children, to hold the usual offices. You did not come to pick out the pleasanter places, but to live in the place where you were born and were made a citizen.
Something of the kind happens in the matter we are considering. Since it is by speech and the sort of instruction you get here that you must advance toward perfection, and clean your will, and correct the capacity that uses impressions; and since the teaching of theorems must be done in a certain style, with a certain variety and sharpness — some men are captivated by these very things and stay among them. One is captivated by the expression, another by syllogisms, another by sophisms, another by some other inn of the kind; and there they stay and waste away, as though among the Sirens.
Man, your business was to make yourself capable of using in line with nature the impressions put before you; not to be frustrated in your desires; not to fall into what you would avoid in your avoidances; never to be out of luck, as one might say, and never to have bad luck; to be free, unblocked, uncompelled, fitting yourself to the administration of Zeus and obeying it, well satisfied with it, blaming nobody, charging nobody with fault, able to say these lines with your whole soul:
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny,
And with that purpose in front of you, if some little turn of phrase pleases you, or some theorems please you, do you settle down among them and choose to live there, forgetting what is at home? And do you say, "These things are fine"? Who says they are not fine — but only as a road home, as inns are.
What stops you being an unlucky man even if you speak like Demosthenes? What stops you, if you can resolve syllogisms like Chrysippus, from being wretched, from grieving, from envying — in a word, from being disturbed and unhappy? Nothing.
So you see that these were inns, worth nothing, and that the purpose set before you was something else. When I talk like this to some people they think I am rejecting care about speaking, or care about theorems. I am not rejecting the care. I am rejecting the settling down among these things forever and putting our hopes in them. If a man does harm to his hearers by this teaching, count me too among the men who do that harm; for when I see one thing that is most excellent and supreme, I am not able to say that something else is, in order to please you.
A certain person said to him: "I have often wanted to hear you, and I came to you, and you never gave me any answer. Now, if it is possible, I beg you to say something to me."
Epictetus said: Do you think that as there is an art in everything else, so there is an art in speaking, and that a man who has the art will speak skilfully and a man who has not will speak unskilfully?
"I do think so."
Then a man who benefits himself by speaking and is able to benefit others will be speaking skilfully; and a man who is damaged by speaking and damages others will be unskilled in this art? And you can find that some men are damaged by speaking and others benefited.
And are all who listen benefited by what they hear? Or will you find that among them too some are benefited and some damaged?
"There are both among these as well," he said.
Then in this case too, those who listen skilfully are benefited and those who listen unskilfully are damaged. He agreed.
Is there an art in listening, then, as there is in speaking?
"It seems so."
If you like, look at it this way as well. The practice of music — whom does it belong to? A musician. And the proper making of a statue — whom does that belong to? A sculptor. And looking at a statue skilfully: does that seem to you to need no art at all?
"That needs art too."
Then if speaking properly is the business of a man with the skill, do you see that listening with benefit is the business of a man with the skill as well?
Now as to speaking and listening perfectly and usefully, let us say nothing more for the present, if you please; we are both a long way from anything of that kind. But I think every man will grant this much: that a man who is going to listen to philosophers needs some amount of practice in listening. Is it not so?
Tell me, then, what I should talk to you about. What subject are you able to listen to?
"Good and evil."
Good and evil in what? In a horse? "No." In an ox? "No." In what, then? In a man? "Yes."
Do we know, then, what a man is? What notion we have of him? Have our ears had any practice at all in this matter? Do you understand what nature is? Can you follow me at all when I say I shall use demonstration on you? How could you? Do you understand this very thing — what a demonstration is, or how anything is demonstrated, or by what means? Or what things resemble demonstration and are not demonstration? Do you know what is true and what is false? What follows from a thing, and what is inconsistent with it or out of keeping with it?
But am I to stir you up to philosophy — and how? Shall I show you the inconsistency in most men's opinions, which is why they differ about good and evil and about what is profitable and unprofitable, when you do not know this very thing, what inconsistency is?
Show me what I shall accomplish by talking to you. Rouse my inclination to do it. When suitable grass is put in front of a sheep, it stirs the sheep's inclination to eat; but put a stone or a piece of bread in front of it and it will not be stirred to eat. In the same way there are natural inclinations in us to speak, when the listener turns out to be somebody, when he stirs us himself. But when he sits beside us like a stone or like grass, how can he rouse a man's desire to speak?
Does the vine say to the farmer, "Take care of me"? No: by showing in itself that it will be profitable to the farmer if he does take care of it, it invites him to take care. When children are attractive and lively, whom do they not invite to play with them and crawl about with them and lisp with them? But who is eager to play with a donkey, or to bray with it? Because it is small, it is still only a little donkey.
"Why do you say nothing to me, then?"
I can only say this to you: that a man who does not know who he is, or what he exists for, or what this world is, or whom he shares it with; who does not know what things are good and bad, beautiful and ugly; who understands neither argument nor demonstration, and does not know what is true and what is false and cannot tell them apart — such a man will neither desire nor turn away nor move toward anything according to nature, nor intend, nor assent, nor dissent, nor suspend judgment. To put it in a few words, he will go about deaf and blind, thinking he is somebody when he is nobody.
Is this something new? Has it not been the case ever since the human race existed that all errors and misfortunes have come out of this ignorance?
Why did Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel with each other? Was it not through not knowing what is profitable and what is not? Does the one not say it is profitable to give Chryseis back to her father, and the other say it is not? Does the one not say he ought to take somebody else's prize, and the other that he ought not? Did they not, for these reasons, forget both who they were and what they had come there for?
Man, what did you come for? To get mistresses, or to fight? "To fight." With whom — the Trojans or the Greeks? "The Trojans." Then do you leave Hector alone and draw your sword on your own king?
And you, most excellent sir: do you neglect a king's duties, you who are the people's guardian and have such cares on you? Are you quarrelling over a girl with the most warlike of your allies, whom you ought to be taking care of and protecting by every means? Do you make yourself worse than a well-behaved priest who treats these fine gladiators with all respect?
Do you see what ignorance of what is profitable does?
"But I am rich too." Are you richer than Agamemnon? "But I am handsome too." Are you handsomer than Achilles? "But I have beautiful hair as well." Did Achilles not have more beautiful hair, and golden? And he did not comb it elegantly or dress it. "But I am strong too." Can you lift as great a stone as Hector or Ajax? "But I am well-born as well." Is your mother a goddess? Is your father sprung from Zeus? And what good did any of that do him, when he sat weeping over a girl? "But I am an orator." And was he not? Do you not see how he handled the most skilful of the Greeks in speaking, Odysseus and Phoenix, and stopped their mouths?
That is all I have to say to you — and I say even this unwillingly. Why? Because you have not roused me. What am I to look to in order to be roused, as men who know horses are roused by a fine one? To your body? You treat it disgracefully. To your clothes? They are luxurious. To your behaviour, to your look? They are as good as nothing.
When you want to listen to a philosopher, do not say to him, "You tell me nothing." Only show yourself worth being spoken to, fit to be spoken to — and you will see how you move the speaker.
When one of the men present said, "Convince me that logic is necessary," he answered:
Do you want me to prove it to you?
"Yes."
Then I shall have to use a demonstrative form of argument.
This was granted.
And how will you know whether I am cheating you with my argument?
The man had nothing to say.
Do you see, said Epictetus, that you are admitting logic is necessary yourself — since without it you cannot even know this much, whether logic is necessary or not?
Every error contains a contradiction. Since the man who goes wrong does not want to go wrong but to be right, plainly he is not doing what he wants.
What does the thief want to do? What is in his own interest. So if the theft is not in his interest, he is not doing what he wants.
Now every rational soul is by nature offended by contradiction; and so long as it does not see the contradiction, nothing stops it doing contradictory things. But once it does see the contradiction, it must necessarily back away from it, exactly as a man must dissent from a falsehood once he sees the thing is false — while as long as the falsehood does not appear to him, he assents to it as true.
So the man who is strong in argument, and has the power of urging others on and refuting them, is the man who can show each person the contradiction he is going wrong through, and prove clearly that he is not doing what he wants and is doing what he does not want. Show a man that, and he will withdraw from what he is doing of his own accord; and as long as you do not show it, do not be surprised if he keeps on. He does what he does because it looks to him like the right thing.
That is why Socrates, trusting to this power, used to say: I am not in the habit of calling any other witness to what I say. I am always satisfied with the man I am arguing with; I ask him for his opinion and call him as my witness, and though he is only one man, he does instead of all of them.
For Socrates knew what moves a rational soul: it is like a pair of scales, and then it must tip, whether it chooses to or not. Show the rational governing part a contradiction and it will back away from it. And if you do not show it, blame yourself rather than the man who is not convinced.
A young man who studied rhetoric came to see Epictetus with his hair done more carefully than usual and the rest of him dressed up. Epictetus said:
Tell me whether you do not think that some dogs are beautiful and some horses, and so with all the other animals.
"I do think so," the young man replied.
And are some men beautiful too, and others ugly?
"Certainly."
Now do we call each of them beautiful in the same kind for the same reason, or is each beautiful for something of its own? You can judge the matter this way. Since we see that a dog is naturally made for one thing and a horse for another and a nightingale, say, for another still, we may declare quite properly, in general, that each of them is beautiful when it is at its best according to its own nature. But since the nature of each is different, each of them seems to me to be beautiful in a different way. Is it not so?
He agreed that it was.
Then what makes a dog beautiful makes a horse ugly, and what makes a horse beautiful makes a dog ugly — if it is true that their natures are different.
"It seems so."
I think what makes a champion in the all-in fight beautiful makes a bad wrestler and a completely ridiculous runner; and a man who is beautiful for the pentathlon is very ugly for wrestling.
"That is so," he said.
Then what makes a man beautiful? Is it the same sort of thing that makes a dog or a horse beautiful in its kind?
"It is," he said.
And what makes a dog beautiful? Having the excellence of a dog. And a horse? Having the excellence of a horse. And what makes a man beautiful? Is it not having the excellence of a man?
So if you want to be beautiful, young man, work at this — at acquiring human excellence.
And what is that? Notice whom you praise, when you praise people without partiality: do you praise the just or the unjust? The just. The moderate or the immoderate? The moderate. The self-controlled or the uncontrolled? The self-controlled.
So if you make yourself such a man, you will know you are making yourself beautiful; and so long as you neglect these things you must be ugly, however much you contrive to look beautiful.
Beyond that I do not know what to say to you. If I say what I think, I shall offend you, and you will perhaps leave the school and not come back. And if I do not say what I think, look what I shall be doing: you come to me to be improved, and I improve you not at all; you come to me as to a philosopher, and I say nothing to you as a philosopher. And how cruel it is to you, to leave you uncorrected.
If you ever afterwards come to your senses, you will blame me with good reason and say: "What did Epictetus see in me? He saw me in such a state, coming to him in such a scandalous condition, and neglected me and never said a word. Did he despair of me so completely? Was I not young? Was I not able to listen to reason? How many other young men at that age make plenty of mistakes like it? I hear that a certain Polemo went from being a thoroughly dissolute youth to a great change. Well, suppose he did not think I would be a Polemo — he might at least have put my hair right, he might have stripped off my ornaments, he might have stopped me plucking the hair off my body. But when he saw me dressed like — what shall I call it? — he kept silent."
I do not say like what; but you will say it when you come to your senses, and know what it is and what sort of men dress that way.
If you bring that charge against me hereafter, what defence shall I make? Shall I say the man will not be persuaded by me? Was Laius persuaded by Apollo? Did he not go off and get drunk and pay no attention to the oracle? And did Apollo refuse to tell him the truth for that reason? I do not know whether you will be persuaded by me or not; but Apollo knew perfectly well that Laius would not be persuaded, and spoke all the same.
And why did he speak? I answer: why is he Apollo? Why does he deliver oracles? Why has he set himself up in that place as a prophet and a source of truth, for the whole world to come to? And why are the words "Know yourself" written in front of the temple, though nobody takes any notice of them?
Did Socrates persuade all his hearers to take care of themselves? Not a thousandth part of them. But all the same, having been put in that position by the deity, as he says himself, he never left it. And what does he say even to his judges? "If you acquit me on condition that I stop doing what I do now, I will not agree, and I will not stop. I shall go up to young men and old, and, to put it plainly, to every man I meet, and ask the questions I ask now; and I shall do it most of all to you, my fellow citizens, because you are more closely related to me."
Are you so inquisitive, Socrates, and such a busybody? What business is it of yours how we behave? And what is this you are saying? "You are a member of the same community and the same family, and you neglect yourself, and show yourself a bad citizen to the state, a bad relation to your relations, a bad neighbour to your neighbours."
And who are you, then?
Here it is a great thing to say: I am the man whose duty it is to take care of men. It is not every little heifer that dares to face a lion; but if the bull comes up and faces him, say to the bull, if you like, "And who are you? What business have you here?"
Man, in every kind something is produced that excels — among oxen, among dogs, among bees, among horses. Do not say to the one that excels, "And who are you?" If you do, it will find a voice somehow and say: I am the sort of thing the purple is in a garment. Do not expect me to be like the rest, and do not blame my nature for having made me different from other men.
What of it? Am I such a man? Certainly not. And are you the sort of man who can listen to the truth? I wish you were. But since I have in a way been sentenced to wear a white beard and a cloak, and you come to me as to a philosopher, I will not treat you cruelly, nor as though I despaired of you. I will say:
Young man, whom do you want to make beautiful? First know who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly. You are a human being; that is, a mortal creature with the power of using impressions rationally. And what does "rationally" mean? In line with nature, and completely.
So what do you have that is your own? Is it the animal part? No. The fact that you are mortal? No. The power of using impressions? No. What you have as your own is reason. Adorn that and make that beautiful — and leave your hair to the one who made it as he chose.
Come: what other names have you? Are you a man or a woman? A man. Then adorn yourself as a man, not as a woman. A woman is naturally smooth and delicate, and if she has a great deal of hair on her body she is a freak and is put on show at Rome among the freaks. And in a man it is monstrous not to have hair; if he has none by nature, he is a freak. But if he cuts his hair off and plucks it out, what are we to do with him? Where shall we exhibit him? Under what label shall we put him on show? "I will exhibit to you a man who would rather be a woman than a man." What a terrible sight. There is nobody who will not wonder at such a notice.
Indeed I think the men who pluck their hair out do it without knowing what they are doing. Man, what fault do you find with your nature? That it made you a man? Then ought nature to have made every human creature a woman? And what advantage would you have got out of adorning yourself in that case? Whom would you have adorned yourself for, if every human creature were a woman?
But you are not pleased with the business. Then set to work on the whole of it. Take away — what is it called? — the thing that causes the hair. Make yourself a woman in every respect, so that we are not left guessing. Do not make one half a man and the other half a woman.
Whom do you want to please? Women? Then please them as a man. "But they like smooth men." Will you not go and hang yourself? And if women took their pleasure in men who let themselves be used that way, would you become one? Is this your business? Is this what you were born for — that dissolute women should take pleasure in you?
Shall we make a man like you a citizen of Corinth, and perhaps a city magistrate, or chief of the young men, or a general, or superintendent of the games? And when you have taken a wife, do you mean to go on having your hair plucked out? To please whom, and for what? And when you have had children, will you bring them into the state as hair-pluckers too? A fine citizen, and senator, and public speaker. We ought certainly to pray for young men like that to be born among us and brought up.
Do not do it, I beg you by the gods, young man. But having once heard these words, go away and say to yourself: "Epictetus did not say this to me — how could he? Some kindly god said it through him. It would never have come into his head to say it, since he is not in the habit of talking that way to anybody. Come then, let us obey God, so that we may not be under his anger."
You say no. But if a crow signifies something to you by its croaking, it is not the crow that signifies but God through the crow. And if he signifies something through a human voice, will he not make the man say this to you, so that you may know the power of the divine — that he signifies to some men one way and to others another, and that about the greatest and chief matters he signifies through the noblest messenger?
What else does the poet mean:
For we ourselves had warned him, and had sent Hermes the sharp-eyed watcher, Argus' slayer: not to kill the husband, nor to wed the wife.
Was Hermes going to come down from heaven to say this to Aegisthus? And now the gods say this to you, and send the messenger, the slayer of Argus, to warn you not to twist what is already well arranged, and not to meddle with it, but to let a man be a man and a woman a woman, a handsome man be a handsome man and an ugly man an ugly man. For you are not flesh and hair: you are will. And if your will is beautiful, then you will be beautiful.
Up to now I have not dared to tell you that you are ugly, because I think you are readier to hear anything else than that. But see what Socrates says to Alcibiades, the most beautiful and blooming of men. "Try, then, to be beautiful." And what does he tell him? Dress your hair and pluck the hairs off your legs? Nothing of the kind. Adorn your will; get rid of your bad opinions.
And what about the body? Leave it as nature made it. Somebody else has looked after that; entrust it to him.
What then — is a man to go uncleaned? Certainly not. But clean what you are and what nature made you. A man should be clean as a man, a woman as a woman, a child as a child. You say no. Then let us pluck out the lion's mane too, so that he shall not go uncleaned, and the cock's comb, since he ought to be cleaned as well. Cleaned, yes — but as a cock, and the lion as a lion, and the hunting dog as a hunting dog.
There are three areas in which a man who intends to be wise and good has to train himself.
The first concerns desires and avoidances: that he may not fail to get what he desires, and may not fall into what he does not want. The second concerns impulses toward a thing and away from it, and in general doing what a man ought to do — that he may act in order, with reason, and not carelessly. The third concerns freedom from deception and rashness in judgment, and in general it concerns assent.
Of these, the chief and most urgent is the one dealing with the passions; for a passion is produced in no other way than by failing to get what one desires or falling into what one wants to avoid. This is what brings in disturbances, disorders, ill luck, misfortunes, griefs, lamentations and envy; this is what makes men envious and jealous; and these are the causes that make us unable even to listen to what reason tells us.
The second area concerns a man's duties. I ought not to be free of feeling like a statue: I ought to keep up my relations, natural and acquired, as a devout man, as a son, as a father, as a citizen.
The third is the one that concerns men who are already making progress. It concerns the security of the other two — so that not even in sleep shall any impression take us by surprise unexamined, nor in drink, nor in a black mood. This, it may be said, is beyond our power.
But the philosophers of today neglect the first and the second and busy themselves with the third: shifting arguments, conclusions drawn by questioning, hypotheses, liar-puzzles. A man engaged on such matters must take care not to be deceived, as the saying goes. Who must? The wise and good man.
So this is all you are short of? Have you successfully worked out the rest? Are you proof against deception in the matter of money? If you see a beautiful girl, do you stand up to the impression? If your neighbour is left an estate in a will, are you not annoyed? Is there nothing else you are short of now except unshakeable firmness of mind?
Wretch, you are hearing these very words in fear and anxiety that somebody may look down on you, asking what people are saying about you. And if a man comes and tells you that in a certain conversation, when the question was who is the best philosopher, somebody present said that a certain person was the leading one, then your little soul, which was a finger's length, stretches out to a yard. But if somebody else present says, "You are mistaken; that man is not worth listening to; what does he know? he has the first principles and nothing more" — then you are dumbfounded, you turn pale, you cry out at once, "I will show him who I am, that I am a great philosopher."
It is shown by these very things. Why do you want to show it by others?
Do you not know how Diogenes pointed out one of the sophists? By sticking out his middle finger. And then when the man went wild with rage, "That," said Diogenes, "is the man in question. I have pointed him out to you." For a man is not shown by pointing a finger at him, as a stone or a piece of wood is; when somebody shows a man's principles, then he shows him as a man.
Let us look at your principles too. Is it not plain that you set no value at all on your own will, and look outside yourself to things not in your power? What will so-and-so say? What will people think of you? Will you be reckoned a man of learning? Have you read Chrysippus, or Antipater? And if you have read Archedemus as well, then you have everything.
Why are you still uneasy in case you fail to show us who you are? Would you let me tell you what sort of man you have shown us you are? You have exhibited yourself as a mean fellow, a complainer, quick-tempered, cowardly, finding fault with everything, blaming everybody, never quiet, vain. That is what you have exhibited.
Go away now and read Archedemus. And then if a mouse drops down and makes a noise, you are a dead man. Such a death is waiting for you as came to — what was the man's name? — Crinis; and he too was proud, because he understood Archedemus.
Wretch, will you not let go of things that are no concern of yours at all? These things suit men who can learn them without being thrown — men who can say: "I am not subject to anger, or grief, or envy. I am not blocked, I am not restrained. What is left for me? I have leisure, I am at peace. Let us see how we must deal with shifting arguments; let us see how a man who has granted a hypothesis is not to be dragged into something absurd."
Such things belong to them. It is right for men who are doing well to light a fire and have dinner, and, if they like, to sing and dance too. But you come to me and hoist the sails when the ship is going down.
The material of the wise and good man is his own governing part, as the body is the material of the doctor and of the trainer who rubs men with oil, and the land is the material of the farmer. And the business of the wise and good man is to use impressions in line with nature.
Now just as it is the nature of every soul to assent to the true, to dissent from the false, and to hold back over what is uncertain, so it is its nature to be moved toward desiring the good and avoiding the bad, and to feel neither way about what is neither good nor bad.
A banker is not allowed to refuse Caesar's coin, nor is a greengrocer; show the coin and, willing or not, he must hand over what it buys. It is the same with the soul. When the good appears it draws the soul to itself at once; the bad repels it. The soul will never refuse a plain impression of the good, any more than men refuse Caesar's coin. On this principle every movement depends, of man and of God alike.
This is why the good is preferred to every family tie. There is no family tie between me and my father, but there is between me and the good.
"Are you so hard-hearted?"
Yes, because that is my nature, and this is the coin God has given me. If the good is something other than the beautiful and the just, then father goes, and brother, and country, and everything.
But am I to overlook my own good so that you may have it? Am I to give it up to you? Why? "I am your father." But you are not my good. "I am your brother." But you are not my good.
And if we put the good in the right direction of the will, then the very keeping up of the relations of life is a good, and a man who gives up any external thing gets what is good.
Your father takes your property. But he does not injure you. Your brother will have the larger part of the estate. Let him have as much as he likes. Will he have a larger share of self-respect, of good faith, of brotherly affection? Who is going to evict you from that property? Not even Zeus — because he did not choose to; he put it in my power and gave it to me exactly as he holds it himself, free from blocking, compulsion and obstruction.
Now when another man's currency is a different coin, then if you present that coin you get what it buys. Suppose a thieving proconsul comes into the province: what currency does he use? Silver. Show it to him and carry off what you like. Suppose an adulterer comes: what currency does he use? Young girls. Take the coin, a man says, and sell me the little thing. Hand it over, says the seller, and buy. Another is keen on boys. Give him the coin and take what you want. Another is fond of hunting: give him a fine horse or a dog. He may groan and complain, but he will sell you what you want for it. Somebody else compels him, from inside — the man who fixed that currency.
This above all is what a man should train himself against. As soon as you go out in the morning, examine every man you see and every man you hear, and answer as if to a question. What have you seen? A handsome man or woman. Apply the rule. Is this outside the will or inside it? Outside. Then take it away.
What have you seen? A man grieving over the death of a child. Apply the rule. Death is outside the will. Take it away.
Did the proconsul meet you? Apply the rule. What kind of thing is a proconsulship — outside the will or inside? Outside. Take that away too. It does not stand examination. Throw it away; it is nothing to you.
If we practised this and drilled ourselves in it every day from morning to night, something would actually get done. As it is, we are caught half asleep by every impression, and only in the school, if ever, are we roused a little. Then we go out, and if we see a man grieving we say, "He is finished." If we see a consul we say, "He is a happy man." If we see an exile we say, "Poor wretch." If we see a poor man we say, "Miserable creature — he has nothing to eat."
These are the bad opinions we ought to root out, and this is where all our effort should go. For what is weeping and lamenting? Opinion. What is bad luck? Opinion. What is civil strife, disagreement, blame, accusation, irreverence, empty talk? All of these are opinions and nothing else — opinions about things outside the will, as though those things were good and bad.
Let a man shift these opinions over to the things inside the will, and I will guarantee that he will be steady and constant, whatever the state of things around him.
The soul is like a dish of water, and impressions are like the ray of light falling on the water. When the water is disturbed the ray seems to be disturbed too, though it is not. So when a man is seized with dizziness, it is not the arts and the virtues that are thrown into confusion but the spirit they are impressed on; and if the spirit is restored to its settled state, they are restored too.
The governor of Epirus had shown his support for an actor in an unseemly way and had been publicly criticised for it. Afterwards he told Epictetus that he had been criticised and that he was annoyed with the men who criticised him. Epictetus said:
What harm were they doing? They were taking sides too, just as you were.
"But does anybody show his support like that?"
When they see you — their governor, a friend of Caesar and his deputy — showing your support like that, was it not to be expected that they would show theirs the same way? If it is not right to show it that way, then do not do it yourself; and if it is right, why are you angry when they follow your example?
Whom have the many to copy but you, who are their superiors? Whose example should they look to when they go to the theatre, if not yours? "See how Caesar's deputy behaves. He has shouted, so I shall shout too. He jumps up from his seat, so I shall jump up. His slaves are sitting all over the theatre calling out; I have no slaves, but I will shout for myself as loud as I can, as loud as all of them together."
So you ought to know, when you go into the theatre, that you go in as a rule and an example to the rest of how they should watch a performance.
Why did they criticise you, then? Because every man hates whatever gets in his way. They wanted one man crowned, you wanted another. They got in your way and you got in theirs. You turned out to be the stronger, and they did what they could — they criticised the thing that was blocking them.
What would you have, then? That you should do as you please and they should not even say what they please? What is surprising about it? Do farmers not abuse Zeus when he gets in their way? Do sailors not abuse him? Do people ever stop abusing Caesar? And what of it? Does Zeus not know? Is what is said not reported to Caesar? And what does Caesar do? He knows that if he punished everybody who abused him he would have nobody left to rule.
So when you go into the theatre you ought to say — not "Let Sophron be crowned", but this: "Come, let me keep my will in this matter in line with nature. No man is dearer to me than myself, so it would be ridiculous for me to be hurt in order that some actor may be crowned. Whom do I want to win the prize, then? The actor who does win it. And so the man I want to win will always win."
"But I want Sophron crowned." Hold as many games as you like in your own house — Nemean, Pythian, Isthmian, Olympian — and proclaim him the victor. But in public do not claim more than your share, and do not try to take for yourself what belongs to everybody. And if you will not agree to that, then put up with being abused: when you behave like the crowd, you put yourself on their level.
"I am ill here," said one of the pupils, "and I want to go home."
At home, I suppose, you were never ill? Do you not consider whether you are doing anything here that might be useful to the training of your will, so that it may be put right? Because if you are doing nothing toward that end, you came for nothing. Go away. Look after your business at home.
If your governing part cannot be kept in a condition that is in line with nature, your land can. You will be able to increase your money, look after your father in his old age, spend time in the marketplace, hold public office — and being a bad man, you will do badly at whatever else you have to do.
But if you understand yourself, and know that you are throwing away certain bad opinions and taking on others in their place; if you have shifted your way of life from the things outside your will to the things inside it; and if, when you ever say "Alas", you say it not on account of your father or your brother but on account of yourself — do you still plead your illness?
Do you not know that both illness and death must catch us doing something? The farmer while he is tilling, the sailor while he is at sea. What would you like to be doing when death catches you — since it must catch you doing something? If you can be doing anything better than this when it comes, do that.
For my part, I want to be caught by illness or death while I am looking after nothing except my own will: undisturbed, unblocked, uncompelled, and free. I want to be found practising these things, so that I can say to God:
Have I broken your commands in any way? Have I misused the powers you gave me? Have I misused my senses, or my preconceptions? Have I ever blamed you? Have I ever found fault with the way you run things? I have been ill, because it was your will, and so have others — but I was content to be ill. I have been poor, because it was your will — but I was content with that too. I have held no public office, because it was not your pleasure that I should; and I never wanted it. Did you ever see me look sour on that account? Have I not always come before you with a cheerful face, ready to do your commands and obey your signals? Is it your will now that I should leave this gathering of men? I go. I thank you with all my heart that you allowed me to join in this gathering of yours, and to see your works, and to follow the way you run things.
May death catch me thinking these thoughts, writing this, reading this.
"But my mother will not be there to hold my head when I am ill."
Then go to your mother — you are exactly the sort of person who needs his head held when he is ill.
"But at home I used to lie in a lovely bed."
Then go away to your bed. Indeed you are fit to lie in such a bed even when you are well. So do not miss out on what you can do there.
And what does Socrates say? As one man is pleased at improving his land and another at improving his horse, so I am pleased every day at noticing that I am getting better.
"Better at what — at using nice little phrases?" Man, do not say that. "At little points of theory?" What are you talking about? "And in fact I do not see what else philosophers spend their time on."
Does it seem nothing to you never to have found fault with anybody, God or man? To have blamed nobody? To carry the same face always, going out and coming in? That is what Socrates knew — and yet he never said he knew anything or taught anything. If any man asked him for nice little phrases or little theories, he would take him off to Protagoras or Hippias; and if a man came asking for greens, he would take him to the gardener.
So which of you has that purpose? If you really had it, you would be content in illness, and in hunger, and in death. And if any of you has ever been in love with a charming girl, he knows I am telling the truth.
Somebody asked how it was that, although reason is more cultivated now than it used to be, greater progress was made in earlier times.
In what respect, he answered, is it more cultivated now, and in what respect was the progress greater then? Because in whatever respect it is more cultivated now, in that respect the progress will be found now too.
At present it is cultivated for the purpose of resolving syllogisms, and progress is being made. In earlier times it was cultivated for the purpose of keeping the governing part in a condition in line with nature, and progress was made in that.
So do not mix up different things, and do not expect to make progress in one thing while you are labouring at another. But see whether any man among us who is intent on this — on keeping himself in a state that is in line with nature, and living that way always — fails to make progress. You will not find one.
The good man is unbeatable, because he does not enter a contest where he is not the stronger. If you want his land and everything on it, take the land; take his slaves, take his public office, take his poor body. But you will not make his desire fail of what it goes after, nor his avoidance fall into what he would escape. The only contest he enters is over things within the power of his will. How can he not be unbeatable?
Somebody asked what common sense is, and Epictetus replied: There is a kind of common hearing that only tells one vocal sound from another, while the hearing that tells musical sounds apart is not common but trained. In the same way there are certain things that men who are not altogether twisted see by the common notions everybody has. A mind constituted that way is called common sense.
It is not easy to encourage weak young men — no easier than holding soft cheese with a hook. But men with a good natural disposition cling to reason all the harder when you try to turn them away from it. This is why Rufus generally tried to discourage his pupils: he used it as a test of who had a good natural disposition and who had not. He used to say, "As a stone thrown upward will be brought down to earth by its own nature, so the man whose mind is naturally good turns all the more toward what he is naturally inclined to, the harder you push him away."
The administrator came to visit him, and the man was an Epicurean. Epictetus said:
It is proper for us who are not philosophers to make enquiries of you who are — as men coming to a strange city make enquiries of the citizens, of people who know the place — about what the best thing in the world is, so that we too, having enquired, may go after what is best and look at it, as visitors do with the sights of a city.
That there are three things belonging to a man — soul, body, and externals — hardly anybody denies. It remains for you philosophers to answer which is best. What are we to tell people? Is the flesh the best? And was it for that that Maximus sailed as far as Cassiope in winter with his son, and went with him, so that his flesh might be gratified?
When the man said it was not, and added, "Far be it from him," Epictetus said: Is it not fitting, then, to be actively occupied with what is best?
"It is the most fitting thing of all."
Then what do we possess that is better than the flesh?
"The soul," he replied.
And the good things of the best — are they better, or the good things of the worse?
"The good things of the best."
And are the good things of the best within the power of the will or not?
"They are within it."
Then is the pleasure of the soul something within the power of the will?
"It is," he replied.
And what will this pleasure depend on? On itself? That cannot even be conceived. There must first exist a certain substance of the good, by getting which we shall feel pleasure in the soul.
He agreed to this as well.
Then what shall we depend on for this pleasure of the soul? If it depends on things of the soul, the substance of the good has been found: for good cannot be one thing and the thing we are rationally delighted by another; nor, if what comes first is not good, can what follows be good, since for the thing that follows to be good, the thing that comes first must be good.
But you would not say that, if you are in your right mind, since you would then be saying something inconsistent with Epicurus and with the rest of your doctrines. So it remains that the pleasure of the soul is the pleasure that comes from things of the body — and again that those bodily things must be what comes first, and the substance of the good.
So Maximus acted foolishly if he made that voyage for any reason but the flesh, that is, for the best. And a man acts foolishly if he keeps his hands off what belongs to others when he is a judge and able to take it.
But if you like, let us consider only this: how the thing may be done secretly and safely, so that nobody knows. For Epicurus himself does not declare stealing to be bad; he only admits that being caught is. And because there is no way to be secure against being caught, he says: do not steal.
But I tell you that if the stealing is done cleverly and carefully we shall not be caught. And besides, we have powerful friends in Rome, both men and women, and the Greeks are weak, and nobody will dare go up to Rome to complain. Why do you hold back from your own good? It is senseless, foolish. And even if you tell me you do hold back, I shall not believe you.
For as it is impossible to assent to what appears false, and to turn away from what appears true, so it is impossible to hold back from what appears good. And wealth is a good thing, and certainly the most efficient producer of pleasure. Why not acquire wealth? And why should we not seduce our neighbour's wife, if we can do it without being caught? And if the husband talks foolishly about it, why not throw him out of the house?
If you want to be the sort of philosopher you ought to be — a complete one, consistent with your own doctrines — this is how you must act. And if you will not, then you will be no different from us so-called Stoics: we too say one thing and do another. We talk about what is fine and do what is base. But you will be perverse in the opposite direction: teaching what is bad and practising what is good.
In God's name, do you imagine a city of Epicureans? "I do not marry." "Nor I — a man ought not to marry, nor have children, nor take part in public business."
What will happen, then? Where will the citizens come from? Who will bring them up? Who will be in charge of the young men, who will preside over the gymnasium? And what will the teacher teach them? What the Spartans were taught, or what the Athenians were taught?
Come, take a young man and bring him up according to your doctrines. The doctrines are bad, they undermine the state, they are ruinous to families, and they do not become women. Drop them, man.
You live in a chief city. It is your duty to hold office, to judge justly, to keep your hands off what belongs to others. No woman should look beautiful to you but your own wife, and no youth, and no silver vessel, and no gold one. Look for doctrines that are consistent with what I say, and by taking them for your guide you will hold back with pleasure from things that have such power to persuade us and overpower us.
But if, on top of the persuasive power of these things, we also invent a philosophy like this one, which helps push us toward them and strengthens us in that direction, what will the result be?
In a piece of chased metalwork, which is the better part — the silver or the workmanship? The substance of the hand is flesh; but the work of the hand is the leading thing.
So there are three kinds of duty as well: those directed toward a thing's existing at all; those directed toward its existing in a particular way; and third, the leading things themselves. And so in a man too we ought not to value the material, the poor flesh, but the leading things.
And what are those? Taking part in public business, marrying, having children, revering God, taking care of one's parents; and in general, having desires and avoidances and pursuits and refusals in the way we ought to have them, and according to our nature.
And how has nature constituted us? Free, noble, capable of shame. What other creature blushes? What other can receive the impression of shame? And we are so constituted that pleasure is made subordinate to these things, as a servant, an attendant, so that it may call out our activity and keep us steady in acts that are in line with nature.
"But I am rich and I need nothing."
Then why pretend to be a philosopher? Your gold and silver vessels are enough for you. What need have you of principles?
"But I am also a judge of the Greeks."
Do you know how to judge? Who taught you to know?
"Caesar wrote me a commission."
Let him write you a commission to judge music; what use will it be to you? And how did you become a judge anyway? Whose hand did you kiss — Symphorus' or Numenius'? Outside whose bedroom did you sleep? Whom did you send presents to? Do you not see, then, that being a judge is worth exactly as much as Numenius is?
"But I can throw any man I please into prison."
So you can a stone.
"But I can beat with sticks whoever I please."
So you can a donkey.
That is not governing men. Govern us as rational creatures. Show us what is good for us and we will follow it; show us what is bad for us and we will turn away from it. Make us imitators of yourself, as Socrates made men imitators of himself. He was a governor of men in the true sense: he made them submit their desires to him, and their avoidances, and their movements toward a thing and away from it.
"Do this. Do not do that. If you disobey, I will throw you into prison." That is not governing men as rational creatures. But I say: act as Zeus has ordained; and if you do not, you will feel the penalty, you will be punished. And what will the punishment be? Nothing but not having done your duty. You will lose the character of a man who is trustworthy, self-respecting, decent. Do not look for heavier penalties than those.
As we train ourselves against trick questions, so we ought to train ourselves daily against impressions; because impressions put questions to us too.
So-and-so's son has died. Answer: that is not within the power of the will; it is not an evil. A father has disinherited his son. What do you think of it? It is outside the power of the will; not an evil. Caesar has condemned somebody. Outside the power of the will; not an evil. The man is crushed by it. Being crushed depends on the will: that is an evil. He has borne the sentence bravely. That is within the power of the will: that is a good.
If we train ourselves this way we shall make progress, because we shall never assent to anything of which we have no impression we can properly take in.
Your son is dead. What has happened? Your son is dead. Nothing more? Nothing. Your ship is lost. What has happened? Your ship is lost. A man has been taken off to prison. What has happened? He has been taken off to prison. That he has come off badly in it — every man adds that out of his own opinion.
"But Zeus does not do right in these matters." Why? Because he has made you able to endure? Because he has made you great in spirit? Because he has taken from what happens to you the power of being an evil? Because it is in your power to be happy while you suffer what you suffer? Because he has opened the door for you when things do not please you? Man, go out, and stop complaining.
If you would like to know how the Romans feel about philosophers, listen to this. Italicus, who had the highest reputation among them, was once annoyed with his own friends while I was there, and said, as though he were suffering something unbearable: "I cannot stand it — you are killing me. You will turn me into that man there." And he pointed at me.
A man came to him who was going up to Rome about a lawsuit concerning his rank. Epictetus asked why he was going to Rome, and the man then asked what Epictetus thought about the business. Epictetus replied:
If you are asking me what you will do in Rome — whether you will win or lose — I have no rule about that. But if you ask me how you will fare, I can tell you: if your judgments are right, you will fare well; if they are false, you will fare badly. For in every man the cause of his acting is a judgment.
What was the reason you wanted to be elected governor of the Cnossians? Your judgment. What is the reason you are now going up to Rome? Your judgment. And going in winter, at danger and expense. "I have to go." What tells you that? Your judgment.
Then if judgments are the causes of every action, and a man has bad judgments, the effect will be of the same quality as the cause.
Well then, do we all have sound judgments — you and your opponent both? Then how do you differ? Or do you have sounder ones than he has? Why? You think so. And he thinks his are better. So do madmen. This is a bad test.
Show me instead that you have made some enquiry into your own judgments and taken some trouble over them. You are sailing to Rome now to become governor of the Cnossians, and you are not content to stay at home with the honours you already had; you want something greater and more conspicuous. So when did you ever make a voyage for the purpose of examining your own judgments and throwing out any bad ones? Whom did you go to for that? What time did you set aside for it? What age of your life?
Go over the times of your life on your own, if you are ashamed to do it in front of me. When you were a boy, did you examine your judgments? Did you not do then exactly as you do everything now? And when you had become a youth and were attending the teachers of rhetoric and practising rhetoric yourself, what did you imagine you were short of? And when you were a young man engaged in public business, pleading cases yourself and gaining a reputation, who seemed your equal then? And at what point would you have put up with any man examining you and showing that your judgments were bad?
So what do you want me to say to you?
"Help me in this business."
I have no rule for that. And if that is what you came to me for, you have not come to me as to a philosopher, but as to a greengrocer or a shoemaker.
Then what do philosophers have rules for? For this: that whatever happens, our governing part may be, and go on being, in line with nature. Does that seem a small thing to you?
"No — the greatest thing there is."
Well then: does it take only a short time? Can you snatch it up as you pass by? If you can, snatch it.
Then you will say: "I met Epictetus as I might meet a stone or a statue." You saw me, and that was all. But a man meets a man as a man when he learns his judgments and shows his own in return. Learn my judgments, show me yours, and then say that you have visited me. Let us examine each other. If I have a bad judgment, take it away; if you have one, show it to me. That is what meeting a philosopher means.
"Not at all: this is only a passing call, and while we are hiring the ship we can look in on Epictetus too. Let us see what he has to say." Then you go away and say: "Epictetus was nothing. He made grammatical mistakes and talked like a foreigner." What else did you come as, if not as judges?
Well — but somebody may say to me: if I attend to such matters as you do, I shall have no land, as you have none; no silver cups, as you have none; no fine cattle, as you have none.
Perhaps it is enough to answer: I have no need of such things. But you, who possess a great many things, have need of others; and whether you choose to admit it or not, you are poorer than I am.
"What do I need, then?"
What you have not got: steadiness, a mind in line with nature, freedom from being thrown about.
Whether I have a patron or not, what is that to me? But it is something to you. I am richer than you. I am not anxious about what Caesar will think of me. And so I flatter nobody. This is what I have instead of vessels of silver and gold. Your utensils are gold, but your talk, your judgments, your assents, your pursuits, your desires are earthenware.
And when I have these things in line with nature, why should I not spend my studies on reason as well? I have leisure; my mind is not pulled about. What shall I do, having nothing to distract me? What have I got that suits a man better than this?
When you have nothing to do you are disturbed; you go to the theatre, or wander about with no purpose. Why should a philosopher not work at improving his reason? You busy yourself with crystal vessels, I with the syllogism called the Liar; you with fluorspar vessels, I with the one called the Denying. To you everything you have looks small; to me everything I have looks great. Your desire cannot be satisfied; mine is satisfied already.
It is like children putting a hand into a narrow-necked jar to get figs and nuts. If they fill the hand they cannot get it out, and then they cry. Drop a few and you will get your hand out. And you — part with some of your desires. Do not desire many things, and you will have what you want.
When the need for each judgment arises, we ought to have it ready: at breakfast, the judgments that have to do with breakfast; in the bath, those that concern the bath; in bed, those that concern bed.
Let sleep not fall upon your weary eyes before you have gone over the day's acts: what was done wrong, what done, what left undone. Examine all of it from first to last; then blame what was amiss, and take joy in what was right.
And we ought to keep these lines in a way that lets us use them, not in a way that lets us recite them aloud, as men cry out "Hail, Apollo".
Again, in a fever we should have ready the judgments that concern fever; and we ought not, the moment the fever starts, to let go of everything and forget. A man with a fever may say: "If I do any more philosophy, let me be hanged. Wherever I go I have to look after this poor body, so that a fever may not come."
But what is doing philosophy? Is it not preparing yourself against what may happen? Do you not see that you are saying something of this kind: "If I go on preparing myself to bear what happens with patience, let me be hanged"? It is exactly as if a man gave up the all-in fight after taking a few blows. In that fight it is in our power to stop and take no more blows. But in this business, if we give up philosophy, what do we gain?
So what should a man say when something painful happens? This is what I trained for. This is what I disciplined myself for.
God says to you: give me proof that you have trained properly as an athlete, that you have eaten what you should have, that you have exercised, that you have obeyed your trainer. And then do you go weak when the moment for action comes?
Now is the time for the fever. Bear it well. Now is the time for thirst. Bear it well. Now is the time for hunger. Bear it well. Is it not in your power? Who is going to stop you? The doctor will stop you drinking, but he cannot stop you bearing thirst well; and he will stop you eating, but he cannot stop you bearing hunger well.
"But I cannot get on with my philosophical studies."
And what do you pursue them for? Slave, is it not so that you may be happy, so that you may be steady, so that you may be in a state that is in line with nature and live that way? What stops you, when you have a fever, from having your governing part in line with nature? Here is the proof of the thing; here is the test of the philosopher. This too is a part of life, like walking, like sailing, like travelling overland — and so is fever.
Do you read while you are walking? No. Nor do you while you have a fever. But if you walk well, you have everything that belongs to a man walking. And if you bear a fever well, you have everything that belongs to a man in a fever.
What is it to bear a fever well? Not to blame God or man; not to be crushed by what is happening; to expect death well and nobly; to do what has to be done. Not to be frightened by what the doctor says when he comes in — and not to be overjoyed if he says you are doing well. What good has he told you? And when you were healthy, what good was that to you? And even if he says you are in a bad way, do not lose heart.
For what is being ill? Is it that you are near the parting of soul and body? What harm is there in that? If you are not near it now, will you not be near it later? Is the world going to be turned upside down when you die?
Why do you flatter the doctor, then? Why do you say, "If you please, master, I shall get well"? Why do you give him the chance to raise his eyebrows at you? Do you not value a doctor as you value a shoemaker measuring your foot, or a carpenter building your house? Treat the doctor as concerned with a body that is not yours, and is by nature dead already.
A man with a fever has the chance to do this; and if he does it, he has what belongs to him. It is not a philosopher's business to look after externals — not his wine, nor his oil, nor his poor body — but his own governing power. And how must he treat externals? So far as not to be careless about them.
Where is there reason for fear, then? Where is there any longer reason for anger, or for fear about what belongs to others, about things of no value?
We ought to have these two principles ready. First: that nothing is good or bad except the will. Second: that we ought not to lead events but to follow them. "My brother ought not to have treated me like that." No — but he will answer for that; and however he behaves, I will conduct myself toward him as I ought. That is my own business; the other is somebody else's. Nobody can stop me in mine; the other thing can be blocked.
There are certain penalties fixed, as if by law, for men who disobey the divine administration. Whoever thinks anything good except what depends on the will — let him envy, let him crave, let him flatter, let him be thrown about. Whoever thinks anything else evil — let him grieve, let him lament, let him weep, let him be unhappy. And yet, punished as severely as that, we cannot stop.
Remember what the poet says about the stranger:
Stranger, I must not — not even if a worse man comes.
This can be applied to a father as well: I must not, even if a worse man than you should come, treat a father unworthily; for all fathers come from Zeus the father. And the same about a brother, for all come from Zeus who presides over kinsmen. And so in the other relations of life we shall find Zeus watching.
We ought not to make our training consist in means that are against nature and calculated to astonish people; if we do, we who call ourselves philosophers will be no different from street performers. It is difficult to walk a rope — difficult and dangerous too. Ought we to practise rope-walking for that reason, or setting up a palm tree, or throwing our arms round statues? Not at all.
Not everything difficult and dangerous is fit for practice. What is fit is whatever helps toward working out the thing set before us. And what is set before us to work out? To live with desire and avoidance unrestrained. And what is that? Neither to be disappointed of what you desire nor to fall into what you would avoid. That is what training ought to aim at.
Since it is not possible to have your desire undisappointed and your avoidance free of falling into what it flees without great and constant practice, you must understand that if you let your desire and avoidance turn toward things outside the power of the will, your desire will not be able to reach its object and your avoidance will not be able to escape what it flees.
And since strong habit is what prevails, and we are used to employing desire and avoidance only on things outside the will, we ought to set a contrary habit against this one; and where impressions are most slippery, there we should set the habit of training.
I am rather inclined toward pleasure: I will lean to the opposite side beyond measure, for training. I shrink from pain: I will rub and exercise against the impressions that come to me, for the purpose of drawing my avoidance away from every such thing.
For who is a man in training? The man who practises not using desire, and applies his avoidance only to things within the power of his will, and practises hardest at what is hardest to beat. So one man must train himself more against one thing and another against another.
What is the use, then, of setting up a palm tree, or carrying about a leather tent, or a mortar and pestle? Practise, man, if you are quick-tempered, to put up with being abused, and not to be upset at being treated with contempt. Then you will make so much progress that even if a man strikes you, you will say to yourself: imagine you have thrown your arms round a statue.
Then train yourself to use wine properly, so as not to drink much — for there are men who foolishly train themselves at this too. But first of all you should keep off it altogether, and keep off young girls and rich cakes. Then at last, if the occasion offers, you will go down into the arena at a proper time to test yourself, and find out whether impressions overpower you as they used to. But at first run a long way from what is stronger than you. The contest between a charming young girl and a beginner in philosophy is not an equal one. The earthenware jar and the rock, as the saying goes, do not agree.
After desire and avoidance comes the second topic, of impulses toward action and away from it: that you may be obedient to reason, and do nothing out of season or out of place, or contrary to any propriety of that kind.
The third topic concerns assent, and has to do with what is persuasive and attractive. As Socrates said we ought not to live a life without examination, so we ought not to accept an impression without examination, but should say: wait, let me see what you are and where you come from — like the sentry at night who says, show me your password. Have you the signal from nature that an impression must have to be accepted?
And finally, whatever means men use on the body when they train it, if these tend in any way toward desire and avoidance, they too may be fit means of training. But if they are for show, they mark a man who has turned toward something external, who is hunting for something else and looking for spectators to say, "What a great man."
This is why Apollonius put it well: when you mean to train yourself for your own benefit, and you are thirsty in hot weather, take a mouthful of cold water, spit it out, and tell nobody.
Loneliness is a certain condition of a helpless man. A man is not lonely just because he is by himself, any more than a man among crowds is not lonely.
So when we have lost a brother, or a son, or a friend we used to lean on, we say we have been left lonely — though we are often in Rome, though such a crowd goes by us, though so many people live in the same place, and though we sometimes have a great number of slaves. The man who counts as lonely is understood to be a helpless one, exposed to anybody who wants to harm him.
That is why, when we travel, we say we are lonely above all when we fall among robbers. It is not the sight of a human creature that takes us out of loneliness, but the sight of one who is trustworthy and decent and helpful to us.
If being by oneself were enough to make loneliness, you might say that Zeus himself is lonely at the great conflagration, and bewails himself, saying: unhappy that I am — I have no Hera, no Athena, no Apollo, no brother, no son, no descendant, no kinsman. Some people say this is what he does when he is alone at the conflagration. But they do not understand how a man passes his time when he is alone, because they start from a certain natural principle — from the natural desire for community and mutual affection, and from the pleasure of human conversation.
All the same, a man ought to be prepared for this too: to be able to be sufficient to himself and to be his own companion. As Zeus lives with himself and is at peace by himself and thinks about his own administration and its nature, and busies himself with thoughts that suit him, so we too ought to be able to talk with ourselves and not need other people; not to be at a loss for ways of passing the time; to observe the divine administration and our own relation to everything else; to consider how we used to be affected by what happens and how we are now; what things still give us pain, and how those too can be cured and taken away; and if anything needs improving, to improve it by reason.
You see that Caesar appears to give us a great peace: there are no more enemies, or battles, or great bands of robbers and pirates, and we can travel at any hour and sail from east to west. But can Caesar give us security against fever as well? Against shipwreck? Against fire, or earthquake, or lightning? Can he — I will go further — give us security against love? He cannot. Against grief? He cannot. Against envy? He cannot. In a word he cannot protect us against any of these things.
But the doctrine of the philosophers promises to give us security even against these. And what does it say? Men, if you will attend to me, then wherever you are and whatever you are doing you will feel no grief, no anger, no compulsion, no blocking; you will pass your time undisturbed and free of everything.
When a man has this peace — proclaimed not by Caesar (how could he proclaim it?) but by God through reason — is he not content when he is alone? When he looks and reflects: no evil can happen to me now; for me there is no robber, no earthquake; everything is full of peace, full of quiet. Every road, every city, every gathering, every neighbour, every companion is harmless. One whose business it is supplies me with food; another with clothing; another with senses and preconceptions. And if he does not supply what is needed, he gives the signal for retreat, opens the door, and says to you: go.
Go where? To nothing terrible — to the place you came from, to your friends and kinsmen, to the elements. What was fire in you goes to fire, what was earth to earth, what was breath to air, what was water to water. No Hades, no Acheron, no Cocytus, no Pyriphlegethon: everything is full of gods and spirits.
When a man has such things to think about, and sees the sun and the moon and the stars, and enjoys the earth and the sea, he is not lonely, and not even helpless.
"Well then — suppose somebody comes on me when I am alone and murders me?"
Fool, he does not murder you. He murders your poor body.
What sort of loneliness is left, then? What lack? Why do we make ourselves worse than children? What do children do when they are left alone? They pick up shells and ashes and build something, then knock it down and build something else, and so they are never at a loss for a way to pass the time. Am I to sit down and weep, then, if you sail away, because I have been left alone and lonely? Am I to have no shells and no ashes? Children do what they do out of a want of understanding; and we are unhappy out of understanding.
Every great capacity is dangerous to beginners. So you must bear such things as you are able, and in line with nature; but not — [the text is defective here.]
Practise sometimes living like a man in poor health, so that at some point you may live like a man in health. Go without food, drink water, hold off from desire altogether sometimes, so that at some point you may desire in accordance with reason; and if in accordance with reason, then when you have something good in you, you will desire well.
Not at all — we want to live like wise men straight away and be useful to mankind. Useful how? What are you doing? Have you been useful to yourself? But I suppose you want to urge them on. You, urge them on! You want to be useful to them. Then show them by your own example what sort of men philosophy makes, and stop trifling.
When you are eating, do good to the men eating with you; when you are drinking, to the men drinking with you. By giving way to everybody, yielding, putting up with them — do them good that way, and do not spit your bad temper over them.
As bad tragic actors cannot sing alone but only in company with many, so some men cannot walk about alone. Man, if you are anything, walk alone and talk to yourself, and do not hide in the chorus. Examine yourself a little at last; look around; stir yourself up, so that you may know who you are.
When a man drinks water, or does anything else for the sake of training, he tells everybody about it whenever he gets the chance: "I drink water." Is that what you drink water for — for the purpose of drinking water? Man, if it is good for you to drink it, drink. And if not, you are being ridiculous. But if it is good for you and you do drink it, say nothing about it to men who dislike water-drinkers. What — do you want to please those very men?
Of the things men do, some are done for their own sake, some as the occasion arises, some with an eye to circumstances, some to fall in with other people, and some according to a settled plan of life.
There are two things you must root out of men: arrogance and distrust. Arrogance is the opinion that you lack nothing; distrust is the opinion that you cannot be happy with so many circumstances pressing round you. Arrogance is removed by being refuted, and Socrates was the first man to practise that. And to learn that the thing is not impossible, enquire and search. The search will do you no harm; and in a way this is what philosophising is — to look for how it is possible to use desire and avoidance without being blocked.
"I am better than you: my father was a consul." Another says, "I have been a tribune and you have not." If we were horses, would you say: my father was faster? I have plenty of barley and fodder, and elegant harness? And if, while you were saying it, I said: very well, let us race, then. Well — is there nothing in a man corresponding to running in a horse, by which we can tell which is the better and which the worse? Is there not self-respect, good faith, justice? Show yourself better in those, so that you may be better as a man. If you tell me that you can land a heavy kick, I shall tell you that you are proud of what a donkey does.
In every act, consider what comes before it and what follows from it, and then go on to the act. If you do not consider, you will start off full of spirit, having given no thought to the consequences; and afterwards, when some of them have shown themselves, you will drop the thing shamefully.
"I want to win at the Olympic games." And so do I, by the gods — it is a fine thing. But consider what comes before and what follows, and then, if it is good for you, take the thing on.
You will have to keep to rules, follow a strict diet, keep off delicacies, exercise under compulsion at fixed hours in heat and in cold, drink no cold water and no wine when you have the chance of it. In a word you must hand yourself over to the trainer as you would to a doctor. Then in the contest itself you must be covered in sand, sometimes dislocate a hand or sprain an ankle, swallow a quantity of dust, be flogged with the whip — and after going through all of it, sometimes lose.
When you have counted all that up, then, if you still have the inclination, go to the training ground. If you do not count it up, look what you will be doing: behaving like children, who play at wrestlers one moment, then at gladiators, then blow a trumpet, then act a tragedy, whenever they have seen and admired such things.
So you too: one moment an athlete, then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a public speaker — and with your whole soul, nothing. Like an ape you copy everything you see, and one thing after another pleases you while whatever has become familiar bores you. You have never taken anything on after consideration, or after exploring the whole matter and putting it to a strict examination; you have taken it on at random and with a lukewarm desire.
So some men, having seen a philosopher and heard one speak like Euphrates — and who can speak like him? — want to be philosophers themselves.
Man, consider first what the business is, and then your own nature, and what it can bear. If you are going to wrestle, look at your shoulders, your thighs, your loins: different men are naturally made for different things.
Do you suppose you can be a philosopher and go on doing what you do every day? Do you suppose you can eat as you eat now, drink as you drink now, and be angry and out of temper in the same way? You must go without sleep, work hard, master certain desires, leave your family, be looked down on by your slave, laughed at by the men you meet, and come off worse in everything — in office, in honours, in the law courts.
When you have thought all this over thoroughly, then, if you think proper, come to philosophy — if you want to get, in exchange for these things, freedom from being thrown about, and liberty, and peace of mind. And if you have not thought it over, do not come near philosophy. Do not behave like children: a philosopher one moment, then a tax collector, then a public speaker, then an agent of Caesar. These things do not go together. You must be one man, either good or bad. You must work either at your own governing part or at externals — either at what is inside or at what is outside. That is, you must take the place either of a philosopher or of one of the crowd.
Somebody said to Rufus, when Galba had been murdered: "Is the world governed by Providence now?" And Rufus answered: "Did I ever, even in passing, build an argument on Galba that the world is governed by Providence?"
If a man mixes often with other people — for conversation, or drinking together, or social life generally — he must either become like them or bring them round to his own way. Put a piece of dead charcoal next to a burning one, and either the dead one puts the other out or the burning one lights it.
Since the danger is so great, we must be careful about entering into these intimacies with ordinary people, and remember that it is impossible to keep company with a man covered in soot and not get some of the soot on yourself.
What will you do if a man talks about gladiators, about horses, about athletes — or, worse, about men? So-and-so is bad, so-and-so is good; this was done well, that was done badly. And what if he sneers, or ridicules, or shows a spiteful temper?
Is any man among us prepared as a lute player is when he picks up a lute, so that the moment he has touched the strings he knows which are out of tune and tunes the instrument? Has any of us the power Socrates had, who in all his social dealings could bring his companions round to his own purpose? How should you have that power? So it necessarily follows that you are carried along by ordinary people.
Why are they stronger than you, then? Because they say their useless things out of real conviction, while you say your elegant things only with your lips. That is why yours are feeble and dead, and why it turns the stomach to listen to your exhortations and your miserable virtue that gets talked about up and down. This is how the crowd has the advantage of you: every conviction is strong and unbeatable.
So until fine sentiments are fixed in you, and you have acquired some power to keep yourself safe, I advise you to be careful about your company. If you are not, then every day, like wax in the sun, whatever you write on your minds in the school will be melted away. Get well away from the sun, then, as long as your sentiments are made of wax.
This is also why philosophers advise men to leave their own country: old habits distract them and do not let a different habit get started, and we cannot put up with the people who meet us and say, "Look, so-and-so is a philosopher now, who used to be such and such." In the same way doctors send patients with lingering diseases to a different country and a different air; and they are right.
You too, then: bring in other habits than the ones you have. Fix your judgments and train yourself in them. But you do not. You go from here to a show, to a gladiator display, to the exercise ground, to the circus; then you come back here, and then off you go again to those places, and always the same people.
And there is no good habit in it, no attention, no care about yourself, no watching of this kind: how shall I use the impressions put before me? In line with nature or against it? How am I answering them? As I ought, or as I ought not? Am I saying to the things outside the will that they are nothing to me?
If you are not yet in this condition, run from your old habits, run from the crowd, if you ever intend to begin to be something.
When you bring a charge against Providence, consider it, and you will find the thing has happened according to reason.
"Yes, but the unjust man has the advantage."
In what? "In money." Yes — because he is better than you at this: he flatters, he has no shame, he is wide awake. What is surprising about it? But see whether he has the advantage of you in good faith and in self-respect. You will not find that he has; you will find that you have the advantage wherever you are the better man.
I once said to a man who was upset because Philostorgus was doing well: would you be willing to go to bed with Sura?
"May that day never come," he answered.
Then why are you upset if the man gets something in return for what he sells? And how can you count him happy, when he acquires those things by means you find disgusting? And what wrong does Providence do, if it gives the better things to the better men? Is it not better to be self-respecting than to be rich?
He agreed that it was.
Then why are you upset, man, when you have the better thing?
So remember always, and keep it ready, that this is a law of nature: the superior has the advantage of the inferior in the thing he is superior in. And you will never be upset.
"But my wife treats me badly." Well: if anybody asks you what this is, say, my wife treats me badly. Is there nothing more? Nothing. "My father gives me nothing." What is this? My father gives me nothing. Is there nothing else? Nothing.
But to say that this is an evil is something that has to be added on from outside, and added falsely. This is why we must get rid, not of poverty, but of our opinion about poverty — and then we shall be happy.
When something is reported to you that is of a kind to disturb you, have this principle ready: the news is about nothing within the power of your will.
Can any man report to you that you have formed a bad judgment, or had a bad desire? Not at all. But perhaps he will report that somebody has died. What is that to you? He may report that somebody is speaking ill of you. What is that to you? Or that your father is plotting something. Against whom? Against your will? How could he? Against your poor body, then, and your little property? You are perfectly safe: it is not against you.
"But the judge declares that you have committed an act of irreverence." And did the judges not make the same declaration about Socrates? Does it concern you that the judge has made the declaration? No. Then why trouble yourself about it any longer?
Your father has a certain duty, and if he does not carry it out he loses the character of a father, of a man with natural affection, of a gentle man. Do not wish him to lose anything else on that account. For a man never does wrong in one thing and suffers in another.
And on your side, it is your duty to make your defence firmly, with self-respect, and without anger; and if you do not, you too lose the character of a son, of a man of decent behaviour, of a generous man.
Well then, is the judge out of danger? No — he is in equal danger. So why are you still afraid of his verdict? What have you to do with somebody else's evil? Making a bad defence is your own evil; guard against that alone. Being condemned or not condemned is another man's act, and so it is another man's evil.
Somebody threatens you. Me? No. He blames you. Let him see to how he manages his own affairs. He is going to condemn you unjustly. He is a wretched man.
The first difference between an ordinary man and a philosopher is this. The ordinary man says, "Alas for me, on account of my little child, my brother, my father." The philosopher, if he is ever forced to say "Alas for me", stops and adds: "on my own account."
For nothing outside the will can block or damage the will; only the will can block or damage itself. So if we lean this way ourselves — so that when we come off badly we blame ourselves, and remember that nothing else is the cause of being thrown or of losing our peace of mind except our own opinion — then I swear to you by all the gods that we have made progress.
But as things stand we have gone another way from the very beginning. While we were still children, if we ever stumbled through carelessness, the nurse did not scold us: she beat the stone. And what had the stone done? Ought the stone to have moved out of the way on account of your child's carelessness?
Again, if we came out of the bath and found nothing to eat, the tutor never checked our appetite: he flogged the cook. Man, did we make you tutor to the cook and not to the child? Correct the child. Improve him.
And so, even when we are grown, we are like children. A man with no music is a child in music; a man with no letters is a child in learning; a man with no teaching is a child in life.
With impressions that come through the eyes, nearly everybody has allowed that good and evil are in us and not in externals. Nobody calls it good that it is day, or bad that it is night, or calls it the greatest evil that somebody thinks three are four. What do men say instead? They say that knowledge is good and error is bad — so that even where falsehood itself is concerned there is a good result: knowing that it is false.
It ought to be the same in life. Is health a good thing and sickness a bad one? No, man. What is it, then? To be healthy, and healthy in the right way, is good; to be healthy in a bad way is bad. So it is possible to get an advantage even out of illness, I tell you.
Is it not possible to get an advantage even out of death? Even out of being maimed? Do you think Menoeceus gained little by dying? Could a man who says so gain as much as Menoeceus gained? Come, man: did he not keep the character of a lover of his country, a man of great spirit, faithful and generous? And if he had gone on living, would he not have lost all of it? Would he not have gained the opposite — the name of coward, ignoble, a hater of his country, a man afraid of death? Well then, do you think he gained little by dying? I suppose not. And did the father of Admetus gain much by dragging his life out so ignobly and miserably? Did he not die afterwards anyway?
Stop, I beg you by the gods, admiring material things. Stop making yourselves slaves — first of things, and then, on account of things, slaves of the men who can give them or take them away.
Can advantage be got out of these things, then? Out of all of them — and out of the man who abuses you. What good does a sparring partner do an athlete before the contest? A very great deal. This man becomes my sparring partner: he trains me in endurance, in keeping my temper, in mildness.
You say no. But the man who grabs my neck and works my loins and shoulders does me good, and the trainer is right when he says, "Lift him with both hands, and the heavier he is, the better for me." And if a man trains me in keeping my temper, does he not do me good?
This is not knowing how to get an advantage out of people. Is my neighbour bad? Bad for himself, good for me: he exercises my good temper and my moderation. Is my father bad? Bad for himself, good for me.
This is the wand of Hermes: touch what you like with it, as the saying goes, and it turns to gold. I say something else: bring what you like and I will turn it into a good. Bring disease, bring death, bring poverty, bring abuse, bring a trial on a capital charge — all of them shall be made profitable by the wand of Hermes.
"What will you do with death?" What else but make it do you honour, or show by means of it what a man is who follows the will of nature? "What will you do with disease?" I will show what it is; I will be at my best in it; I will be steady, I will be happy, I will not flatter the doctor, I will not pray to die.
"What more are you looking for?" Whatever you give me, I will make it happy, fortunate, honoured — a thing a man will go looking for.
You say: no, take care you do not fall ill, it is a bad thing. That is exactly as if you said: take care never to get the impression that three are four, that is bad. Man, how is it bad? If I think about it as I ought, how will it damage me? Will it not even do me good?
So if I think as I ought about poverty, about disease, about holding no office, is that not enough for me? Will it not be an advantage? Then why should I go on looking for good and evil in externals?
And what happens? These doctrines are maintained here, and nobody carries them home. Straight away every man is at war with his slave, with his neighbours, with the men who sneered at him, with the men who laughed at him. Good luck to Lesbius, who proves every day that I know nothing.
Men who have taken in bare theorems want to bring them straight up again, as people with a bad stomach do with food. Digest the thing first, and do not vomit it up like that. If you do not digest it, the thing really does become an emetic — raw food, unfit to eat.
But after you have digested it, show us some change in your governing part, as athletes show in their shoulders what they have trained at and what they have eaten, and as men who have taken up a trade show what they have learned. The carpenter does not come along and say, "Hear me talk about carpentry." He takes on the building of a house, builds it, and proves that he knows the art.
You ought to do something of the same kind. Eat like a man, drink like a man, dress, marry, have children, do a citizen's duty, put up with being abused, bear with an unreasonable brother, bear with your father, your son, your neighbour, your companion. Show us these things, so that we can see you have really learned something from the philosophers.
"No — come and hear me read my commentaries."
Go away and find somebody else to be sick over.
"But I will expound the writings of Chrysippus to you as no other man can. I will make his text perfectly clear. I will add the force of Antipater and Archedemus too, if I can."
Is it for this that young men are to leave their country and their parents — to come here and hear you explain words? Ought they not to go home able to endure, active in dealing with other people, free of passions, free of being thrown about, with such provisions for the journey of life that they will be able to bear well whatever happens and take honour from it? And how are you to give them any of that, when you do not have it yourself?
Have you done anything at all, from the beginning, except busy yourself with resolving syllogisms and shifting arguments and the ones that work by questioning?
"But so-and-so has a school. Why should I not have one too?"
These things are not done carelessly, man, or just as it happens. There has to be a suitable age, and a life, and God as a guide. You say no. But no man sails out of harbour without having sacrificed to the gods and asked their help; nobody sows without having called on Demeter. And is a man who has taken on so great a work going to undertake it safely without the gods? Are men who take this work on going to come to it successfully?
What are you doing, man, but giving away the mysteries? You say: "There is a temple at Eleusis, and there is one here too. There is a hierophant at Eleusis, and I will make a hierophant. There is a herald, and I will appoint a herald. There is a torchbearer at Eleusis, and I will appoint a torchbearer. There are torches at Eleusis, and I will have torches here. The words are the same. How do the things done here differ from the things done there?"
Most irreverent of men, is there no difference? Those things are done in the right place and at the right time, accompanied by sacrifice and prayers, when a man has first been purified and has brought his mind to the thought that he is about to approach sacred rites, and ancient ones. That is how the mysteries are useful; that is how we come to the notion that all these things were established by the ancients for the instruction and correction of life.
But you publish them and give them away at the wrong time, in the wrong place, without sacrifices, without purity. You do not have the robes the hierophant ought to have, nor the hair, nor the headdress, nor the voice, nor the age; and you have not purified yourself as he has. You have only learned the words by heart, and you say: the words are sacred in themselves.
You ought to come at these matters another way. The thing is great, it is a mystery, it is not a common thing and it is not given to every man. Not even wisdom is perhaps enough to let a man take charge of young men: he needs a certain readiness and fitness for it as well, and a certain bodily quality — and above all he needs God to advise him to take the office, as God advised Socrates to take the place of a man who refutes error, and Diogenes the office of kingship and reproof, and another man the office of teaching precepts.
But you open a doctor's shop with nothing in it but drugs, and you do not know where or how they are to be applied, and you have taken no trouble to find out. "Look," the man says, "I have ointments for the eyes too." And have you the power of using them? Do you know when and how they will do good, and whom they will do good to?
Why do you take chances in matters of the greatest importance, then? Why are you careless? Why do you take on a thing that in no way suits you? Leave it to men who can do it, and do it well. Do not bring disgrace on philosophy by your own acts, and do not be one of the men who give it a bad name.
If theorems please you, sit still and turn them over on your own — but never say you are a philosopher, and do not let anybody else say it. Say instead: he is mistaken; my desires are no different from what they were before, my activity is not directed at other objects, I do not assent to other things, and in the use of impressions I have not changed at all from what I was.
This is what you must think and say about yourself, if you want to think as you ought. And if not, take your chances and go on doing what you are doing — it suits you.
One of his pupils, who seemed inclined toward the Cynic life, asked Epictetus what sort of man a Cynic ought to be, and what the idea of the thing was.
We shall look into that at leisure, said Epictetus. But I have this much to say to you: a man who takes on so great a matter without God is hateful to God, and has no other purpose than to disgrace himself in public.
In any well-run household no man comes forward and says to himself, I ought to be the steward here. If he does, the master turns round, sees him giving orders insolently, drags him out and flogs him. So it is in this great city, the world; here too there is a master of the house who arranges everything.
"You are the sun. By going round you can make the year and the seasons, make the fruits grow and feed them, stir the winds and let them drop, and warm men's bodies properly. Go, travel round, and administer things from the greatest to the least. You are a calf: when a lion appears, do your proper business — run. If you do not, you will suffer for it. You are a bull: come forward and fight, for that is your business and it suits you and you can do it. You can lead the army against Troy: be Agamemnon. You can fight Hector in single combat: be Achilles."
But if Thersites had come forward and claimed the command, either he would not have got it, or if he had, he would have disgraced himself in front of a great many witnesses.
So think the matter over carefully yourself. It is not what it looks like to you. You say: "I wear a cloak now and I shall wear one then. I sleep hard now and I shall sleep hard then. I shall add a little bag and a staff, and go about begging and abusing the men I meet; and if I see a man plucking the hair off his body I shall rebuke him, or if he has had his hair dressed, or if he goes about in purple."
If you imagine the thing is like that, keep well away from it. Do not go near it; it is not for you at all. But if you imagine it as it really is, and do not think yourself unfit for it, consider what a great thing you are taking on.
In the first place, in the things that concern yourself you must be nothing like what you are now. You must blame neither God nor man. You must do away with desire altogether. You must move your avoidance to the things within the power of the will alone. You must feel no anger, no resentment, no envy, no pity. No girl must look handsome to you; you must not love a little reputation; you must not be pleased by a boy or a cake.
For you should understand that other men put walls around themselves, and houses, and darkness, when they do any such thing, and they have plenty of means of concealment. A man shuts the door and posts somebody outside the room: "If anyone comes, say he is out, he is busy." But the Cynic must use self-respect for all these — and if he does not, he will be indecent in his nakedness and under the open sky. This is his house, his door, the slave outside his bedroom, his darkness.
He must not want to hide anything he does; and if he does, he is finished. He has lost the character of a Cynic, of a man who lives under the open sky, of a free man. He has begun to fear something external; he has begun to need concealment, and he cannot have concealment when he wants it. Where would he hide, and how? And if this public teacher, this tutor of mankind, does happen to be caught, what will he be forced to suffer?
So when a man is afraid of these things, is it possible for him to be bold with his whole soul and take charge of other men? It is not. It is impossible.
First, then, you must make your governing part clean, and this way of life clean too. "Now the material I work on is my understanding, as wood is the carpenter's and hides the shoemaker's, and my business is the right use of impressions. The body is nothing to me; its parts are nothing to me. Death? Let it come when it likes, death of the whole or of a part. Go into exile, you say. And where to? Can any man throw me out of the world? He cannot. Wherever I go, there is the sun, there is the moon, there are the stars, dreams, omens, and conversation with the gods."
And then, if he is prepared like that, the true Cynic cannot be satisfied with it. He must know that he has been sent as a messenger from Zeus to men, about good things and bad, to show them that they have gone astray and are looking for the substance of good and evil where it is not, and never think of it where it is. He is a spy, as Diogenes was taken to Philip after the battle of Chaeronea as a spy. In fact a Cynic is a spy on what is good for men and what is bad, and his duty is to examine carefully and to come back and report truly — not to be struck with terror and point out as enemies men who are not enemies, nor to be thrown or confused by impressions in any other way.
So it is his duty to be able, if the occasion arises, to come forward on the tragic stage and say in a loud voice, as Socrates did:
Men, where are you rushing to? What are you doing, wretches? You are wandering up and down like blind people. You are on another road and have left the true one. You look for prosperity and happiness where they are not, and if somebody else shows you where they are, you do not believe him.
Why do you look for it outside? In the body? It is not there. If you doubt me, look at Myro, look at Ophellius. In possessions? It is not there. If you do not believe me, look at Croesus; look at the rich men of today, and what lamentation their lives are full of. In power? It is not there. If it were, men who have been consul twice and three times would have to be happy — and they are not.
Whom shall we believe about this? You, who see their affairs from outside and are dazzled by an appearance, or the men themselves? What do they say? Listen to them when they groan, when they grieve, when they think themselves more wretched and in greater danger precisely because of these consulships and this glory and splendour.
Is it in royal power? It is not; if it were, Nero would have been happy, and Sardanapalus. But not even Agamemnon was happy, and he was a better man than Sardanapalus and Nero. While the others are snoring, what is he doing?
Much of his rooted hair he tore from his head. — Iliad, x 15
And what does he say himself?
"I am at a loss," he says, "and I am shaken," and "my heart is leaping out of my breast." — Iliad x 91
Wretch, which of your affairs is going badly? Your possessions? No. Your body? No. You are rich in gold and bronze. What is the matter with you, then? That part of you, whatever it is, has been neglected by you and has gone rotten — the part we desire with, and avoid with, and move toward things and away from things with.
Neglected how? He does not know the nature of the good he was made by nature for, nor the nature of evil; nor what is his own and what belongs to another. And when something belonging to others goes badly he says, "Alas for me, the Greeks are in danger." Wretched is his governing part, and it alone is neglected and uncared for.
"The Greeks are going to be destroyed by the Trojans and die." And if the Trojans do not kill them, will they not die? "Yes — but not all at once." And what difference does that make? If death is an evil, it is equally an evil whether men die all together or one by one. Is anything else going to happen but the parting of soul and body? Nothing. And if the Greeks perish, is the door shut? Is it not in your power to die? It is.
Then why do you lament, and say, "You, a king, holding the sceptre of Zeus"? An unhappy king does not exist, any more than an unhappy god. What are you, then? A shepherd, in truth — because you weep as shepherds do when a wolf has carried off one of their sheep. And these men you govern are sheep.
And why did you come here? Was your desire in any danger? Your avoidance? Your pursuits? Your refusals? "No," he says, "but my brother's wife was carried off." Then was it not a great gain to be rid of an adulterous wife? "Are we to be despised by the Trojans, then?" What sort of people are the Trojans, wise or foolish? If they are wise, why are you fighting them? If they are fools, why do you care what they think?
Where is the good, then, since it is not in these things? Tell us, you who are lord and messenger and spy.
It is where you do not think it is, and do not choose to look for it. If you chose to look, you would have found it inside yourselves; and you would not be wandering off the road, or seeking what belongs to others as though it were your own.
Turn your thoughts inward. Notice the preconceptions you have. What sort of thing do you imagine the good to be? "Something that runs smoothly, something happy, something unblocked." Come — do you not naturally imagine it to be great? Do you not imagine it to be valuable? Do you not imagine it to be beyond harm?
In what material, then, ought you to look for what runs smoothly and is unblocked — in what serves, or in what is free? "In what is free." Then do you possess the body free, or in a condition of slavery? "We do not know." Do you not know that it is the slave of fever, of gout, of eye disease, of dysentery, of a tyrant, of fire, of iron, of everything stronger than itself? "Yes, it is a slave."
Then how is it possible for anything belonging to the body to be unblocked? And how is a thing great or valuable that is by nature dead — earth, mud?
Well then, do you possess nothing that is free? "Perhaps nothing." And who is able to force you to assent to what appears false? "No man." And who can force you not to assent to what appears true? "No man." Then by this you see that there is something in you naturally free.
And to desire, or to be averse, or to move toward an object or away from it, or to prepare yourself, or to plan to do something — which of you can do this without having received an impression of what is profitable or of what is a duty? "No man." So in these things too you have something unblocked and free.
Wretched men, work at this. Take care of this. Look for the good here.
"And how is it possible for a man who has nothing, who is naked, homeless, without a hearth, dirty, with no slave and no city, to lead a life that runs smoothly?"
Look — God has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me: no city, no house, no possessions, no slave. I sleep on the ground. I have no wife, no children, no official residence — only earth and sky and one poor cloak. And what do I lack? Am I not free from sorrow? Am I not free from fear? Am I not free?
When did any of you ever see me fail to get what I desired, or fall into what I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse anybody? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful face? And how do I meet the men you are afraid of and admire? Do I not treat them like slaves? Who, seeing me, does not think he is looking at his king and his master?
This is the language of the Cynics, this is their character, this is their purpose. You say: "No — what marks them is the little bag and the staff and the big jaws; bolting everything you give them, or hoarding it; abusing everybody they meet at the wrong moment; and showing off a fine shoulder."
Do you see how you are going about taking on so great a business? First take a mirror. Look at your shoulders. Look at your loins and your thighs. You are going, my man, to be enrolled as a competitor in the Olympic games — no feeble, wretched contest. At the Olympic games a man is not allowed to be beaten and simply take himself off: first he must be disgraced in the sight of the whole world, not only of Athenians or Spartans or Nicopolitans; and next he must be whipped as well, if he entered the contests rashly; and before being whipped he must endure thirst and heat and swallow a great deal of dust.
Think it over more carefully. Know yourself. Consult the divinity. Attempt nothing without God. If he does advise you to do it, be sure that he intends you either to become great or to take a great many blows.
For this very entertaining quality goes along with being a Cynic: he must be flogged like a donkey, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father of them all and the brother of them all.
You say: "No — if a man flogs you, stand in the public square and call out, Caesar, what am I suffering under your protection in this time of peace? Let us take the offender before the proconsul."
But what is Caesar to a Cynic, or a proconsul, or anybody except the one who sent him down here and whom he serves — Zeus? Does he call on anybody but Zeus? Is he not convinced that whatever he suffers, it is Zeus who is training him?
Hercules, when Eurystheus was training him, did not think himself wretched; he set about carrying out everything he was given without hesitation. And is the man who is being trained and exercised by Zeus going to cry out and be annoyed — a man fit to carry the staff of Diogenes?
Listen to what Diogenes says to the passers-by when he is in a fever. "Miserable wretches, will you not stop? You go all the way to Olympia to see athletes destroyed or fighting, and you will not choose to watch a fight between a fever and a man?"
Would such a man accuse the God who sent him down, as though God were treating him unworthily — a man who gloried in his circumstances and claimed to be an example to the people going past? What would he accuse him of? Of keeping his behaviour decent? Of showing his virtue more plainly?
And what does he say about poverty, about death, about pain? How did he compare his own happiness with that of the great king of Persia? Or rather, he thought there was no comparison to be made. Where there are disturbances and griefs and fears and unsatisfied desires and avoidances of what cannot be avoided, and envies and jealousies — how is there any road to happiness there? And where the principles are rotten, all these things must necessarily be.
The young man asked: if a Cynic falls ill and a friend asks him to come to his house and be looked after, should the Cynic accept the invitation?
And where, I ask you, are you going to find a friend of a Cynic? The man who invites him would have to be another such man himself, if he is to be worth counting as a Cynic's friend. He would have to share the Cynic's staff and his kingship, and be a worthy servant of it, if he means to be thought worthy of a Cynic's friendship — as Diogenes was the friend of Antisthenes, and Crates of Diogenes.
Do you think that a man who comes up to a Cynic and greets him is the Cynic's friend, and that the Cynic will judge him fit to have a Cynic in his house? So think about this too, if you please: look round instead for some convenient dunghill where you can have your fever, sheltered from the north wind so that you do not get chilled. But it looks to me as though you want to get into somebody's house and be well fed there for a while. Why are you thinking of attempting so great a thing at all?
"But," said the young man, "should a Cynic take on marriage and the raising of children as a chief duty?"
Give me a community of wise men, Epictetus replied, and perhaps no man will readily take up the Cynic practice at all. On whose account would he take up that way of life? But suppose he does; then nothing will stop him marrying and having children, for his wife will be another like himself, and his father-in-law another like himself, and his children will be brought up like him.
But in the present state of things, which is like an army drawn up in battle order, is it not right that the Cynic should be free of distraction and engaged only in the service of God — able to go about among men, not tied down to the ordinary duties of mankind, not entangled in the ordinary relations of life? Because if he neglects those relations he will not keep the character of an honourable and good man, and if he observes them he will lose the character of the messenger and spy and herald of God.
Consider: he has a duty to his father-in-law, and something to the rest of his wife's family, and something to his wife too, if he has one. And being a Cynic shuts him out from nursing his own family in sickness and from providing for their keep. To say nothing of the rest, he must have a vessel for heating water for the baby so that he can wash it in the bath, and wool for his wife when she has given birth, and oil, a bed, a cup — and so the furniture of the house grows. I say nothing of his other occupations and his distractions.
Where is that king now, the man who gives himself to the public interest,
the guardian of the people, weighed down with cares, — Homer, Iliad ii 25
whose duty it is to look after other men — the married ones and the ones with children; to see who treats his wife well and who badly; who quarrels; which household is well run and which is not — going about as a doctor does and feeling pulses? He says to one, you have a fever; to another, you have a headache, or gout. He tells one to go without food, another to eat, another to keep out of the baths; and another that he needs the knife or the cautery.
How is a man tied to the duties of ordinary life to have time for this? Is it not his duty to supply his children with clothing, and send them to the schoolmaster with writing tablets and pens? And must he not supply them with beds as well? They cannot be full-grown Cynics the moment they are born. If he is not going to do these things, it would be better to expose the children as soon as they are born than to kill them this way.
See what we are bringing the Cynic down to, and how we are taking his kingship away from him. "Yes, but Crates took a wife." You are talking about a case that arose out of love, and about a woman who was another Crates. We are enquiring about ordinary marriages, free of complications; and making that enquiry, we do not find marriage in this state of the world a thing especially suited to the Cynic.
How is society to keep going, then? In God's name, which men do society more good — the ones who bring two or three squalling children into the world to take their own places, or the ones who watch over the whole of mankind as far as they can, and see what men do, how they live, what they attend to and what they neglect against their duty?
Did the Thebans who left small children behind do them more good than Epaminondas, who died childless? Did Priam, who fathered fifty worthless sons, or Danaus, or Aeolus, contribute more to the community than Homer?
Well then: shall a general's duty, or a writer's work, excuse a man from marriage and from having children, and shall such a man not be judged to have taken on childlessness for nothing — and shall the kingship of a Cynic not be counted as worth the want of children? Do we not see his grandeur? Do we not rightly contemplate the character of Diogenes? And do we instead turn our eyes to the Cynics of today, dogs waiting at tables, who imitate the old Cynics in nothing at all except perhaps in breaking wind?
Otherwise such matters would not have troubled us in the least, and we should not have wondered at a Cynic not marrying and not having children. Man, the Cynic is father of all men. The men are his sons and the women his daughters; that is how carefully he visits them all, that is how well he cares for them all. Do you suppose it is out of idle impertinence that he rebukes the people he meets? He does it as a father, as a brother, and as the servant of the father of all — the servant of Zeus.
Ask me too, if you like, whether a Cynic shall take part in the government of the state. Fool, do you look for a greater form of government than the one he is already engaged in? Do you ask whether he shall appear before the Athenians and say something about revenue and supply — a man who has to talk to all men alike, to Athenians, to Corinthians, to Romans, and not about supply or revenue or peace or war, but about happiness and unhappiness, good fortune and bad, slavery and freedom? When a man has taken on the government of such a state as that, do you ask me whether he shall go into government?
Ask me too whether he shall hold office. Again I shall say to you: fool, what greater office shall he hold than the one he holds now?
Such a man also needs a certain bodily condition. If he looks consumptive, thin and pale, his testimony does not carry the same weight. He must not only prove to ordinary people, by showing the qualities of his soul, that it is possible to be a good man independently of the things they admire; he must also show by his body that a simple, frugal life in the open air does not damage even the body. "Look," he says, "I am the proof of it, and so is my body."
That is what Diogenes did: he used to go about looking fresh, and he caught the attention of the crowd by his very appearance. But if a Cynic is an object of pity he looks like a beggar; everybody turns away from him, everybody is offended by him. He ought not to look dirty either, or he will drive men off that way too; his very roughness ought to be clean and attractive.
A Cynic ought also to have a great deal of natural grace and quickness — and if he does not, he is a stupid fellow and nothing more. He needs these qualities so as to be able to meet any circumstance that arises readily and aptly.
So Diogenes replied to a man who said, "Are you the Diogenes who does not believe there are gods?" And how can that be, said Diogenes, when I think that you are hateful to them?
And on another occasion, when Alexander stood over him while he was asleep and quoted Homer's line,
A man who is a councillor should not sleep all night,
he answered, still half asleep,
the guardian of the people, weighed down with cares.
But before everything, the Cynic's governing part must be purer than the sun; and if it is not, he must be a cunning rogue and a man of no principle, since he will be reproving others while he is tangled up in some vice himself.
See how the matter stands. Kings and tyrants have their guards and their weapons, and these give them the power of reproving certain men and even of punishing wrongdoers, bad as they are themselves. But for a Cynic, what gives that power, instead of weapons and guards, is his conscience.
When he knows that he has kept watch and laboured for mankind; that he has slept pure and that sleep has left him purer still; that whatever he thought, he thought as a friend of the gods, as their servant, as a sharer in the power of Zeus; and that on every occasion he is ready to say
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny,
and also, if it so pleases the gods, so let it be — then why should he not have the confidence to speak freely to his own brothers, to his children, in a word to his own family?
That is why a man in this state of mind is neither over-inquisitive nor a busybody. He is not meddling with other men's affairs when he is watching over human affairs; he is looking after his own. Otherwise you might as well say that a general is a busybody when he inspects his soldiers and examines them and watches them and punishes the disorderly.
But if you rebuke other people while you have a cake under your arm, I shall say to you: will you not rather go off into a corner and eat what you have stolen? What have you to do with other men's affairs? Who are you? Are you the bull of the herd, or the queen of the bees? Show me the marks of your supremacy, such as they have from nature. And if you are a drone claiming sovereignty over the bees, do you not suppose your fellow citizens will put you down as the bees put down the drones?
The Cynic must also have such power of endurance that ordinary people take him for a stone with no feeling in it. Nobody insults him, nobody strikes him, nobody offends him: he gives his body over for any man who likes to do what he likes with it. For he keeps in mind that the inferior must be overpowered by the superior in whatever it is inferior in, and the body is inferior to the many, the weaker to the stronger. So he never goes down into a contest where he can be overpowered. He gives up at once what belongs to others; he lays no claim to what is servile.
But where will and the use of impressions are concerned, there you will see how many eyes he has — so many that you would call Argus blind beside him. Is his assent ever hasty? Is his impulse ever rash? Does his desire ever fail of its object? Does what he would avoid ever come upon him? Is his purpose ever unfulfilled? Does he ever find fault, is he ever humiliated, is he ever envious? To these he gives all his attention and energy; and as to everything else, he lies on his back and snores. All is peace. There is no robber who can take away his will, and no tyrant.
But what about his body? There is. And his property? There is. And offices and honours? What does he care about them? So when anybody tries to frighten him with these, he says: be off, look for children — masks are frightening to them; I know they are made of shell and there is nothing inside.
This is the sort of matter you are deliberating about. So, if you please, I urge you in God's name: put the thing off, and first consider whether you are prepared for it. Look at what Hector says to Andromache: go back into the house, he says, and weave —
war is the work of men, of all men, but of me above all. — Iliad vi 490.
So he was conscious of what he was fit for, and knew what she was not.
First tell yourself who you want to be, and then do what you are doing accordingly. We see this in nearly everything else. Men who take up athletics first settle what they want to be, and then do what follows. If a man is a long-distance runner there is a certain diet, a certain kind of walking, rubbing and exercise; if he is a sprinter, all of it is different; if he is a pentathlete, more different still. You will find the same in the crafts. If you are a carpenter you will have such and such things; if a metalworker, such and such.
Whatever we do, if we refer it to no end we shall be doing it for nothing; and if we refer it to the wrong end we shall miss the mark.
There is a general end and a particular one. First of all we must act as a man. What does that include? Not being like a sheep, gentle though it is; and not being like a wild beast, out to do harm. The particular end has to do with each person's way of life and his choice: the lute player acts as a lute player, the carpenter as a carpenter, the philosopher as a philosopher, the public speaker as a public speaker.
So when you say, "Come and hear me read," take care first that you are not doing it without a purpose; and then, if you find you are doing it for a purpose, consider whether it is the right one. Do you want to do good, or to be praised?
At once you hear him saying, "What is the praise of the crowd worth to me?" And he says it well — it is worth nothing to a musician as a musician, nor to a geometer.
So do you want to be useful? Useful in what? Tell us, so that we can come running to your lecture room. And can a man do anything useful for others who has not received something useful himself? No — any more than a man can do anything useful in carpentry unless he is a carpenter, or in shoemaking unless he is a shoemaker.
Do you want to know whether you have got any benefit, then? Produce your judgments, philosopher. What does desire promise? Not to fail of its object. What does avoidance promise? Not to fall into what it flees. Well — do we keep their promise? Tell me the truth; and if you lie, I shall tell you.
The other day, when your audience came in rather cold and did not applaud, you went away humiliated. And the other day, when you had been praised, you went round asking everybody, "What did you think of me?" — Marvellous, master, I swear by everything I hold dear. — "But how did I handle that particular passage?" — Which? — "The place where I described Pan and the nymphs." — Superb.
And you tell me that in desire and avoidance you are acting according to nature? Be off; try that on somebody else.
Did you not praise a certain man against your own opinion? Did you not flatter a certain senator's son? Would you want your own children to be like them? I hope not. Then why did you praise and flatter him? "He is a well-born young man and listens well to discourses." How so? "He admires me." There is your proof.
And what do you think? Do these very people not secretly despise you? When a man who knows perfectly well that he has never done any good and never thinks about it finds a philosopher saying, "You have great natural talent, and a frank and good disposition" — what else do you suppose he says to himself but "This man wants something from me"?
Or tell me: what act has he shown that indicates a great mind? Look — he has been in your company a long time, he has listened to your talks, he has heard you read. Has he become more modest? Has he been turned to reflect on himself? Has he seen what a bad state he is in? Has he thrown off his conceit? Is he looking for somebody to teach him?
He is. A man to teach him how to live? No, fool — how to talk. That is what he admires you for as well. Listen to what he says: "This man writes with perfect art, far better than Dion." That is a different thing altogether. Does he say, "This man is modest, trustworthy, undisturbed"? And even if he did say it, I would ask him: since this man is trustworthy, tell me what a trustworthy man is. And if he could not tell me, I would add: first understand what you are saying, and then say it.
So you, in your wretched state, gaping after applause and counting your audience — do you mean to be useful to other people? "Many more attended my lecture today." Yes, many; let us say five hundred. That is nothing; suppose there were a thousand. "Dion never had so many hearers." How could he? "And they understand what is said beautifully." What is fine, master, can move even a stone.
There — those are the words of a philosopher. That is the disposition of a man who is going to do others good. Here is a man who has listened to discourses, who has read what was written about Socrates as Socratic writing and not as compositions by Lysias and Isocrates. "'I have often wondered by what arguments...' No: by what argument. That is more exact than the other."
Have you read the words in any way different from the way you read little songs? If you read them as you ought, you would not have been attending to such matters. You would have been looking at these words instead: "Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot harm me." And: "I have always been the sort of man to pay attention to nothing of my own except the reasoning that on examination seems to me best."
So who ever heard Socrates say, "I know something and I teach it"? He used to send different men to different teachers. And so they used to come to him and ask him to introduce them to philosophers, and he would take them and recommend them.
No — instead, as he walked along with them, he would say: "Hear me lecture today at the house of Quadratus."
Why should I hear you? Do you want to show me that you put words together cleverly? You do put them together, man — and what good will it do you?
"Only praise me."
What do you mean by praising? "Say to me: admirable, wonderful." Very well, I say it. But if that is praise, then whatever it is philosophers mean by the name of good — what have I to praise in you? If speaking well is a good, teach me and I will praise you.
"What then — ought a man to listen to such things without pleasure?" I hope not. For my part I do not listen even to a lute player without pleasure. Must I stand and play the lute for that reason?
Hear what Socrates says: "Nor would it be seemly for a man of my age to come before you like a young man putting together speeches." Like a young man, he says. And in truth this little art is an elegant thing: to pick out words and put them together and come forward and read them or speak them gracefully, and while reading to say, "There are not many who can do this" — I swear by everything you hold dear.
Does a philosopher invite people to hear him? As the sun draws men to it, or as food does, does the philosopher not draw those who will get some benefit? What doctor invites a man to be treated by him? Though I do hear that these days even the doctors in Rome invite patients; when I lived there, doctors were invited.
"I invite you to come and hear that things are in a bad way with you; that you take care of everything except what you ought to take care of; that you do not know good from bad and are unlucky and unhappy." A fine sort of invitation. And yet if the philosopher's words do not have that effect on you, he is dead, and so is the speaker.
Rufus used to say: if you have leisure to praise me, I am talking to no purpose. And in fact he used to talk in such a way that every one of us sitting there supposed somebody had denounced him to Rufus — so exactly did he touch on what we were doing, so completely did he put every man's faults before his eyes.
Gentlemen, a philosopher's school is a surgery. You ought not to leave it feeling pleasure, but feeling pain. You are not in good health when you come in: one man has a dislocated shoulder, another an abscess, a third a fistula, a fourth a headache.
And am I to sit and utter neat little thoughts and exclamations so that you may praise me and go away — one with his shoulder in the same state it came in, another with his head still aching, a third with his fistula or his abscess exactly as they were? Is this what young men are to leave home for, and leave their parents and friends and family and property, so that they can say "Wonderful!" while you are making your exclamations? Was this what Socrates did, or Zeno, or Cleanthes?
"What then — is there no such thing as the style of exhortation?" Who denies it? As there is the style of refutation and the style of instruction. But who ever counted a fourth style beside them, the style of display?
What is the style of exhortation? Being able to show a man, or many men, the struggle they are actually in, and that they are thinking about anything rather than what they really want. They want the things that lead to happiness and they look for them in the wrong place.
And in order to do that, a thousand seats have to be set out and men invited to listen, and you have to go up into the pulpit in a fine robe and describe the death of Achilles. Stop, I beg you by the gods, spoiling good words and good acts as far as you possibly can.
Nothing has more power in exhortation than a speaker showing his hearers that he needs them. But tell me: who, hearing you read or lecture, is anxious about himself, or turns to reflect on himself? Who, going out, says, "The philosopher hit me there; I must stop doing these things"? Does he not rather say to somebody — even if you have a great reputation — "He spoke finely about Xerxes"? And another says, "No, about the battle of Thermopylae." Is this what listening to a philosopher means?
Do not let what is against nature in another man be an evil to you. You were not made by nature to be depressed along with others, or unhappy along with them, but to be happy along with them.
If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault. God made all men to be happy and undisturbed, and gave them the means: certain things belonging to each as his own, and other things not as his own. The things subject to blocking and compulsion and loss are not a man's own; the things not subject to blocking are. And the nature of good and evil — as was fitting for one who takes care of us and protects us like a father — he made our own.
"But I have parted from somebody, and he is grieving."
Why did he count as his own what belongs to another? Why, when he looked at you and was glad, did he not also reckon that you are mortal, and that it is natural for you to leave him for another country? So he is suffering the consequences of his own folly.
And why do you bewail yourself, and what for? Because you also gave no thought to these things? Like worthless women, you enjoyed everything you took pleasure in as if you would enjoy it forever — places, and men, and conversation — and now you sit weeping because you do not see the same people and do not live in the same places.
Indeed you deserve it: to be more wretched than crows and ravens, which can fly where they please and change their nests and cross the seas without lamenting or pining for their old condition.
"Yes, but that is because they are creatures without reason."
Was reason given us by the gods, then, for the purpose of unhappiness and misery, so that we might spend our lives in wretchedness and lamentation? Must everybody be immortal, and nobody go abroad, and must we ourselves never travel but stay rooted like plants? And if one of our friends goes abroad, must we sit and weep, and when he comes back must we dance and clap our hands like children?
Shall we not wean ourselves at last and remember what we heard from the philosophers — if we did not listen to them as though they were street performers? They tell us that this world is one city, and that the substance it was formed out of is one; that there must be a certain cycle; that some things must give way to others, some be dissolved and others come in their place, some stay where they are and others be moved; and that everything is full of friendship — first of the gods, and then of men, who are made by nature to be one family. Some must be together and others must be separated, rejoicing in those who are with them and not grieving for those who have been taken away.
And a man, besides being naturally of a noble temper and having contempt for everything outside the power of his will, also has this property: not to be rooted, not to be naturally fixed to the earth, but to go at different times to different places — sometimes because some occasion presses, and sometimes simply for the sake of seeing.
That was how it was with Odysseus, who saw
the cities of many men, and learned their ways.
And earlier still it fell to Hercules to visit the whole inhabited world,
seeing men's lawless deeds and their good government,
throwing out the lawlessness and clearing it away and putting good government in its place. And how many friends do you suppose he had in Thebes, how many in Argos, how many in Athens? How many do you think he made as he went about? And he married too, when it seemed to him the right occasion, and had children, and left them without lamenting or pining or feeling he was leaving them orphans — because he knew that no man is an orphan; it is the father who takes care of all men, always and without a break.
It was not as mere hearsay that he had heard Zeus is the father of men: he thought Zeus was his own father, and called him so, and looked to him in everything he did. And so he was able to live happily wherever he was.
It is never possible for happiness and a longing for what is absent to come together. What is happy must have everything it desires; it must be like a man who has eaten his fill, with neither thirst nor hunger.
"But Odysseus felt a longing for his wife and wept as he sat on a rock."
Do you take Homer and his stories as authority in everything? And if Odysseus really wept, what was he but an unhappy man? And what good man is unhappy? In truth the whole is badly administered if Zeus does not take care of his own citizens so that they may be happy as he is. But it is neither lawful nor right to think such things. And if Odysseus did weep and lament, he was not a good man.
For who is good if he does not know who he is? And who knows what he is, if he forgets that the things that have been made are perishable, and that it is not possible for one human being to be with another always? To desire the impossible, then, is the mark of a slavish character, and it is foolish: it is the mark of a stranger, a man fighting against God in the only way he can, by his opinions.
"But my mother laments when she does not see me."
Why has she not learned these principles? And I do not say we should not take care that she does not lament; I say we ought not to want what is not our own, by every means.
Another man's grief is his own; my grief is my own. So I will stop my own grief by every means, because it is in my power; and another man's grief I will try to stop as far as I can, but I will not attempt it by every means. If I do, I shall be fighting against God, opposing Zeus, setting myself against him in the administration of the universe. And the penalty for this fighting against God and this disobedience will be paid not only by my children's children but by me — startled by dreams by night and by day, thrown about, trembling at every piece of news, with my peace of mind depending on other men's letters.
"Somebody has arrived from Rome. I only hope nothing has gone wrong." But what harm can come to you where you are not? "Somebody has come from Greece; I hope nothing has gone wrong." In this way every place on earth can be a source of misfortune to you. Is it not enough to be unfortunate where you are, without being unfortunate across the sea as well, and by letter? Is this what having your affairs in a state of security looks like?
"Well then, suppose my friends have died in places far from me."
What have they suffered but the condition of mortals? Or how can you want at the same time to live to old age and never see the death of anybody you love? Do you not know that over a long stretch of time many different things must happen — that a fever will carry off one man, a robber another, a tyrant a third? Such is the condition of things around us, and such are the people who live in the world with us. Cold and heat, unsuitable diets, journeys by land and voyages by sea, winds, all the various circumstances round us — these destroy one man, exile another, throw one into an embassy and another into an army.
So sit there in a flutter over all of it, lamenting, unhappy, unlucky, dependent on somebody else — and not on one or two, but on tens of thousands.
Is this what you heard when you were with the philosophers? Is this what you learned? Do you not know that human life is a campaign; that one man must stand watch, another go out as a scout, and a third fight? It is not possible for everybody to be in one place, and it would not be better if they were.
But you neglect to carry out the general's orders and complain when something harder than usual is put on you — and you do not notice what you are turning the army into, as far as it is in your power: if everybody copied you, nobody would dig a trench, nobody would throw up a rampart, nobody would keep watch or expose himself to danger, and everyone would turn out useless for the purposes of an army.
Again: if you go to sea as a sailor, keep to one spot and stick to it. If you are told to climb the mast, refuse; if to run to the bow, refuse. What ship's master will put up with you? Will he not throw you overboard as a useless thing, an obstruction and a bad example to the other sailors?
So it is here too. Every man's life is a kind of campaign, and it is a long one and full of variety. You must do a soldier's duty and do everything at the general's nod — guessing his wishes if possible, since there is no resemblance between that general and this one, either in strength or in quality of character.
You are placed in a great command, not in a mean position; you are always a senator. Do you not know that such a man must give little time to his household affairs and be often away from home — as a governor or as one governed, or discharging some office, or serving in war, or acting as a judge? And then do you tell me you want to be fixed to the same places and rooted, like a plant?
"Yes, because it is pleasant." Who says it is not? But soup is pleasant, and a handsome woman is pleasant. What else do the men who make pleasure their end say? Do you not see whose language you have been using — that it is the language of Epicureans and of men who have lost all shame about sex? And then, while you are doing what they do and holding their opinions, do you speak the words of Zeno and Socrates to us? Will you not throw away, as far as you can, the things belonging to other men that you decorate yourself with, when they do not fit you at all?
What else do such men want than to sleep without being blocked or compelled; and, having got up, to yawn at their leisure, and wash their faces, and then write and read what they like, and then talk about some trifle and be praised by their friends whatever they say; then to go out for a walk, and having walked a little to take a bath, and then eat, and then sleep — the kind of sleep such men have? Why need I say how? It is easy enough to guess.
Come — tell me your own way of passing the time, the one you want, you who are an admirer of truth and of Socrates and Diogenes. What do you want to do in Athens? The same as everybody else, or something different? Then why do you call yourself a Stoic?
Well: men who falsely claim to be Roman citizens are severely punished, and are men who falsely claim so great and venerable a thing and name to get off unpunished? Or is that not possible, and is this the divine and strong and unavoidable law — the one that exacts the heaviest punishments from those who commit the greatest crimes?
And what does this law say? Let the man who lays claim to things that do not belong to him be a boaster and a vain man. Let the man who disobeys the divine administration be base and a slave. Let him grieve, let him be envious, let him pity; and in a word, let him be unhappy and let him lament.
"Well then — do you want me to pay court to a certain man? To go to his door?"
If reason requires it for the sake of your country, for your family, for mankind, why should you not go? You are not ashamed to go to a shoemaker's door when you need shoes, or a gardener's when you want lettuces; and are you ashamed to go to a rich man's door when you want something?
"Yes, because I stand in no awe of a shoemaker." Then stand in no awe of the rich. "Nor will I flatter the gardener." Then do not flatter the rich either.
"How am I to get what I want, then?"
Do I tell you to go as though you were certain to get it? Do I not tell you only that you may do what becomes you?
"Then why should I go at all?"
So that you shall have gone; so that you shall have discharged the duty of a citizen, of a brother, of a friend. And remember besides that you have gone to a shoemaker, to a seller of vegetables, men who have no power over anything great or noble, however dear they sell.
You go to buy lettuces: they cost a penny, not a fortune. So it is here as well. The matter is worth going to the rich man's door for — very well, I will go. It is worth talking about — very well, I will talk with him. But you must kiss his hand as well and flatter him with praise. Away with that: that costs a fortune. It is no profit to me, nor to the state, nor to my friends, to have done the thing that ruins a good citizen and a good friend.
"But you will look as though you were not keen about the business, if you do not succeed."
Have you forgotten again why you went? Do you not know that a good man does nothing for the sake of appearances, but for the sake of doing right?
"And what advantage is it to him to have done right?"
And what advantage is it to a man writing the name Dion to write it as he ought? The advantage is to have written it.
"Is there no reward, then?"
Do you look for a greater reward for a good man than doing what is good and just? At Olympia you want nothing more; it seems enough to you to be crowned at the games. Does being good and happy seem to you so small and worthless a thing?
The gods have brought you into this city for these purposes, and it is now your duty to take up a man's work — and do you still want nurses and a mother? Do foolish women move you with their weeping and make you soft? Will you never stop being a foolish child? Do you not know that a man who behaves like a child is all the more ridiculous the older he gets?
In Athens did you see nobody by going to his house? "I visited any man I pleased." Here too be ready to see people, and you will see whom you please — only let it be without meanness, and without desire and without avoidance, and your affairs will go well. But that result does not depend on going, or on standing at doors: it depends on what is inside, on your judgments.
When you have learned not to value things that are external and not dependent on the will, and to consider that not one of them is your own — that these things only are your own, to judge well, to form opinions, to move toward an object, to desire, to turn away — where is there room left for flattery, and where for meanness?
Why do you still long for the quiet there, and for the places you are used to? Wait a little and you will find these places familiar too. And then, if you have so ignoble a nature, when you leave these as well, weep and lament again.
"How am I to become an affectionate man, then?"
By being of a noble disposition, and happy. It is not reasonable to be mean-spirited, or to bewail yourself, or to depend on somebody else, or ever to blame God or man. Become an affectionate man that way, I beg you, by keeping these rules. But if through this affection, as you call it, you are going to be a slave and wretched, then there is no profit in being affectionate.
And what stops you loving another person as one who is subject to death, as one who may go away from you? Did Socrates not love his own children? He did — but as a free man, as one who remembered that he must first be a friend to the gods. That is why he violated nothing that becomes a good man, neither in making his defence nor in proposing his own penalty, nor earlier in his life when he was a councillor or a soldier.
But we are fully supplied with excuses for a mean temper — one man for a child's sake, another for a mother's, another for his brothers'. It is not fitting for us to be unhappy on anybody's account; we should be happy on everybody's account, and chiefly on God's, who made us for this end.
Well then — did Diogenes love nobody, who was so kind and so much a lover of mankind that he willingly took on so much labour and bodily suffering for mankind in general? He did love mankind — but how? As a servant of God should: caring for men and at the same time being subject to God. That is why the whole earth was his country and no particular place; and when he was taken prisoner he did not pine for Athens or his friends and companions there, but even became familiar with the pirates and tried to improve them. And when he was sold afterwards he lived in Corinth as he had lived in Athens; and he would have behaved just the same if he had gone to the country of the Perrhaebi.
This is how freedom is got. That is why he used to say: ever since Antisthenes set me free, I have not been a slave.
How did Antisthenes set him free? Hear what he says. Antisthenes taught me what is my own and what is not. Possessions are not my own, nor family, nor servants, nor friends, nor reputation, nor familiar places, nor my way of life; all of these belong to others.
What is your own, then? The use of impressions. He showed me that I have this free of blocking and free of compulsion; nobody can put an obstacle in my way, nobody can force me to use impressions otherwise than I wish. Who has any power over me, then? Philip, or Alexander, or Perdiccas, or the great king? How should they have it?
For if a man is going to be overpowered by a man, he must long before have been overpowered by things. So if pleasure cannot subdue a man, nor pain, nor fame, nor wealth, and if he is able whenever he chooses to spit out his whole poor body in a man's face and leave life — whose slave can he still be?
But if he had lived in Athens with pleasure and been overpowered by that way of living, his affairs would have been at everybody's command; the stronger man would have had the power to grieve him. How do you suppose Diogenes would have flattered the pirates to make them sell him to some Athenian, so that he might one day see that beautiful Piraeus, and the Long Walls, and the Acropolis?
In what condition would you see them? As a captive, a slave, a mean creature — and what use would that be to you?
"Not so: I should see them as a free man."
Show me how you would be free. Look: somebody has caught you and is leading you away from the place you are used to living in, and says, "You are my slave, because it is in my power to stop you living as you please. It is in my power to treat you gently or to humble you, whenever I choose." And on the other side you are cheerful and go off to Athens elated.
What do you say to the man who treats you as a slave? What means have you of finding somebody to rescue you from slavery? Or can you not even look him in the face, but without another word beg to be let go?
Man, you ought to go to prison gladly, hurrying, going ahead of the men who are taking you there. And then, I ask you, are you unwilling to live in Rome, and do you long to live in Greece? And when you have to die, will you fill our ears with your lamentations then too, because you will not see Athens and will not walk about in the Lyceum?
Is this what you went abroad for? Was this why you looked for somebody you might get some benefit from? What benefit? So that you could resolve syllogisms more readily, or handle hypothetical arguments? And was it for this that you left brother, country, friends, family — to come back having learned these things?
So you did not go abroad to get steadiness of mind, or freedom from being thrown about; not so that, being safe from harm, you might never complain of anybody, or accuse anybody, and nobody could wrong you, and you might keep up your relations to other men unblocked?
This is a fine line of trade you have gone abroad for — syllogisms and trick arguments and hypotheticals. If you like, take a place in the marketplace and cry them for sale like a drug seller. Will you not deny even everything you have learned, so as not to give your theorems a bad name as useless?
What harm has philosophy done you? How has Chrysippus injured you, that you should prove by your acts that his labours were useless? Were the evils you had at home not enough — the ones that were the cause of your pain and lamentation even if you had never gone abroad? Have you added more to the list? And if you make other acquaintances and friends, you will have more causes for lamentation; and the same if you grow fond of another country.
Why do you live to heap sorrow upon sorrow round yourself, and be unhappy through them? And then, I ask you, do you call this affection? What affection, man! If it is a good thing, it is the cause of no evil; and if it is a bad thing, I want nothing to do with it. I am made by nature for my own good; I am not made for my own harm.
What is the training for this, then? The first and chief one, standing as it were in the doorway, is this: when you are delighted by anything, be delighted with it as with a thing that can be taken away — as with an earthenware pot, or a glass cup, so that when it is broken you may remember what it was and not be upset.
So here too. When you kiss your own child, or your brother, or your friend, never give the impression free rein and never let your pleasure go as far as it likes. Check it and curb it, as the men who stand behind generals in their triumphs do, reminding them that they are mortal. Remind yourself in the same way that the one you love is mortal, and that what you love is nothing of your own. It has been given to you for the present, not so that it cannot be taken away, and not for all time, but as a fig is given, or a bunch of grapes, at its appointed season of the year. If you want them in winter you are a fool. So if you want your son or your friend when it is not allowed to you, you must know you are wanting a fig in winter.
For what winter is to a fig, every event that comes from the universe is to the things it takes away in the course of nature.
And further: at the times when you are delighted with a thing, put the contrary impressions in front of yourself. What harm is there, while you are kissing your child, in saying under your breath, "Tomorrow you will die"? And to a friend, "Tomorrow you will go away, or I shall, and we shall never see each other again"?
"But these are words of ill omen."
Some charms are of ill omen too; and because they are useful, I do not care about that — only let them be useful. Do you call anything a bad omen except what signifies some evil? Cowardice is a word of ill omen, and meanness of spirit, and sorrow, and grief, and shamelessness. Those are words of ill omen; and even so we ought not to hesitate to say them, in order to protect ourselves against the things.
Do you tell me that a word signifying something natural is of evil omen? Then say that the reaping of the ears of corn is of evil omen, since it signifies the destruction of the ears — though not of the world. Say that the falling of the leaves is of ill omen, and the dried fig taking the place of the green one, and grapes being turned into raisins. All these are changes from a former state into other states: not destruction, but a certain fixed ordering and administration.
So is going abroad: a small change. So is death: a greater change, not from what is now to what is not, but to what is not now.
"Shall I no longer exist, then?"
You will not exist, but you will be something else, of which the world now has need. For you came into existence not when you chose, but when the world had need of you.
And so the wise and good man, remembering who he is and where he came from and by whom he was made, attends only to this: how he may fill his place in good order and obediently to God.
Do you still want me to exist? Then I will go on existing as a free man, as a man noble by nature, as you wanted me to exist — for you made me unblocked in what is my own. But have you no further need of me? I thank you. I have stayed until now for your sake and for nobody else's, and now in obedience to you I depart.
How do you depart? Again, as you have pleased: as a free man, as your servant, as one who has known your commands and your prohibitions.
And as long as I stay in your service, what do you want me to be — a prince or a private man, a senator or an ordinary person, a soldier or a general, a teacher or the head of a household? Whatever place and position you assign me, I will die ten thousand times, as Socrates says, rather than desert it.
And where do you want me to be? In Rome, or Athens, or Thebes, or Gyara? Only remember me there, where I am. If you send me to a place where there are no means for a man to live according to nature, I shall not leave life in disobedience to you, but as though you had given me the signal to retreat. I do not leave you — far be that from my intention — but I see that you have no further need of me. And if the means of living according to nature are allowed me, I will look for no other place than the one I am in, and no other men than the ones I am among.
Let these thoughts be ready to hand night and day. These you should write; these you should read; about these you should talk to yourself and to others. Ask a man, "Can you help me at all toward this?" And then go to another, and another.
Then if something happens against your wish, this reflection will relieve you at once: that it was not unexpected. It is a great thing in every case to be able to say, "I knew that the son I fathered was mortal." So you will also say: I knew that I am mortal; I knew that I may leave my home; I knew that I may be thrown out of it; I knew that I may be taken off to prison.
And then, if you turn round and look at yourself and look for the quarter the thing came from, you will remember at once that it comes from the region of things outside the power of the will, things that are not my own. So what is it to me?
Then you will ask — and this is the chief thing — and who was it that sent it? The commander, the general, the state, the law of the state. Give it to me, then; I must always obey the law in everything.
And when the impression gives you pain — for it is not in your power to prevent that — fight against it with the help of reason. Beat it. Do not let it gain strength, and do not let it lead you on to the consequences by raising whatever images it pleases and however it pleases.
If you are on Gyara, do not picture the way of living at Rome, and how many pleasures there were for a man living there and how many there would be if he went back. Fix your mind on this instead: how a man who lives on Gyara ought to live on Gyara, like a man of courage. And if you are in Rome, do not picture life in Athens; think only about life in Rome.
Then, in place of every other delight, put this one: being conscious that you are obeying God; that not in word but in fact you are performing the acts of a wise and good man.
What a thing it is for a man to be able to say to himself: whatever the rest of them may be saying solemnly in the schools, and may be thought to be saying in a strange way, this I am doing. They are sitting and discoursing about my virtues, and enquiring about me, and praising me — and Zeus has willed that I should get the proof of it from myself, and should know for myself whether he has the soldier he ought to have, the citizen he ought to have; and whether he has chosen to produce me before the rest of mankind as a witness of the things that lie outside the will.
See that you fear without reason. See that you foolishly desire what you desire. Do not look for the good in externals; look for it in yourselves — and if you do not, you will not find it.
For this purpose he leads me here at one time and sends me there at another; shows me to men as poor, without authority, and sick; sends me to Gyara, takes me into prison — not because he hates me, far be such a thought from him, for who hates the best of his servants? nor because he does not care about me, for he neglects not even the smallest things — but in order to train me and to use me as a witness to others.
Appointed to such a service, do I still care what place I am in, or whom I am with, or what men say about me? Do I not turn my thoughts entirely to God and to his instructions and commands?
Keep these things always to hand, and exercise them on your own, and hold them in readiness, and you will never be in want of somebody to comfort and strengthen you. For it is not shameful to have nothing to eat; it is shameful not to have reason enough to keep off fear and sorrow.
And if you once win exemption from sorrow and fear, will there be any tyrant for you any longer, or any tyrant's guard, or any of Caesar's attendants? Will any appointment to office at court cause you pain? Will the men who sacrifice on the Capitol on being named to certain functions cause any pain to you, who have received so great an authority from Zeus?
Only do not make a proud display of it, and do not boast of it; show it by your acts. And if nobody notices, be satisfied that you yourself are in a healthy state, and happy.
Look at the things you set out to do at the start: which you have secured and which you have not; and how pleased you are when you remember the one and how pained about the other. And if it is possible, recover the things you failed at.
For we must not flinch when we are engaged in the greatest of contests; we must take the blows. The contest before us is not in wrestling or in the all-in fight, where both the winner and the loser may have great merit or very little, and may in truth be very lucky or very unlucky. Our contest is for good fortune and happiness themselves.
Well then — even if we have given up the contest for those, nothing stops us starting the fight again. We are not forced to wait another four years for the games at Olympia to come round. As soon as you have recovered and pulled yourself together and put the same keenness into it, you may take up the fight again; and if you give up again, you may take it up again. And if you once win, you are like a man who never gave up at all.
Only do not, out of the habit of giving up, begin to give up with pleasure — and then, like a bad athlete, go the whole circuit of the games after being beaten, like quails running away.
"The sight of a beautiful young girl overpowers me. Well — have I not been overpowered before? An inclination comes on me to find fault with somebody; and have I not found fault before?"
You talk to us as though you had come out of these things unharmed — just as a man might say to the doctor who forbids him to bathe, "Have I not bathed before?" And the doctor can say to him: well, and what happened to you after the bath? Did you not have a fever, did you not have a headache?
And when you found fault with somebody the other day, were you not doing the act of a spiteful man, of a trifling chatterer? Did you not feed the habit in yourself by adding the corresponding acts to it? And when you were overpowered by the girl, did you come off unharmed?
So why do you talk about what you did before? You ought, I think, to remember what you did as slaves remember the blows they have taken, and to keep off the same faults.
But the two cases are not alike. With slaves it is the pain that causes the memory; and with your faults, what is the pain, what is the punishment? When have you ever been in the habit of running from bad acts? Then sufferings of the testing kind are useful to us, whether we choose them or not.
Are you not ashamed to be more cowardly and meaner than runaway slaves? How do they leave their masters when they run? What estates do they count on, what servants do they rely on? Do they not steal a little, enough for the first few days, and after that make their way over land or sea, contriving one method after another of keeping themselves alive? And what runaway slave ever died of hunger?
But you are afraid that necessities may fail you, and you lie awake at night over it. Wretch, are you so blind that you cannot see the road that the want of necessities leads to?
"Well, where does it lead?"
To the same place a fever leads, or a stone falling on you: to death. Have you not said this yourself to your companions, often? Have you not read a great deal of this kind, and written a great deal? And how often have you boasted that you were easy about death?
"Yes — but my wife and children will go hungry too."
Well then, does their hunger lead anywhere else? Is there not the same descent to the same place for them? Is there not the same condition down there for them? Will you not choose to look toward that place, full of boldness against every want and shortage — the place the richest men and the men who have held the highest offices, and kings themselves, and tyrants, all have to go down to? You will go down hungry, if it happens that way; they will go down burst with indigestion and drink.
How rarely have you seen a beggar who was not an old man, and of extreme old age at that? Chilled with cold night and day, lying on the ground, eating only what is absolutely necessary — and they come close to being unable to die at all.
Can you not write? Can you not look after children? Can you not be a doorkeeper at somebody else's house?
"But it is shameful to come to such a necessity."
Then learn first what things are shameful, and after that tell us you are a philosopher. For the present, do not allow it even if somebody else calls you one.
Is a thing shameful to you when it is not your own act, when you are not the cause of it, when it has come to you by accident, like a headache or a fever? If your parents were poor and left their property to others, and if while they live they do not help you at all, is that shameful to you? Is this what you learned from the philosophers?
Did you never hear that what is shameful is what deserves blame, and that what deserves blame is worth blaming? Whom do you blame for an act that is not his, that he did not do himself? Did you make your father what he is? Is it in your power to improve him? Is that power given to you? Well then — ought you to want things that are not given to you, or to be ashamed if you do not get them?
And in studying philosophy, have you got into the habit of looking to others and hoping for nothing from yourself? Then lament and groan, and eat in fear that you may have no food tomorrow. Tremble about your wretched slaves, in case they steal, in case they run away, in case they die.
Live that way and go on living that way, you who have come near philosophy in name only, and have disgraced its theorems as far as you can by showing them to be useless and unprofitable to the men who take them up. You have never looked for steadiness, or freedom from being thrown about, or freedom from the passions. You have never sought out anybody for that purpose, though you have sought out plenty for syllogisms. You have never thoroughly examined any of these impressions on your own: am I able to bear this, or am I not? What is left for me to do?
Instead, as though all your affairs were secure and in order, you have settled on the third topic, the one about things staying unchanged — so that you may possess unchanged what? Cowardice, meanness of spirit, admiration of the rich, desire that reaches nothing, and avoidance that fails in the attempt. These are the things you have been anxious to make secure.
Ought you not first to have gained something from reason, and then made that secure? Whom did you ever see building a parapet all round and not putting a wall under it? What doorkeeper is stationed to guard where there is no door?
But you practise so as to be able to prove — what? You practise so that you may not be tossed about as at sea by sophisms. Tossed about away from what? Show me first what you are holding, what you are measuring, what you are weighing; and show me the scales, or the measure. Or how long will you go on measuring dust?
Ought you not to be demonstrating the things that make men happy, that make things go for them as they wish, and that show us why we should blame nobody, accuse nobody, and accept the administration of the universe? Show me those.
"See, I show them: I will resolve syllogisms for you."
That is the measure, slave — it is not the thing measured.
So now you are paying the penalty for what you neglected, philosophy. You tremble, you lie awake, you take advice from everybody; and if your deliberations are not likely to please everybody, you think you have deliberated badly.
Then you fear hunger, as you suppose. But it is not hunger you fear. You are afraid that you will not have a cook, that you will not have a second man to buy provisions for the table, a third to take off your shoes, a fourth to dress you, others to rub you down and follow you about — so that in the bath, when you have taken your clothes off and stretched yourself out like a man being crucified, you may be rubbed on this side and on that, and the attendant may say to the slave, "Move him; give me his side; take his head; show me the shoulder." And then, when you have left the bath and gone home, you may call out, "Is nobody bringing anything to eat?" and then, "Take the tables away; wipe them down."
This is what you are afraid of: that you may not be able to lead the life of a sick man.
Learn instead the life of men who are in health: how slaves live, how labourers live, how genuine philosophers live; how Socrates lived, who had a wife and children; how Diogenes lived; how Cleanthes lived, who ran the school and drew water. If you choose to have these things, you will have them everywhere, and you will live in complete confidence.
Confidence in what? In the only thing a man can be confident in: what is secure, what cannot be blocked, what cannot be taken away — that is, your own will.
And why have you made yourself so useless and good for nothing that nobody will choose to take you into his house or take care of you? If a whole and useful pot were thrown out, any man who found it would pick it up and count it a gain. Nobody will pick you up; every man will count you a loss. So can you not do the work even of a dog, or of a cock? Then why do you choose to go on living, being what you are?
Does any good man fear he will run out of food? It does not run out for the blind, or for the lame: will it run out for a good man? A good soldier does not lack somebody to pay him, nor does a labourer, nor a shoemaker: and will the good man lack such a person?
Does God so neglect the things he established — his servants, his witnesses, the only men he uses as examples to the untaught, to show that he exists and administers the whole well and does not neglect human affairs, and that for a good man there is no evil, living or dead?
And what about when he does not supply him with food? What else is he doing but giving me, like a good general, the signal to retreat? I obey. I follow, agreeing with the commander's words and praising his acts. I came when it pleased him and I shall go when it pleases him; and while I lived, my duty was to praise God, both by myself and to each man and to many.
He does not supply me with much, or with plenty; he does not want me to live in luxury. He did not supply Hercules either, who was his own son: somebody else was king of Argos and Mycenae, and Hercules obeyed orders and laboured and was trained. And Eurystheus was what he was, king neither of Argos nor of Mycenae, since he was not even king of himself; while Hercules was ruler and leader of the whole earth and sea, who cleared away lawlessness and brought in justice and holiness — and he did it naked and alone.
And when Odysseus was cast ashore from the shipwreck, did want humiliate him? Did it break his spirit? How did he go off to the girls to ask for necessities — begging, which is thought the most shameful thing of all?
Like a lion bred in the mountains, trusting in his strength. — Odyssey vi 130.
Trusting in what? Not in reputation, not in wealth, not in the power of an office, but in his own strength — that is, in his judgments about what is in our power and what is not. These are the only things that make men free, that let them escape being blocked, that lift the heads of men who are cast down, that let them look at rich men and tyrants with a steady eye.
And this was the gift given to the philosopher. But you will not come out bold; you will come out trembling for your paltry clothes and your silver plate. Unhappy man — have you wasted your time until now like this?
"And what if I fall ill?"
You will be ill in the way you ought to be.
"Who will look after me?"
God. Your friends.
"I shall lie on a hard bed."
But you will lie on it like a man.
"I shall not have a comfortable room."
Then you will be ill in an uncomfortable one.
"Who will provide the food I need?"
The people who provide it for others. You will be ill as Manes is ill.
And what will the end of the illness be? Anything but death?
Then will you not consider that this — not death, but the fear of death — is the chief of all evils for a man, and the chief mark of a mean spirit and of cowardice? Train yourself against that fear, then; that is my advice. Let all your reasoning tend that way, and your exercises, and your reading. And you will know that this, and only this, is how men are made free.
He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is subject to no compulsion, no blocking, no force; whose impulses to action are unobstructed, whose desires reach their object, and who does not fall into what he would avoid.
Who chooses to live in error? Nobody. Who chooses to live deceived, liable to mistake, unjust, uncontrolled, discontented, mean? Nobody. So not one bad man lives as he wishes, and therefore not one of them is free.
And who chooses to live in grief, in fear, in envy, in pity, desiring and failing of his desires, trying to avoid something and falling into it? Not one. Then do we find any bad man free of grief and free of fear, who does not fall into what he would avoid and does get what he wants? Not one. So we find no bad man free.
Now if a man who has twice been consul hears this, and you add, "But you are a wise man; this has nothing to do with you," he will forgive you. But if you tell him the truth and say, "As far as not being a slave goes, you differ in nothing from the men who have been sold three times over," what else should you expect but blows?
"What," he says, "I a slave? My father was free, my mother was free. Nobody can buy me. I am of senatorial rank besides, and a friend of Caesar, and I have been consul, and I own a great many slaves."
In the first place, most excellent senator, perhaps your father was a slave in the same kind of servitude, and your mother, and your grandfather, and all your ancestors in a rising line. But even if they were as free as it is possible to be, what is that to you? What if they were of a noble nature and you of a mean one; if they were fearless and you a coward; if they had the power of self-control and you cannot exercise it?
"And what," you may say, "has that to do with being a slave?"
Does it seem to you nothing to do a thing unwillingly, under compulsion, with groans — has that nothing to do with being a slave?
"It is something," you say. "But who is able to compel me, except the master of us all, Caesar?"
Then you have admitted yourself that you have one master. And do not let it console you in the least that he is, as you say, the common master of all; understand instead that you are a slave in a great household. This is how the people of Nicopolis are in the habit of shouting, "By the fortune of Caesar, we are free."
However, let us not speak about Caesar for the present, if you please. Tell me this instead: did you never love anybody, a young girl, or a slave, or a free woman?
"And what has this to do with being a slave or free?"
Were you never ordered by the person you loved to do something you did not want to do? Have you never flattered your little slave girl? Have you never kissed her feet? And yet if a man forced you to kiss Caesar's feet you would think it an insult and outrageous tyranny. So what else is slavery?
Did you never go out at night to a place you did not want to go to? Did you never spend what you did not want to spend? Did you never say things with sighs and groans, and put up with abuse, and with being shut out?
And if you are ashamed to admit your own acts, look at what Thrasonides says and does — a man who has seen more military service than perhaps even you have. First of all he goes out at night, when Geta the slave does not dare go out, and would have made a great outcry if his master had forced him, and gone out lamenting his bitter slavery. And then, what does Thrasonides say? "A worthless girl has enslaved me, whom no enemy ever enslaved."
Unhappy man, to be the slave even of a girl, and a worthless one. Why do you still call yourself free, then? Why do you talk about your service in the army? Then he calls for a sword and is angry with the man who kindly refuses to give it to him; and he sends presents to the woman who hates him, and begs and weeps; and then, having had a little success, he is elated. But even then — was he free enough neither to desire nor to fear?
Now consider how we use the notion of freedom with animals. Men keep tame lions shut up and feed them, and some take them about; and who will say that such a lion is free? Is it not the case that the more comfortably he lives, the more slavish his condition? And who, if he had perception and reason, would want to be one of those lions?
And these birds, when they are caught and shut up — how much do they suffer trying to escape? Some of them starve to death rather than put up with such a life; and those that live, barely live and waste away in suffering; and if they ever find an opening, out they go. So strongly do they want their natural liberty, to be independent and unblocked.
And what harm is there to you in it? What do you say? I am made by nature to fly where I choose, to live in the open air, to sing when I choose; you take all this from me, and then ask what harm it is to me.
For this reason we shall say that only those animals are free which cannot bear captivity, but escape it by dying as soon as they are caught. So Diogenes says somewhere that there is only one road to freedom, and that is to die content. And he writes to the king of Persia: "You cannot enslave the Athenian state any more than you can enslave fish."
How is that? Can I not catch them?
"If you catch them," says Diogenes, "they will leave you at once, as fish do; catch a fish and it dies. And if these men, once caught, are going to die, what use to you is all your preparation for war?"
These are the words of a free man who had examined the matter carefully and, naturally enough, had found the answer. But if you look for it somewhere other than where it is, what wonder if you never find it?
The slave wants to be set free at once. Why? Do you suppose he wants to pay the manumission tax to the collectors? No — but because he imagines that up to now, not having got this, he is blocked and unlucky. "Once I am set free, everything is happiness at once. I take no notice of anybody. I speak to everybody as an equal and a like. I go where I choose, I come from where I choose, I go where I choose."
Then he is set free — and at once, having nowhere to eat, he looks for somebody to flatter, somebody to have dinner with. Then he either works with his body and endures the most dreadful things, and if he can get a manger to feed at he falls into a slavery much worse than his old one; or, even if he becomes rich, being a man with no knowledge of what is good, he falls in love with some little girl and laments in his unhappiness and longs to be a slave again.
"What evil did I suffer as a slave? Somebody else clothed me, somebody else gave me shoes, somebody else fed me, somebody else looked after me when I was ill; and I only did a few services in return. But now, wretched man, what things I suffer, being a slave to many instead of to one. All the same," he says, "if I get the gold rings, then I shall live in prosperity and happiness."
First, to get the rings, he submits to what he deserves; then, having got them, it is all the same again. Then he says, "If I take a commission in the army, I am free of all my troubles." He gets his commission, and suffers as much as a flogged slave — and nevertheless asks for a second commission and a third.
And after that, when he has put the final touch to his career and become a senator, then he becomes a slave by entering the senate house; then he serves the finest and most splendid slavery of all.
Let him stop being a fool and learn what Socrates taught: what the nature of each thing that exists is, and that a man should not fit his preconceptions rashly to particular things. This is the cause of all men's troubles: not being able to fit the general preconceptions to particular cases.
But we hold different opinions about the cause of our troubles. One man thinks he is ill — not so; the fact is that he is fitting his preconceptions wrongly. Another thinks he is poor; another that he has a harsh father or mother; another that Caesar is not favourable to him. All of it is one thing and one only: not knowing how to fit the preconceptions.
Who has not a preconception of what is bad — that it is harmful, that it should be avoided, that it should be guarded against by every means? One preconception is not in conflict with another; the conflict only comes at the point of fitting them.
So what is this evil, this harmful thing to be avoided? He answers: not being Caesar's friend. He has gone wide of the mark; he has missed the fitting; he is in difficulties; he is looking for things that have nothing to do with the matter. For when he has succeeded in becoming Caesar's friend, he has still failed to find what he was looking for.
For what is it that every man is looking for? To live securely, to be happy, to do everything as he wishes, not to be blocked, not to be compelled. When he becomes Caesar's friend, then, is he unblocked? Uncompelled? Is he at peace? Is he happy?
Whom shall we ask? What more trustworthy witness have we than the very man who has become Caesar's friend? Come forward and tell us: when did you sleep more quietly, now or before?
At once you hear the answer: "Stop, I beg you, and do not mock me. You do not know what miseries I suffer. Sleep does not come to me. Somebody comes and says, Caesar is awake already, he is on his way out — and then come the troubles and the cares."
Well — when did you dine with more pleasure, now or before? Hear what he says about that too. If he is not invited he is hurt; and if he is invited he dines like a slave with his master, anxious the whole time not to say or do anything foolish. And what do you suppose he is afraid of? Being flogged like a slave? How could he hope for anything so good. No: as befits so great a man, Caesar's friend, he is afraid of losing his head.
And when did you bathe with less worry, and take your exercise more quietly? In short, which life did you prefer, the one you have now or the one before? I can swear that no man is so stupid or so ignorant of the truth that he does not lament his own misfortunes the closer he stands in friendship to Caesar.
So since neither the men called kings live as they choose, nor the friends of kings, who in the end are the men who are free? Look, and you will find; you have aids from nature for discovering the truth.
But if you are not able by yourself, going only along these roads, to discover what follows, then listen to the men who have made the enquiry. What do they say? Does freedom seem to you a good thing? "The greatest good." Is it possible, then, for a man who has got the greatest good to be unhappy or to fare badly? "No." Then whenever you see men unhappy, unlucky, lamenting, declare confidently that they are not free. "I do declare it."
So now we have got away from buying and selling and all such arrangements about property. If you have rightly agreed to these things, then if the great king is unhappy he cannot be free; nor can a lesser king, nor a man of consular rank, nor a man who has been consul twice. Very well.
Then answer me this question as well: does freedom seem to you something great and noble and valuable? "How could it not?" Then is it possible, when a man has got something so great and valuable and noble, for him to be mean? "It is not."
So whenever you see a man subject to another, or flattering him against his own opinion, declare confidently that this man is not free either — and not only if he does it for a dinner, but if he does it for a province or a consulship. Call the men who do it for small things little slaves, and the men who do it for great things great slaves, as they deserve. "That is admitted too."
Do you think freedom is something independent and self-governing? "Certainly." Then whenever it is in another man's power to block a man and compel him, declare that he is not free. And do not, I beg you, look into his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, or enquire whether he was bought and sold. If you hear him say "Master" from the heart and with feeling, call him a slave, even if twelve lictors walk in front of him. And if you hear him say, "Wretch that I am, how much I suffer," call him a slave. If in the end you see him lamenting, complaining, unhappy, call him a slave, though he wears the purple-bordered toga.
And if he is doing none of these things, do not yet call him free: learn his judgments, and see whether they are subject to compulsion, or can produce blocking, or bad fortune. If you find him so, call him a slave on holiday at the Saturnalia. Say his master is away from home; he will be back soon, and then you will find out what he suffers.
"Who will be back?" Whoever has in himself the power over anything the man wants — to give it to him or to take it away.
"So we have many masters?" We have. Before our present masters we have circumstances as our masters, and the circumstances are many. So the men who have power over any of these circumstances must necessarily be our masters.
No man fears Caesar himself; he fears death, exile, loss of property, prison, disgrace. And no man loves Caesar unless Caesar is a man of great merit; he loves wealth, or the office of tribune, or praetor, or consul. And when we love and hate and fear these things, then the men who have power over them must be our masters.
So we worship them as gods; we think that whatever has the power of conferring the greatest advantage on us is divine. And then we wrongly assume that a particular man has the power of conferring the greatest advantages, and so that he is something divine. For if we wrongly assume that a particular man has that power, the conclusion drawn from those premises must necessarily be false.
What is it, then, that makes a man unblocked and his own master? Wealth does not do it, nor a consulship, nor a provincial governorship, nor royal power. Something else has to be found.
What is it that makes us unblocked and unobstructed when we write? Knowing the art of writing. And in playing the lute? Knowing the science of the lute. So in life too, it is the science of living.
You have heard it in general terms; now examine the thing in its parts as well. Is it possible for a man who desires any of the things that depend on others to be unblocked? No. Is it possible for him to be unobstructed? No. Then he cannot be free.
Consider, then: have we nothing in our own power only? Or have we everything? Or are some things in our own power and others in the power of others?
"What do you mean?"
When you want the body to be sound, is it in your power or not? "It is not." When you want it to be healthy? "That is not in my power either." When you want it to be handsome? "Nor that." Life or death? "That is not in my power either."
So your body belongs to somebody else, subject to every man stronger than you. "It does."
And your estate — is it in your power to have it when you please, and as long as you please, and in the state you please? "No." And your slaves? "No." And your clothes? "No." And your house? "No." And your horses? "Not one of these things." And if you want your children to live by all means, or your wife, or your brother, or your friends — is that in your power? "That is not in my power either."
Have you nothing at all, then, that is in your own power, that depends on you alone and cannot be taken from you? Or have you something of the kind?
"I do not know."
Then look at the thing this way and examine it. Can any man make you assent to what is false? "No man." Then in the matter of assent you are unblocked and unobstructed. "Granted."
Well — and can a man force you to have an impulse toward something you do not choose? "He can: when he threatens me with death or with chains, he forces me to have the impulse."
If you despise death and chains, then, do you pay him any more attention? "No." Then is despising death an act of your own or not? "It is my own act." Then having an impulse toward a thing is also your own act, or is it not? "It is my own act." And having an impulse away from a thing — whose act is that? That too is yours.
"And what if I try to walk and somebody stops me?"
What part of you does he stop? Does he stop your assent? "No — my poor body." Yes, as he would stop a stone. "Granted; but I no longer walk."
And who told you that walking is your own act and unblocked? I said that this alone is unblocked: having the impulse. Where the body and its cooperation are needed, you heard long ago that nothing is your own. "Granted that as well."
And who can force you to desire what you do not want? "No man." And to intend or plan, or in short to use the impressions that come to you — can any man force you? "He cannot do that; but he will block me from getting what I desire, when I desire."
If you desire something of your own, one of the things that cannot be blocked, how will he block you? "He cannot in any way." Then who tells you that a man who desires what belongs to others is unblocked?
"Must I not desire health, then?"
By no means, nor anything else belonging to others. What it is not in your power to get or to keep when you please belongs to another. Keep away from it, then — not only your hands, but more than that, your desires as well. If you do not, you have handed yourself over as a slave; you have put your neck under the yoke, if you admire anything not your own, of everything that depends on other men's power and is perishable, everything you have taken a liking to.
"Is my hand not my own?"
It is a part of your own body — but by nature it is earth, subject to blocking, to compulsion, and slave to everything stronger than itself. And why do I say your hand? You ought to possess your whole body as you possess a loaded donkey, as long as it is possible, as long as you are allowed to. But if there is a requisition and a soldier takes hold of it, let it go, do not resist and do not complain; if you do, you will get a beating and lose the donkey anyway.
And when this is how you should feel about the body, consider what is left to do about everything else that is provided for the body's sake. When the body is a donkey, all the other things are the donkey's tackle: the pack-saddles, the shoes, the barley, the fodder. Let those go too; get rid of them faster and more readily than of the donkey.
When you have made this preparation, and have trained at this discipline — telling what belongs to another from what is your own, and the things subject to blocking from the things that are not; counting the unblocked things as your concern and the others as no concern of yours; keeping your desire steadily fixed on what does concern you and turned away from what does not — do you still fear any man? No one.
What will you be afraid about? About the things that are your own, in which the nature of good and evil consists? And who has power over these? Who can take them away? Who can obstruct them? Nobody can, any more than they can obstruct God.
But will you be afraid about your body and your possessions — about things that are not yours, that in no way concern you? And what else have you been studying from the beginning but how to tell your own from not your own, what is in your power from what is not, what is subject to blocking from what is not? And why did you come to the philosophers? So that you might be unlucky and unhappy just the same?
So in this way you will be without fear and without disturbance. And what is grief to you? Fear comes from what you expect, grief from what is present. And what more will you desire? Of the things within the power of the will, being good and present, you have a proper and regulated desire; and of the things not within the power of the will you desire none, and so you give no room at all to what is irrational and impatient and hasty beyond measure.
When you are in this state toward things, what man can still be formidable to you? What has one man that is formidable to another, whether you see him or speak to him or live with him? No more than one horse has to another, or one dog to another, or one bee to another bee.
Things are formidable to every man; and when a man is able to give those things to another or take them away, then he too becomes formidable.
So how is a citadel demolished? Not by the sword and not by fire, but by opinion. If we abolish the citadel that stands in the city, have we abolished the citadel of fever as well, and the citadel of beautiful women? Can we, in a word, abolish the citadel inside us and throw out the tyrants inside us — the ones we have standing over us daily, sometimes the same tyrants and sometimes different ones?
This is where we have to begin; this is how we demolish the citadel and throw out the tyrants: by giving up the body, its parts, its capacities, its possessions, reputation, offices, honours, children, brothers, friends, and counting all of them as belonging to others.
And if the tyrants have been thrown out of me, why should I still blockade the citadel with a wall — on my own account, at any rate? If it is still standing, what does it do to me? Why should I still throw out the tyrant's guards? Where do I feel them? They have their rods and their spears and their swords for other men. But I have never been blocked in my will, and never compelled when I did not will it.
And how is that possible? I have put my impulse to act under God's orders. Is it his will that I have a fever? It is my will too. Is it his will that I move toward something? It is my will too. Is it his will that I get something? It is my wish too. Does he not will it? Then I do not wish it. Is it his will that I die, is it his will that I be racked? Then it is my will to die, my will to be racked.
Who can still block me against my own judgment, or compel me? No more than they can block or compel Zeus.
This is how the more cautious travellers behave. A traveller has heard the road is full of robbers; he does not risk it alone, but waits for the company of an ambassador, or a quaestor, or a proconsul, and having attached himself to such men he goes along the road safely.
So the wise man behaves in the world. There are many bands of robbers, tyrants, storms, difficulties, losses of what is dearest to him. Where is there a refuge? How is he to pass along without being attacked by robbers? What company shall he wait for so as to pass safely? Whom shall he attach himself to? To whom in general — to the rich man, to the man of consular rank? And what use is that to me? Such a man is stripped himself; he groans and laments. And what if my fellow traveller turns on me and becomes my robber, what shall I do then?
I will be a friend of Caesar; when I am Caesar's companion nobody will wrong me. In the first place, what must I endure and suffer in order to become distinguished? How often, and by how many men, must I be robbed? And then, if I do become Caesar's friend, he is mortal too. And if Caesar becomes my enemy for some reason, where is it best for me to retire to? A desert? Well — does fever not come there?
What is to be done, then? Is it not possible to find a safe fellow traveller, a faithful one, strong, proof against every surprise? So he considers, and sees that if he attaches himself to God he will make his journey safely.
How do you understand attaching yourself to God? In this sense: that whatever God wills, a man shall will too; and what God does not will, a man shall not will either.
And how is that to be done? In what other way than by examining God's movements and his administration? What has he given me as my own and in my own power? What has he kept for himself? He has given me the things within the power of the will; he has put them in my power, free of obstruction and blocking. How could he make the earthy body unblocked? He could not, and so he made possessions, household goods, house, children and wife subject to the revolution of the whole.
Why do I fight against God, then? Why do I will what does not depend on the will? Why do I will to have absolutely what is not granted to me?
But how ought I to will to have things? In the way they are given, and for as long as they are given. And the one who gave them takes them away. Why do I resist, then? I do not say that I shall be a fool if I use force against a stronger — I shall first of all be unjust.
For where did I get anything when I came into the world? My father gave it to me. And who gave it to him? And who made the sun? And who made the fruits of the earth? Who made the seasons? Who made the connection of men with one another, and their fellowship?
And then, having received everything from another, and yourself as well, are you angry and do you blame the giver if he takes something from you?
Who are you, and what did you come into the world for? Did he not bring you here? Did he not show you the light? Did he not give you fellow workers, and senses, and reason? And as what did he bring you here? Did he not bring you as a mortal, to live on the earth with a little flesh, and to watch his administration, and to join him in the spectacle and the festival for a short time?
Then will you not, as long as you are allowed, having seen the spectacle and the solemnity, go out when he leads you out, worshipping him and giving thanks for what you have heard and seen?
"No — I would like to enjoy the feast longer."
So would the initiated like to be longer at their initiation; so, perhaps, would the crowds at Olympia like to see more athletes. But the solemnity is over. Go away like a grateful and modest man; make room for others. Others must be born, as you were; and being born, they must have a place, and houses, and necessities. And if the first men do not withdraw, what is left?
Why are you insatiable? Why are you not content? Why do you crowd the world?
"Yes, but I want my little children with me, and my wife."
What — are they yours? Do they not belong to the giver, to the one who made you? Then will you not give up what belongs to others? Will you not give way to your superior?
"Why did he bring me into the world on these conditions, then?"
And if the conditions do not suit you, leave. He has no need of a spectator who is not satisfied. He wants men who join in the festival, who take part in the chorus, so that they may applaud and admire and sing the solemnity's praises. Those who cannot bear any trouble, and the cowards, he will not be sorry to see absent from the great assembly; because when they were there they did not behave as men should at a festival, and did not fill their place properly, but lamented and found fault with the deity, with fortune, with their companions — not seeing what they had, and not seeing their own powers, which they were given for the opposite purposes: the powers of greatness of spirit, of a generous mind, of courage, and the one we are enquiring about now, freedom.
"What did I receive these things for, then?"
To use them.
"For how long?"
For as long as the one who lent them chooses.
"And what if they are necessary to me?"
Do not attach yourself to them and they will not be necessary. Do not tell yourself they are necessary, and then they are not.
This is the study you should practise from morning till night, beginning with the smallest things and the ones most easily damaged — with an earthenware pot, with a cup. Then go on in the same way to a tunic, to a little dog, to a horse, to a small piece of land; then to yourself, to your body, to the parts of your body, to your children, to your wife, to your brothers.
Look all round and throw these things away from you. Clean out your judgments, so that nothing that is not your own clings to you or grows onto you, and nothing gives you pain when it is torn away. And say, while you do your daily exercises there in the school, not that you are doing philosophy — that is an arrogant word — but that you are presenting a man who claims his freedom. Because this is really freedom.
It was to this freedom that Antisthenes called Diogenes, and Diogenes said that from then on nobody could enslave him. That is why, when he was taken prisoner, he behaved to the pirates as he did. Did he call any of them master? I do not mean the word — I am not afraid of the word — but the state of mind the word comes out of. How he reproached them for feeding their captives badly! And how was he sold? Did he look for a master? No: for a slave.
And once he was sold, how did he behave to his master? He argued with him at once, and told him he ought not to be dressed as he was, or shaved that way; and about the children, he told them how he ought to bring them up.
And what was strange in that? If his master had bought a trainer, would he have used him in the wrestling school as a servant or as a master? And the same if he had bought a doctor or an architect. And so in every matter: the man with the skill must necessarily be the superior of the man without it.
So whoever has the science of life in general — what else must he be but master? Who is master on a ship? The man at the helm. Why? Because whoever will not obey him suffers for it.
"But a master can have me flogged."
Can he do it without suffering for it, though? So I used to think too. But because he cannot do it without suffering for it, it is not in his power; and no man can do an injustice without suffering for it.
And what is the penalty for the man who chains his own slave? What do you suppose it is? The fact of having chained him. And you will admit this too, if you will hold to the truth that man is not a wild beast but a tame creature.
When is a vine doing badly? When it is in a condition contrary to its nature. When is a cock? Just the same. So a man too. And what is a man's nature? To bite, to kick, to throw men into prison and cut off their heads? No: to do good, to work together with others, to wish them well. So at that moment he is in a bad condition, whether you choose to admit it or not — when he is behaving like a fool.
"So Socrates did not come off badly?"
No — but his judges and his accusers did.
"And Helvidius at Rome did not come off badly?"
No — but his murderer did.
"How do you mean?"
The same as you mean when you say a cock has not come off badly when he has won and been badly wounded, and that a cock has come off badly when he has been beaten and is unhurt. And you do not call a dog lucky when he neither hunts nor works, but when you see him sweating, when you see him in pain and panting hard after a run.
What paradox are we uttering, if we say that the evil in everything is what is contrary to that thing's nature? Is that a paradox? Do you not say it about everything else? Then why do you think differently about man alone?
But because we say that man's nature is gentle and social and trustworthy, will you not say that this is a paradox? It is not. And is it a paradox to say that a man is not harmed when he is whipped, or chained, or beheaded? If he suffers nobly, does he not come off with an increase of advantage and profit? And is the man not harmed who suffers in the most pitiful and disgraceful way, who instead of a man becomes a wolf, or a viper, or a wasp?
Well then, let us go back over what has been agreed. The man not under restraint is free, the man for whom things are exactly as he wishes them to be; and the man who can be restrained or compelled or blocked, or thrown into some situation against his will, is a slave.
And who is free from restraint? The man who desires nothing that belongs to others. And what belongs to others? Whatever it is not in our power to have or not have, or to have of a certain kind or in a certain way. So the body belongs to another, the parts of the body belong to another, property belongs to another. And if you are attached to any of them as your own, you will pay the penalty a man ought to pay for desiring what belongs to somebody else.
This is the road to freedom; this is the only escape from slavery — to be able to say at last, with your whole soul:
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny, wherever you have fixed my post.
But what do you say, philosopher? The tyrant summons you to say something that does not become you. Do you say it or not? Answer me.
"Let me consider."
Consider now? And when you were in the school, what was it you used to consider? Did you not study what things are good and what are bad and what are neither? "I did." And what was our conclusion? "That just and honourable acts are good, and unjust and disgraceful ones bad."
Is life a good thing? "No." Is death a bad thing? "No." Is prison? "No." And what did we think about mean and faithless words, and betraying a friend, and flattering a tyrant? "That they are bad."
Well then, you are not considering; you have not considered and you have not deliberated. What is there to consider? Whether it is fitting for me, when it is in my power, to secure the greatest of goods for myself, and not to secure the greatest evils? A fine enquiry indeed, and necessary, and one that calls for much deliberation. Man, why do you mock us? Such an enquiry is never made.
If you really imagined that base things were bad and honourable things good, and that everything else was neither, you would never even have approached this enquiry or come near it. You would have been able to distinguish them at once by the understanding, as you distinguish things by sight. When do you enquire whether black things are white, whether heavy things are light, and fail to grasp the plain evidence of the senses?
How then do you now say that you are considering whether things that are neither good nor bad ought to be avoided more than things that are bad? But you do not hold these judgments. These things do not seem to you neither good nor bad; you think they are the greatest evils. And those other things do not seem evils to you but matters of no concern at all.
That is how you have trained yourself from the beginning. "Where am I? In the school. And is anybody listening to me? I am talking among philosophers." But I have gone out of the school. Away with that talk of scholars and fools.
This is how a friend is crushed by a philosopher's testimony; this is how a philosopher becomes a parasite; this is how he hires himself out for money; this is how a man does not say in the senate what he thinks, while in private he proclaims his opinions.
You are a cold and miserable little opinion, hanging from idle words as from a hair. Keep yourself strong instead, and fit for the uses of life, and initiated by being exercised in action.
How do you take the news — I do not say that your child has died, for how could you bear that — but that your oil has been spilled, your wine drunk up? Do you behave in such a way that a man standing next to you while you are making a great outcry can say just this: "Philosopher, you say something different in the school. Why do you deceive us? Why, when you are only a worm, do you say you are a man?"
I should like to be there when one of the philosophers is in bed with a woman, so that I could see how he exerts himself, and what words he uses, and whether he remembers his title of philosopher and the words he hears and says and reads.
And what has this to do with liberty? Nothing but this: whether you rich men choose it or not.
And who is my evidence for that? Who but yourselves — who have a powerful master, and live at his nod and his gesture, and faint if he so much as looks at you with a scowl; who court old women and old men and say, "I cannot do this, it is not in my power."
Why is it not in your power? Did you not argue with me the other day and say you were free? "But Aprulla stopped me." Then tell the truth, slave. Do not run away from your masters, and do not deny them, and do not dare to produce somebody to assert your freedom, when you have so many proofs of your slavery.
Indeed, when a man is forced by love to do something against his own judgment, and sees the better course at the same time but has not the strength to follow it, one might think him more deserving of excuse, as being held by a certain violent and in a way divine power. But who could put up with you, who fall in love with old women and old men, and wipe the old women's noses and wash them and give them presents, and wait on them like a slave when they are ill — and at the same time wish them dead, and ask the doctors whether they are sick unto death?
And again, when in order to get these great and much-admired offices and honours you kiss the hands of other men's slaves, so that you are not even the slave of free men. And then you walk about in front of me in state, a praetor, a consul. Do I not know how you became a praetor, and by what means you got your consulship, and who gave it to you? I would not even choose to live if I had to live by the help of Felicion and put up with his arrogance and his slavish insolence — because I know what a slave is who is fortunate, as he thinks, and swollen with pride.
"And you," a man may say, "are you free?"
I wish I were, by the gods, and I pray to be; but I am not yet able to face my masters. I still value my poor body; I set great store by keeping it whole, though I do not have it whole.
But I can point out a free man to you, so that you need look no further for an example. Diogenes was free. How was he free? Not because he was born of free parents — he was not — but because he was free himself: because he had thrown off all the handles of slavery, and it was not possible for any man to get at him, and nobody had any means of taking hold of him to enslave him.
Everything about him was loosely tied; everything was merely hanging on him. If you took hold of his property, he would have let it go and be yours rather than follow you for it. If you had taken hold of his leg, he would have let the leg go; if of his whole body, the whole poor body; and the same with his friends, his companions, his country. He knew where he got them from, and from whom, and on what terms.
His true parents, the gods, and his real country he would never have deserted; he would have yielded to no man in obedience to them and their orders; and no man would have died for his country more readily. For he was not in the habit of asking when he should be counted to have done something on behalf of the whole; he remembered that everything that is done comes from there, and is done on behalf of that country, and is commanded by the one who administers it.
So see what Diogenes says and writes himself: "For this reason, Diogenes, it is in your power to speak both with the King of Persia and with Archidamus the king of the Spartans, as you please."
Was it because he was born of free parents? I suppose all the Athenians and all the Spartans, being born of slaves, could not talk with these kings as they wished, but feared them and paid court to them?
Then why does he say it is in his power? Because I do not consider the poor body my own; because I want nothing; because law is everything to me and nothing else is. These were the things that let him be free.
And so that you shall not think I am showing you the example of a solitary man, with no wife and no children, no country, no friends and no family to bend him and pull him different ways, take Socrates. Observe that he had a wife and children, but did not consider them his own; that he had a country, so long as it was fit to have one and in the way it was fit; and friends and family too, but he held all of them subject to law and to the obedience owed to it.
That is why he was the first to go out as a soldier when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger without sparing himself. And when he was sent by the tyrants to arrest Leon, he did not even deliberate about it, because he thought it a base act, and he knew he must die for refusing, if it came to that. And what difference did that make to him? He meant to preserve something else — not his poor flesh, but his good faith and his honourable character. Those are things that cannot be attacked or brought into subjection.
Then, when he had to speak in defence of his own life, did he behave like a man who had children, who had a wife? No: he behaved like a man who had neither.
And what did he do when he was ordered to drink the poison, and had the power to escape from prison, and Crito said to him, "Escape for the sake of your children"? Did he count the chance of escape as an unexpected gain? Not at all. He considered what was fitting and proper, and did not so much as look at the rest or take it into account. He did not choose, he said, to save his poor body, but to save the thing that is increased and saved by doing what is just and is damaged and destroyed by doing what is unjust.
Socrates will not save his life by a base act — the man who would not put the question to the vote when the Athenians clamoured for it, who refused to obey the tyrants, who talked as he did about virtue and right behaviour. It is not possible to save such a man's life by base acts. He is saved by dying, not by running away. The good actor too preserves his character better by stopping when he ought to stop than by going on acting past the proper time.
What are Socrates' children to do, then? "If I had gone off to Thessaly," said Socrates, "would you have taken care of them? And if I go off to the world below, will there be nobody to take care of them?" See how he gives death a gentle name and makes fun of it.
But if you or I had been in his place we should have answered at once, like philosophers, that men who act unjustly must be paid back in the same coin; and we should have added, "I shall be useful to many men if my life is saved, and if I die I shall be useful to nobody." And if it had been necessary we should have made our escape by slipping through a small hole.
And how should we have been useful to anybody then? Where would they have been staying? And if we were useful to men while we were alive, should we not have been far more useful by dying when we ought to die, and as we ought to die? Now that Socrates is dead, the memory of what he did and said while he lived is no less useful to men — it is more useful.
Think about these things, these judgments, these words. Look at these examples, if you want to be free, if you want the thing at what it is worth.
And what is the wonder if you buy so great a thing at the price of so many great things? For the sake of what is called liberty, some men hang themselves and others throw themselves off cliffs, and sometimes whole cities have perished. And will you not, for the sake of the true and unassailable and secure liberty, give back to God the things he gave you, when he asks for them?
Will you not, as Plato says, practise not only dying but enduring torture and exile and flogging — in a word, giving up everything that is not your own? If you will not, you will be a slave among slaves, though you were consul ten thousand times over; and if you make your way up to the Palace you will be no less a slave. And you will feel that philosophers perhaps say things contrary to common opinion, as Cleanthes said too, but not things contrary to reason.
For you will know by experience that the words are true; that there is no profit to men who have obtained the things that are prized and eagerly chased after; and that to men who have not yet obtained them there is an imagination that when these things come, everything good will come with them. And then, when they have come, the fever is the same, the tossing to and fro is the same, the surfeit, the longing for what is not there.
For freedom is not won by getting full possession of the things you want, but by taking away the wanting.
And so that you may know this is true: as you have laboured for those things, transfer your labour to these. Keep vigil for the sake of acquiring a judgment that will make you free. Pay court to a philosopher instead of to a rich old man. Be seen at a philosopher's door — you will not disgrace yourself by being seen there. You will not go away empty or without profit if you go to the philosopher as you should. And if you do not succeed, at least try. The attempt is nothing to be ashamed of.
Before everything else you must attend to this: never to be so closely tied to any of your old companions or friends that you come down to doing the same things he does. If you do not keep this rule, you will ruin yourself.
And if the thought comes into your mind, "I shall seem disobliging to him, and he will not feel the same about me," remember that nothing is done without cost, and that it is not possible for a man who stops doing the same things to be the same man he was.
So choose which of the two you will have: to be loved just as much by the people who used to love you, by staying the same as your old self; or to be better, and not get from your friends what you used to get. If the second is better, turn to it at once and do not let other considerations pull you the other way. No man can make progress while he is wavering between opposites; and if you have preferred this one thing to everything else, if you choose to attend to this only and work at this only, then give up everything else.
If you will not do that, your wavering will produce both results: you will neither improve as you ought, nor get what you used to get. For before, by plainly wanting the things that are worth nothing, you pleased your friends.
But you cannot excel in both kinds; and to the extent that you share in the one, you must necessarily fall short in the other. You cannot be as agreeable as you used to be to the men you used to drink with, if you no longer drink with them. So choose whether you will be a hard drinker and pleasant to your old friends, or a sober man and disagreeable to them. You cannot be loved just as much by the men you used to sing with, if you no longer sing with them. So choose in this matter too which of the two you will have.
If it is better to be modest and orderly than to have a man say, "He is a jolly fellow," then give up the rest, renounce it, turn away from it, have nothing to do with such men.
But if that does not suit you, then turn to the opposite altogether: throw away all shame about sex, be an adulterer, act accordingly, and you will get what you want. And jump up in the theatre and bawl your praise of the dancer.
But characters as different as these cannot be mixed. You cannot play both Thersites and Agamemnon. If you mean to be Thersites, you must be humpbacked and bald; if Agamemnon, you must be tall and handsome and love the men placed under your command.
Keep this thought ready when you lose something external: what you have got in its place. And if it is worth more, never say, "I have suffered a loss" — not if you have got a horse instead of a donkey, or an ox instead of a sheep; not if you have got a good action instead of a bit of money; not if instead of idle chatter you have got the peace of mind that suits a man; not if instead of dirty talk you have got self-respect.
If you remember this, you will always keep your character as it ought to be. And if you do not, consider that your opportunities are being wasted, and that whatever trouble you take over yourself you are going to throw away and overturn.
It takes only a few things to lose and overturn everything — a small deviation from reason. For a steersman to capsize a ship he does not need what he needs to save it; if he turns her a little into the wind she is lost. And if he does it not on purpose but merely by neglecting his duty for a moment, the ship is lost all the same.
Something of the kind happens here too: nod off for a moment, and everything you have gathered up to now is gone. So attend to the impressions of things, and keep watch over them; because what you have to preserve is no small matter. It is self-respect, and good faith, and steadiness, freedom from the passions, an undisturbed mind, freedom from fear, peace — in a word, liberty.
What will you sell these for? Look at what the things are worth that you will get in exchange.
"But shall I not get anything like that for it?"
Look — and if you do get something in return, look at what you are getting instead. I have decency; he has a tribuneship. He has a praetorship; I have self-respect. But I do not shout applause where it is not fitting; I will not stand up where I ought not to. Because I am free, and a friend of God, and so I obey him willingly.
But I must claim nothing else — not body, nor property, nor office, nor good report, nor in fact anything. He does not allow me to claim them; if he had chosen to, he would have made them good for me. But he has not, and so I cannot break his commands.
Preserve in everything what is your own good; and as for everything else, take it as it is allowed, and behave reasonably about it, and be content with that alone. If you do not, you will be unlucky; you will fail in everything; you will be blocked and obstructed.
These are the laws that have been sent from there; these are the orders. A man ought to be an expounder of these laws and submit to these, not to those of Masurius and Cassius.
Remember that it is not only the desire for power and riches that makes us mean and subject to others, but the desire for peace and leisure and travel and learning as well. To put it plainly, whatever the external thing may be, the value we set on it puts us in subjection to somebody.
So what difference is there between wanting to be a senator and not wanting to be one? What difference between wanting power and being content with private life? What difference between saying "I am wretched, I have nothing to do, I am tied to my books like a corpse" and saying "I am wretched, I have no leisure for reading"? Salutations and power are external and outside the will — and so is a book.
What do you choose to read for? Tell me. If you are aiming only at being entertained or learning something, you are a silly fellow who cannot bear hard work. But if you refer reading to its proper end, what else is that end but a life that runs smoothly and happily?
And if reading does not secure you a happy and untroubled life, what use is it? "But it does secure it," the man says, "and that is why I am annoyed at being deprived of it."
And what is this untroubled and happy life, that any man can obstruct — I do not say Caesar or Caesar's friend, but a crow, a piper, a fever, and thirty thousand other things? A happy and untroubled life contains nothing so certain as continuity and freedom from obstruction.
Now I am called to do something. I will go, then, with the purpose of observing the rules I must keep: acting with self-respect and steadiness, without desire and without avoidance where externals are concerned; and then, of attending to men, to what they say and how they are moved — and this not with any bad disposition, and not so as to have something to blame or laugh at, but turning to myself and asking whether I commit the same faults. And how am I to stop committing them? I used to do wrong once, and now I do not: thanks be to God.
Come: when you have done these things and attended to them, have you done a worse act than when you have read a thousand lines or written as many? When you eat, are you grieved because you are not reading? Are you not satisfied to eat according to what you learned by reading — and the same with bathing and with exercise?
Why do you not behave consistently in everything, then, both when you come before Caesar and when you come before anybody? If you keep yourself undisturbed, unalarmed and steady; if you look at what is being done and what happens rather than being looked at yourself; if you do not envy the men preferred before you; if the circumstances around you do not strike you with fear or admiration — what do you lack? Books? How, or what for? Is reading not a preparation for life? And is life itself not made up of certain other things than this?
This is as if an athlete wept on entering the stadium because he is not exercising outside it. This was what you used to do your exercises for; this was what the weights were for, and the dust, and the young men as opponents — and now, when it is time for action, do you go looking for those?
It is as if, in the matter of assent, when impressions present themselves, some of which can be grasped and some of which cannot, we should refuse to distinguish them and choose instead to read what has been written about grasping.
What is the reason for this? The reason is that we never read for this purpose and never wrote for this purpose — so that in our actions we might use the impressions before us in a way that is in line with nature. We stop short at learning what is said, and at being able to expound it to somebody else, and at resolving a syllogism, and handling a hypothetical one. And so it is exactly where our study lies that we find the obstruction.
Would you have, by all means, the things not in your power? Then be prevented, be blocked, fail of your purpose.
But if we read what is written about action, not to see what is said about action but so as to act well; if we read what is said about desire and avoidance so as neither to fail in our desires nor fall into what we try to avoid; if we read what is said about duty so that, remembering how things stand to one another, we may do nothing unreasonably and nothing contrary to those relations — then we should not be annoyed at being obstructed in our reading. We should be satisfied with doing the acts that fit; and we should be reckoning up, not what we have been used to reckon — "Today I read so many lines, I wrote so many" — but this: today I employed my impulse as the philosophers teach; I did not employ desire; I used avoidance only with respect to things within the power of my will; I was not afraid of such and such a man; I was not won over by another's entreaties; I exercised my patience, my abstinence, my cooperation with others. And so we should thank God for what we ought to thank him for.
But as it is, we do not know that in another way we too are like the crowd. One man is afraid that he will not get power; you are afraid that you will. Do not do it, my man. As you laugh at the man who is afraid he will not get power, laugh at yourself as well. It makes no difference whether you are thirsty like a man with a fever or dread water like a man who is mad.
Or how will you still be able to say, as Socrates did, "If it so pleases God, so let it be"? Do you suppose that if Socrates had been eager to spend his leisure in the Lyceum or the Academy and talk with the young men every day, he would have served so readily on so many campaigns? Would he not have lamented and groaned: "Wretch that I am, I have to be miserable here when I might be sunning myself in the Lyceum"?
Why — was that your business, sunning yourself? Is your business not to be happy, unblocked, unobstructed? And could he still have been Socrates if he had lamented like that? How would he still have been able to write hymns in his prison?
In short, remember this: whatever you prize that lies beyond your will, to that extent you have destroyed your will. And these things lie outside the will: not only power but a private station; not only business but leisure.
"Must I live in this tumult, then?"
Why do you call it tumult?
"I mean among a great many men."
Well, and what is the hardship? Suppose you are at Olympia; imagine it a great public assembly, where one man is shouting one thing and another doing another and a third shoving somebody. There is a crowd at the baths. And which of us is not pleased with that assembly, and leaves it unwillingly?
Do not be hard to please, and do not be fussy about what happens. "Vinegar is disagreeable, it is sharp; honey is disagreeable, it upsets me; I do not like vegetables." So too: "I do not like leisure, it is a desert; I do not like a crowd, it is confusion."
If circumstances make it necessary for you to live alone or with a few people, call it quiet and use the thing as you ought: talk with yourself, work on your impressions, work up your preconceptions. If you fall into a crowd, call it games, an assembly, a festival; try to enjoy the festival along with everybody else.
For what is a pleasanter sight to a man who loves mankind than a great many men? We watch herds of horses and oxen with pleasure; we are delighted when we see many ships. Who is pained at seeing many men?
"But they deafen me with their shouting."
Then your hearing is obstructed. What is that to you? Is the power of using impressions obstructed? And who prevents you from using inclination and disinclination, and impulse toward and away from a thing, according to nature? What tumult can do that?
Only keep the general rules in mind: what is mine? What is not mine? What is permitted me? What does God want me to do now, and what does he not want? A little while ago he wanted you to be at leisure, to talk with yourself, to write about these things, to read, to listen, to prepare yourself; and you had enough time for it. Now he says to you: come to the contest; show us what you have learned, how you have practised the athlete's art. How long will you exercise alone? Now is your chance to learn whether you are an athlete worth the victory or one of those who go round the world getting beaten.
Why are you annoyed, then? No contest is without confusion. There must be many men exercising for it, many shouting at the men exercising, many trainers, many spectators.
"But my wish is to live quietly."
Then lament and groan, as you deserve to. What greater punishment is there for the untaught man, and for the man who disobeys the divine commands, than to grieve, to lament, to envy — in a word, to be disappointed and unhappy?
Would you not release yourself from these things?
"And how am I to release myself?"
Have you not often heard that you must take desire away entirely, and apply avoidance only to what is within your power; that you must give up everything — body, property, fame, books, tumult, power, private station? Because whichever way you turn, you are a slave, you are subject, you are blocked, you are compelled, you are wholly in other men's power.
Keep the words of Cleanthes ready instead:
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny, wherever you have fixed my post.
Is it your will that I go to Rome? I will go to Rome. To Gyara? I will go to Gyara. To Athens? To Athens. To prison? To prison.
If you once say, "When can a man get to Athens?" you are finished. It necessarily follows that this desire, if it is not fulfilled, must make you unhappy; and if it is fulfilled, must make you vain, since you are lifted up by things you ought not to be lifted up by; and on the other side, if you are obstructed, it must make you wretched, because you fall into what you did not want to fall into.
So give all these things up. "Athens is a good place." But happiness is a much better one — and being free of the passions, free of disturbance, having your affairs depend on nobody. "There is tumult at Rome, and calls to pay." But happiness is worth all the troublesome things put together. So if the time comes for them, why do you not take away the wish to avoid them? What need is there to carry a load like a donkey and be beaten with a stick? And if you do not do this, understand that you must always be the slave of whoever has the power to release you and the power to block you, and must serve him as an evil spirit.
There is only one road to happiness, and let this rule be ready morning and noon and night: not to look toward things outside the power of the will; to think nothing your own; to give everything up to the Divinity, to Fortune, and to make them the superintendents of these things, as Zeus has made them; to observe only what is your own, the thing that cannot be blocked; and when we read, to refer our reading to this alone, and our writing and our listening too.
This is why I cannot call a man industrious if all I hear is that he reads and writes; and even if somebody adds that he reads all night, I cannot say it, if he does not know what he should refer his reading to. You do not call a man industrious if he stays awake for a girl; nor do I. If he does it for reputation, I say he loves reputation; if he does it for money, I say he loves money, not labour; and if he does it out of love of learning, I say he loves learning. But if he refers his labour to his own governing part, so as to keep it in a condition in line with nature and to live his life in that condition, then and only then do I call him industrious.
So never praise a man on account of things that are common to everybody; praise him for his judgments, because those are what belong to each man, and they are what make his acts good or bad.
Remembering these rules, take joy in what is present and be content with the things that come in season. If you see something you have learned and enquired about turning up in the course of your life, be delighted at it. If you have laid aside or reduced a bad disposition and the habit of abusing people; if you have done the same with rash temper, foul language, hastiness, sluggishness; if you are not moved by what used to move you, or not in the same way — then you can hold a festival every day: today because you behaved well in one act, tomorrow because you behaved well in another.
How much greater a reason is this for sacrificing than a consulship or the governorship of a province? These things come to you from yourself and from the gods. Remember this: who gives these things, and to whom, and for what purpose.
If you nourish yourself on these thoughts, do you still think it makes any difference where you are happy, where you please God? Are the gods not equally distant from every place? Do they not see what is going on equally from every place?
The wise and good man neither quarrels with anybody himself nor, so far as he can prevent it, allows anybody else to. An example of this, as of everything else, is set before us in the life of Socrates, who not only avoided quarrels himself on every occasion but would not let others quarrel either.
See in Xenophon's Symposium how many quarrels he settled; how he put up with Thrasymachus and Polus and Callicles; how he put up with his wife, and with his son when he tried to refute him and pick holes in him. For he remembered well that no man has another man's governing part in his power. So he wanted nothing except what was his own.
And what is that? Not that this man or that should act according to nature — that belongs to somebody else — but that while other men are doing their own acts as they choose, he should nevertheless be in a condition in line with nature and live in it, doing only what is his own, so that others too may come into a state in line with nature. This is the object the wise and good man always sets before himself.
Is it to be a general? No; but if it is permitted him, his object in that matter is to keep his own governing part. Is it to marry? No; but if marriage is allowed him, his object in that matter is to keep himself in a condition in line with nature. And if he wanted his son not to do wrong, or his wife, he would be wanting what belongs to another not to belong to another. And being taught is precisely this: learning what things are one's own and what belong to somebody else.
So where is any room left for quarrelling, in a man who holds the opinion he ought to hold? Is he surprised at anything that happens? Does anything look new to him? Does he not expect what comes from bad men to be worse and harder than what actually falls on him? Does he not reckon as pure gain whatever they do that falls short of the extreme of wickedness?
Somebody has abused you. Great thanks to him for not striking you. "But he struck me as well." Great thanks that he did not wound you. "But he wounded me as well." Great thanks that he did not kill you.
For when did he ever learn, and in what school, that man is a tame creature, that men love one another, that an act of injustice is a great harm to the man who does it? Since he has not learned it and is not convinced of it, why should he not follow what looks like his own interest?
Your neighbour has thrown stones. Have you done anything wrong, then? "But the things in the house are broken." Are you a piece of household furniture? No: you are a free power of will.
What are you given to do in answer, then? If you are like a wolf, you must bite back and throw more stones. But if you consider what is proper for a man, examine your storehouse; see what capacities you came into the world with. Have you the disposition of a wild beast? Have you the disposition of revenge for an injury?
When is a horse wretched? When he is deprived of his natural capacities — not when he cannot crow like a cock, but when he cannot run. When is a dog wretched? Not when he cannot fly, but when he cannot follow a scent. And is a man unhappy in the same way — not because he cannot strangle lions or throw his arms round statues, since he did not come into the world with powers from nature for that, but because he has lost his honesty and his good faith?
People ought to gather and lament over such a man for the misfortunes he has fallen into — not lamenting because a man has been born or has died, but because in his lifetime it has happened to him to lose what was his own. Not what he received from his father, not his land and his house and his inn and his slaves, for not one of those is a man's own; they all belong to others, they are servile, they are subject to account, and they are given to different men at different times by those who have them in their power. I mean the things that belong to him as a man: the marks stamped on his mind that he came into the world with — the marks we look for on coins too, and if we find them we approve the coin, and if we do not find them we reject it.
What is the stamp on this coin? Trajan's. Hand it over. It is Nero's. Throw it away; it cannot be accepted; it is counterfeit.
So here too. What is the stamp on this man's judgments? Gentleness, a sociable disposition, a tolerant temper, a readiness for mutual affection. Produce those. I accept them: I count this man a citizen, I accept him as a neighbour and a fellow passenger. Only see that he has not Nero's stamp on him. Is he quick-tempered, full of resentment, a fault-finder? Does he break the heads of the men in his way when the whim takes him? Then why did you call him a man?
Is everything judged by the bare shape? If that is so, then say that the shape of an apple in wax has the smell and the taste of an apple. The external figure is not enough; the nose and the eyes are not enough to make the man; he must have the judgments of a man too.
Here is a man who does not listen to reason, who does not know when he is refuted: he is a donkey. In another the sense of shame has gone dead: he is good for nothing, he is anything rather than a man. This one is looking for somebody to meet so that he can kick him or bite him — so he is not even a sheep or a donkey, but a kind of wild animal.
"What then? Would you have me despised?"
By whom? By men who know you? And how will men who know you despise a man who is gentle and modest? By men who do not know you, perhaps? What is that to you? No other craftsman cares about the opinion of men who know nothing about his craft.
"But they will be more hostile to me for it."
Why do you say "me"? Can any man injure your will, or stop you using the impressions before you in a natural way? In no way at all. Then why are you still disturbed, and why do you choose to show yourself afraid? Why do you not come out and announce that you are at peace with all men whatever they do, and laugh most of all at the ones who think they can harm you? These slaves, you can say, know neither who I am nor where my good and my evil lie, because they have no access to what is mine.
This is how men who hold a strong city mock the besiegers: what trouble these men are taking for nothing. Our wall is secure, we have food for a very long time, and every other resource. These are the things that make a city strong and impossible to take. And nothing but his judgments makes a man's soul impossible to take.
For what wall is so strong, what body so hard, what possession so safe, what rank so free from assault? All other things everywhere are perishable and easily stormed; and any man attached to them in any way must be disturbed, must expect what is bad, must fear, lament, find his desires disappointed and fall into what he would avoid.
Then do we not choose to make secure the one means of safety that is offered to us? Do we not choose to withdraw from what is perishable and servile and to work at what is imperishable and free by nature? Do we not remember that no man either harms another or does good to another, but that a man's opinion about each thing is what harms him and what overturns him — that this is fighting, this is civil discord, this is war?
What made Eteocles and Polynices enemies was nothing but this: their opinion about royal power and their opinion about exile, that the one is the extreme of evils and the other the greatest good.
Now it is every man's nature to seek the good and avoid the bad, and to count whoever deprives him of the one and involves him in the other an enemy and a traitor, even if he is a brother, a son, a father. Nothing is closer kin to us than the good. So if externals are good and evil, then a father is no friend to his sons, nor a brother to a brother, and the whole world everywhere is full of enemies and traitors and informers.
But if the will, being as it ought to be, is the only good, and the will, being as it ought not to be, is the only evil — then where is there any strife, where is there any abuse? About what? About things that do not concern us? And strife with whom? With the ignorant, the unhappy, men who have been deceived about the chief things?
Remembering this, Socrates ran his own household and put up with a very bad-tempered wife and a foolish son. And how did she show her bad temper? By pouring water over his head as much as she liked, and by trampling on the cake somebody had sent him. And what is that to me, if I think these things are nothing to me?
But this is my business: no tyrant shall check my will, and no master; the many shall not check me, who am only one; the stronger shall not check me, who am the weaker. God gives this power of being unchecked to every man.
These judgments make love in a household, agreement in a state, peace among nations, and gratitude to God. They make a man confident about externals in everything, as about things belonging to others, as about things of no value.
We are certainly able to write and read these things, and to praise them when they are read, but we do not come anywhere near being convinced of them. So what is said about the Spartans — lions at home, but foxes in Ephesus — will fit us too: lions in the school, but foxes outside it.
"I am hurt," a man says, "at being pitied."
Is the fact of your being pitied something that concerns you, or the men who pity you? And is it in your power to stop the pity?
"It is in my power, if I show them I do not need pity."
And are you in the condition of not needing pity, or are you not?
"I think I am not. But these people do not pity me for the things it would be proper to pity me for, if they ought to pity me at all — I mean my faults. They pity me for my poverty, for not holding honourable office, for diseases and deaths and other such things."
Then are you prepared to convince the crowd that not one of these things is an evil, and that it is possible for a man who is poor and holds no office and enjoys no honour to be happy? Or to show yourself to them as rich and powerful?
The second of these belongs to a boastful, silly, good-for-nothing man. And consider by what means the pretence has to be kept up. You will have to hire slaves, and own a few pieces of silver plate, and display them in public if you can — the same pieces over and over, and you will have to try to hide that they are the same. You will need splendid clothes and everything else for show. You will have to appear a man honoured by the great, and try to dine at their houses, or at least to be thought to dine there. And as to your person, you will have to use some mean tricks so as to look handsomer and better born than you are.
These are the things you must contrive if you choose the second road so as not to be pitied. And the first road is both impossible and long: attempting the very thing Zeus has not been able to do, to convince all men what things are good and bad. Is that power given to you? Only this is given to you: to convince yourself. And you have not convinced yourself.
And then I ask you: do you attempt to persuade other men? Who has lived so long with you as you have with yourself? Who has so much power to convince you as you have? Who is better disposed toward you and closer to you than you are to yourself? How is it, then, that you have not yet convinced yourself, so as to learn?
Are things not upside down at the moment? Is this what you have been in earnest about doing — learning to be free of grief and free of disturbance, not to be abject, and to be free? Have you not heard that there is only one road that leads to this end: giving up the things that do not depend on the will, withdrawing from them, and admitting that they belong to others?
So what sort of thing is it for another man to have an opinion about you? A thing outside the will. Then is it nothing to you? It is nothing. And when you are still annoyed and disturbed by it, do you think you are convinced about good and evil?
Will you not leave other men alone, then, and be both pupil and teacher to yourself? Let the rest of mankind see to whether it is in their interest to live in a state contrary to nature; no man is closer to me than myself.
What is the meaning of this, then — that I have listened to the words of the philosophers and I agree with them, and yet in fact I am no more at ease than before? Am I so stupid? And yet in everything else I have taken up I have not turned out very stupid: I learned my letters quickly, and wrestling, and geometry, and how to resolve syllogisms.
Has reason not convinced me, then? And in fact there is nothing I have approved and chosen from the beginning so much as this; and now I read about these things, hear about them, write about them. I have found no stronger reasoning than this so far.
Where am I falling short, then? Have the contrary opinions not been rooted out of me? Have the notions themselves not been exercised, not been put into practice — laid aside like armour and rusted, so that they no longer fit me?
And yet in the wrestling school, and in writing and reading, I am not satisfied with merely learning: I turn the syllogisms that are put to me upside down, and I make others, and trick syllogisms too. But the necessary theorems, working from which a man can become free of grief, fear, passions and blocking, and become a free man — in these I do not exercise myself, and in these I do not do the proper practice. And then I care what other people will say about me, whether I shall look worth noticing to them, whether I shall look happy.
Wretched man, will you not see what you are saying about yourself? What do you look like to yourself — in your judgments, in your desires, in your avoidances, in your impulses, in your preparation, in your plans, and in the other acts that suit a man? And do you trouble yourself about whether other men pity you?
"Yes — but I am pitied when I do not deserve it."
Then are you pained at that? And is a man who is pained an object of pity? "Yes." Then how are you being pitied when you do not deserve it? By the very fact that you suffer over being pitied, you make yourself deserving of it.
And what does Antisthenes say? Have you not heard? "It is a royal thing, Cyrus, to do well and be ill spoken of."
My head is sound and everybody thinks I have a headache. What do I care? I am free of fever, and people sympathise with me as if I had one: "Poor man, you have not been rid of that fever for so long." And I say, with a sorrowful face, "It is true — I have been ill a long time now." And what will come of it? Whatever God pleases. And meanwhile I laugh to myself at the people who are pitying me.
What stops the same thing being done here? I am poor, but I have the right judgment about poverty. Why do I care if they pity me for it? I am not in office, and others are; and I have the judgment I ought to have about having office and not having it. Let the men who pity me look to it. I am neither hungry nor thirsty nor cold; but because they are hungry and thirsty they think I must be too.
What am I to do for them, then? Go about proclaiming, "Do not be mistaken, gentlemen; I am very well. I do not trouble myself about poverty, or lack of power, or in a word about anything but right judgments. I have those unrestricted; I care about nothing else at all"?
What foolish talk is this? How do I possess right judgments, when I am not content with being what I am but am uneasy about what I am taken to be?
But you say: others will get more, and be preferred to me. And what is more reasonable than that men who have laboured at something should have more of the thing they laboured at? They laboured for power, and you laboured at your judgments; they laboured for wealth, and you for the right use of impressions.
See whether they have more than you in the thing you laboured at and they neglected: whether they assent better than you do with respect to the natural measures of things; whether they are less often disappointed in their desires; whether they fall less often than you into what they would avoid; whether in their intentions, in what they set before themselves, in their purposes, in their movements toward an object, they take better aim; whether they keep proper behaviour better, as men, as sons, as parents, and so on through the other names by which we express the relations of life.
But if they hold power and you do not, will you not choose to tell yourself the truth — that you do nothing for the sake of power, and they do everything? It would be most unreasonable for a man who looks after a thing to get less of it than the man who does not.
"Not so. Since I care about right judgments, it is more reasonable for me to have power."
Yes, in the matter you do care about, in judgments. But in the matter they have cared about more than you, give way to them. It is exactly as if you thought that because you have right judgments you ought to hit the mark better with a bow than an archer does, and do better in metalwork than a smith.
Give up your earnestness about judgments, then, and busy yourself with the things you want to get. And then lament if you do not succeed — you will deserve to lament. But as it is, you say that you are occupied with other things, that you are looking after other things; and the crowd say truly that one act has nothing in common with another.
The man who has got up in the morning is looking for whom to salute, whom to say something agreeable to, whom to send a present to, how to please the dancer, how by behaving badly to one man he may please another. When he prays, he prays about these things; when he sacrifices, he sacrifices for them. He takes the saying of Pythagoras — "Let sleep not fall upon your weary eyes" — and applies it to these things. Where have I fallen short in the matter of flattery? What have I done? Anything like a free man? Anything like a man of noble mind? And if he finds anything of the kind, he blames and accuses himself: why did you say that? Was it not in your power to lie? Even the philosophers say there is nothing to stop us telling a lie.
But you, if you really have cared about nothing but the right use of impressions, should reflect as soon as you have got up in the morning: what do I need in order to be free of the passions and free of disturbance? What am I? A poor body, a piece of property, a thing that gets talked about? I am none of these. What am I, then? A rational creature. What is required of me, then?
Go over your acts. Where did I leave out the things that lead to living well? What have I done that was unfriendly or unsociable? What have I failed to do in these matters that I ought to have done?
The difference in desires and actions and wishes being so great, then, would you still have the same share as other men in things you have not laboured at and they have? And are you surprised when they pity you, and annoyed?
But they are not annoyed if you pity them. Why? Because they are convinced that they have what is good, and you are not convinced. That is why you are not satisfied with your own but want what they have; while they are satisfied with theirs and do not want what you have. Because if you were really convinced that where the good is concerned it is you who possess it and they who have missed it, you would not even have given a thought to what they say about you.
What makes a tyrant formidable? The guards, you say, and their swords, and the men of the bedchamber, and the men who keep out those who want to come in.
Then why is a child not afraid when you bring him to the tyrant while the guards are there? Is it because the child does not understand these things? And if a man does understand what guards are, and that they have swords, and comes to the tyrant precisely because he wants to die on account of some circumstance and is looking for an easy death at another man's hand — is he afraid of the guards? No: because he wants the very thing that makes the guards formidable.
And if a man comes to the tyrant neither wanting to die nor wanting to live by all means, but only as it may be allowed him, what stops him coming without fear? Nothing.
And if a man has the same opinion about his property as the man I have described has about his body — and about his children too, and his wife; if he is in a word so affected by some madness or despair that he does not care whether he has them or not; if, as children playing with shells care about the game but not about the shells, he too has set no value on the materials but values the pleasure he gets from them and the occupation — then what tyrant is formidable to him, or what guards, or what swords?
So it is possible for a man to be disposed toward these things through madness, and for the Galileans to be so through habit; and is it not possible for anybody to learn from reason and demonstration that God made everything in the universe, and the universe itself, completely unblocked and complete, and made the parts of it for the use of the whole?
All the other animals are incapable of taking in how it is administered; but the rational animal, man, has the capacities for considering all this, and for understanding that he is a part, and what kind of part, and that it is right for the parts to be subordinate to the whole.
And besides this, being naturally noble and great-spirited and free, man sees that of the things around him some are unblocked and in his power and others are subject to blocking and in the power of others; that the unblocked ones are within the power of the will, and the ones subject to blocking are not.
And for this reason, if he thinks his good and his interest lie only in the things that are unblocked and in his own power, he will be free, prosperous, happy, unharmed, great in spirit, reverent, thankful to God for everything, never finding fault with any of the things that were not put in his power and never blaming them.
But if he thinks his good and his interest lie in externals and in things not within the power of his will, then he must necessarily be blocked and obstructed and a slave to whoever has power over the things he admires and fears; he must necessarily be irreverent, because he thinks God harms him; and he must be unjust, because he is always claiming more than belongs to him; and he must necessarily be abject and mean.
What stops a man who has clearly separated these things from living light-hearted and holding the reins easily, quietly expecting whatever can happen and enduring what has already happened?
Would you have me bear poverty? Come and see what poverty is when it has found somebody who can play the part of a poor man well. Would you have me hold power? Let me have power — and the trouble of it too. Exile? Wherever I go, it will be well with me there; because here, where I am, it was not the place that made it well with me but my judgments, and I shall carry those away with me. No man can take them from me; my judgments alone are mine and cannot be taken away, and I am satisfied as long as I have them, wherever I am and whatever I am doing.
"But now it is time to die."
Why do you say to die? Do not make a tragedy of the thing; say it as it is. It is now time for the matter to be resolved into the things it was put together from. And what is formidable in that? What is going to perish, of the things in the universe? What new or marvellous thing is going to happen?
Is this what makes a tyrant formidable? Is this why the guards seem to have swords that are large and sharp? Tell that to other people. I have thought all of this over; no man has power over me. I have been made free; I know his commands; nobody can lead me away as a slave now. I have a proper man to assert my freedom, and proper judges.
Are you not master of my body? What is that to me? Are you not master of my property? What is that to me? Are you not master of my exile and my chains? Well — from all of these, and from the poor body itself, I depart at your bidding, whenever you please. Try your power, and you will find out how far it reaches.
Whom can I still fear, then? The men in charge of the bedchamber? In case they do — what? Shut me out? If they find that I want to go in, let them shut me out.
Why do you go to the doors, then? Because I think it becomes me to join in the game while it lasts. Then how are you not shut out? Because unless somebody lets me in, I do not choose to go in; I am always content with what happens. I think what God chooses is better than what I choose. I will attach myself to him as a servant and a follower; I have the same impulses as he has, the same desires; in a word, I want the same things. There is no shutting out for me — only for the men who try to force their way in.
Why do I not force my way in, then? Because I know that nothing good is handed out inside to the men who go in. But when I hear a man called fortunate because Caesar has honoured him, I say: what does he happen to get? A province. Does he also get the judgment he ought to have? A prefecture. Does he also get the power of using the office well? Why should I still strive to get in?
A man scatters dried figs and nuts: the children snatch at them and fight one another over them; men do not, because they think it a small matter. But if a man throws shells about, not even the children snatch at them.
Provinces are handed out: let children see to that. Money is handed out: let children see to that. Praetorships and consulships are handed out: let children scramble for them, let them be shut out and beaten, let them kiss the hands of the giver and of his slaves. To me they are dried figs and nuts.
What then? If you fail to get one while Caesar is scattering them about, do not be troubled. If a dried fig falls into your lap, take it and eat it; a fig may be worth that much. But if I have to stoop down and turn another man over, or be turned over myself, and flatter the men who have got into the chamber, then a dried fig is not worth the trouble — nor is anything else among the things that are not good, which the philosophers have convinced me not to think good.
Show me the guards' swords. See how big they are, and how sharp. And what do these big sharp swords do? They kill. And what does a fever do? Nothing else. And a falling roof tile? Nothing else.
Would you have me marvel at these things and worship them and go about a slave to all of them? I hope that will not happen. Once I have learned that everything which has come into existence must also go out of it, so that the universe may not stand still or be obstructed, I no longer consider it makes any difference whether a fever does it, or a tile, or a soldier. And if a man must make a comparison between them, I know that the soldier will do it with less trouble to me, and quicker.
So when I neither fear anything a tyrant can do to me nor want anything he can give, why do I still look on at him in wonder? Why am I still confused? Why do I fear the guards? Why am I pleased if he speaks to me in a friendly way and receives me, and why do I go and tell other people how he spoke to me? Is he a Socrates, is he a Diogenes, that his praise should be proof of what I am? Have I been eager to imitate his character?
No — I keep up the game and go to him and serve him, so long as he does not order me to do anything foolish or unreasonable. But if he says to me, "Go and bring Leon of Salamis," I say: find somebody else, I am not playing any more.
"Take him away to prison." I follow; that is part of the game. "But your head will come off." Does the tyrant's head always stay where it is? And the heads of you who obey him? "But you will be thrown out unburied." If the corpse is me, then I shall be thrown out; but if I am something other than the corpse, then speak more accurately, as the fact is, and do not think of frightening me.
These things are formidable to children and to fools. But if a man has once entered a philosopher's school and does not know what he is, then he deserves to be full of fear and to flatter the men he used to flatter afterwards — if he has not yet learned that he is not flesh, or bones, or sinews, but the thing that uses these parts of the body and governs them and follows the impressions of things.
"Yes, but this talk makes us despise the laws."
And what sort of talk makes men who use it more obedient to the laws? The things in a fool's power are not law. And yet see how this talk disposes us as we ought to be even toward such men, since it teaches us to claim against them none of the things they are able to beat us at.
This talk teaches us to give up the body; to give up property as well; to withdraw from children, parents and brothers, and give up everything. It makes an exception only of our judgments, which Zeus himself has willed to be every man's own private property. What breaking of the laws is there in that? What folly?
Where you are better and stronger, I gave way to you. And on the other hand, where I am better, you give way to me — because I have taken care about this and you have not. Your study is to live in houses with floors of many-coloured stone, and how your slaves and dependents shall wait on you, and how you shall wear fine clothes and keep a lot of huntsmen and lute players and tragic actors. Do I lay claim to any of it?
Have you made any study of judgments, or of your own rational capacity? Do you know what parts it is made of, how they are put together, how they are connected, what powers it has and of what kind? Then why are you annoyed if another man, who has made it his study, has the advantage of you in it?
"But these things are the greatest things."
And who stops you being occupied with them and looking after them? And who has a better stock of books, of leisure, of people to help him?
Only turn your mind to these things at last; attend, if only for a short time, to your own governing part. Consider what this thing is that you possess, and where it came from — the thing that uses all the others and tests them and picks and rejects.
But so long as you busy yourself with externals, you will possess those as no other man does — and you will have this thing exactly as you choose to have it: dirty and neglected.
Never praise or blame a man on account of things that are common to everybody, and do not credit him with any skill or lack of skill on that account; and so you will be free of rashness and of spite.
This man bathes very quickly. Does he do wrong, then? Certainly not. What does he do? He bathes very quickly. Is everything done well, then? By no means: acts that come from right judgments are done well, and acts that come from bad judgments are done badly. But until you know the judgment a man does each thing from, neither praise nor blame the act.
And a judgment is not easily discovered from external acts. This man is a carpenter. Why? Because he uses an axe. And what has that to do with it? This man is a musician, because he sings. And what does that prove? This man is a philosopher — because he wears a cloak and long hair. And what does a street conjurer wear?
So when a man sees a philosopher behaving indecently, he says at once, "Look what the philosopher is doing!" — when because of the indecent behaviour he ought rather to say that the man is not a philosopher.
If the preconception of a philosopher, and what he professes, were to wear a cloak and long hair, men would be right. But if what he professes is rather to keep himself free of faults, why do we not take the name of philosopher away from him, since he does not make his professions good?
That is what we do in every other art. When a man sees another handling an axe badly, he does not say, "What is the use of carpentry? See how badly carpenters do their work." He says the opposite: this man is not a carpenter, because he uses an axe badly. In the same way, if a man hears somebody singing badly, he does not say, "See how musicians sing," but rather, "This man is no musician."
It is only in the matter of philosophy that people do otherwise. When they see a man acting against the profession of a philosopher, they do not take his title away; they assume he is a philosopher, and then, from his acts and the fact that he is behaving indecently, they conclude that philosophy is of no use.
What is the reason for that? Because we set a value on the notion of a carpenter, and of a musician, and of the other craftsmen likewise, and not on the notion of a philosopher; and we judge from externals only that it is a confused and ill-defined thing.
And what other kind of art takes its name from dress and hair, and has no theorems and no material and no end? What is the material of the philosopher? Is it a cloak? No — reason. What is his end? To wear a cloak? No — to have his reason in a right state. What sort of theorems are his? Are they about how the beard is to be grown big or the hair long? No: rather what Zeno says — to know the elements of reason, what each of them is like, and how they are fitted to one another, and what follows from them.
Will you not see first whether he does what he professes, when he behaves unbecomingly, before you blame his pursuit? As it is, when you are behaving soberly yourself, you say, because of what he seems to you to be doing wrong, "Look at the philosopher" — as though it were proper to call a man who does these things a philosopher; and further, "This is how a philosopher behaves."
But you do not say "Look at the carpenter" when you know a carpenter is an adulterer, or when you see him a glutton; and you do not say "See the musician." So up to a point even you understand what a philosopher professes — and then you fall away from the notion and get confused through carelessness.
But even the men called philosophers themselves go after the thing by starting from what is common to them and everybody else. As soon as they have put on a cloak and grown a beard, they say, "I am a philosopher." No man will say "I am a musician" because he has bought a plectrum and a lute, or "I am a smith" because he has put on a cap and an apron. The dress fits the art, and men take their name from the art and not from the dress.
This is why Euphrates used to put it so well. "For a long time," he said, "I tried to be a philosopher without anybody knowing it, and it was useful to me. In the first place, I knew that when I did anything well I did it for my own sake and not for the spectators. I ate well for my own sake; I kept my expression and my walk composed — all of it for myself and for God. And then, as I struggled alone, so I was alone in the danger. If I did anything base or unbecoming, philosophy was not endangered through me; and I did not injure the many by doing anything wrong as a philosopher. So the men who did not know my purpose used to wonder how it was that, though I talked and lived entirely among philosophers, I was not a philosopher myself. And what was the harm in being known for a philosopher by my acts instead of by outward marks?"
See how I eat, how I drink, how I sleep, how I bear and forbear, how I work with others, how I employ desire and how avoidance, how I keep the relations that are natural and the ones I have taken on, how free of confusion, how free of blocking. Judge me from that, if you can. And if you are so deaf and blind that you cannot conceive even Hephaestus to be a good smith unless you see the cap on his head, what is the harm in going unrecognised by so foolish a judge?
Socrates too was not known to most people to be a philosopher; men used to come to him and ask to be introduced to philosophers. Was he annoyed, as we are, and did he say, "And do you not think I am a philosopher?" No: he would take them and introduce them, satisfied with one thing, with being a philosopher — and pleased, too, at not being thought one, and not annoyed, because he was thinking about his own occupation.
What is the work of an honourable and good man? To have many pupils? By no means; the men who are keen on that will see to it. Was it his business to examine difficult theorems carefully? Others will see to that as well. In what, then, was he, and who was he, and whom did he want to be? He was engaged in the thing where harm and advantage lie.
If any man can damage me, he says, I am doing nothing. If I am waiting for another man to do me good, I am nothing. If I want something and it does not happen, I am unlucky. To such a contest he invited every man, and I do not think he would have refused the contest with anybody.
What do you suppose — was it by proclaiming, "I am such a man"? Far from it: by being such a man. Because this is exactly the mark of a fool and a boaster, to say, "I am free of the passions and of disturbance. Do not be unaware, my friends, that while you are uneasy and disturbed about things of no value, I alone am free of all disturbance."
So is it not enough for you to feel no pain, unless you make this announcement: "Gather round, all of you with gout, headaches, fever; you who are lame and blind — and observe that I am sound and free of every ailment"? That is empty and unpleasant to hear, unless like Asclepius you are able to show at once what treatment will free them from their disease too, and unless you show your own health as an example.
For such is the Cynic whom Zeus honours with the staff and the crown, and who says: so that you may see, gentlemen, that you are looking for happiness and peace of mind not where they are but where they are not — look, I have been sent to you by God as an example. I have no property, no house, no wife, no children, not even a bed, or a coat, or a piece of household furniture; and see how healthy I am. Test me; and if you see that I am undisturbed, hear the remedies and how I was cured.
That is both humane and noble. But see whose work it is: the work of Zeus, or of the man Zeus may judge worthy of the service, so that he shall never show the many anything by which he would cancel out his own testimony — the testimony he gives for virtue and against externals:
His handsome face does not grow pale, nor does he wipe a tear from his cheeks. — Odyssey, xi 524
And not only that: he neither desires nor looks for anything — not a man, not a place, not an amusement, as children look forward to the vintage or the holidays. He is always fortified by self-respect, as other men are fortified by walls and doors and doorkeepers.
But as it is, these men are merely stirred toward philosophy the way men with a bad stomach are stirred toward certain foods they will soon be sick of — and they rush straight at the staff and the royal power. They grow their hair, they put on the cloak, they bare one shoulder, they quarrel with the men they meet; and if they see a man in a thick winter coat, they quarrel with him.
Man, first train yourself in winter weather. Look at your own inclinations, and see that they are not those of a man with a bad stomach, or of a woman with a craving. First make sure that nobody knows what you are; be a philosopher to yourself for a while.
This is how fruit grows: the seed has to be buried for a time, hidden, growing slowly, so that it may come to perfection. If it produces the ear before the stem has jointed, it is imperfect — the produce of an Adonis garden. You are that sort of poor plant: you have flowered too soon, and the cold will scorch you.
See what farmers say about seed when the warm weather comes too early. They are afraid the seed will grow too lush, and then a single frost will catch it and show how forward it was.
Consider it yourself, my man. You have shot up too soon; you have rushed toward a little fame before the proper season; you think you are something, a fool among fools. The frost will catch you — or rather you have already been frostbitten at the root, while your upper parts still blossom a little, and so you think you are still alive and flourishing.
Let us ripen in the natural way. Why do you strip us bare? Why do you force us? We cannot bear the open air yet. Let the root grow; then let it put out the first joint, then the second, then the third. And then the fruit will force its own way out naturally, even if I do not choose it.
For who that is pregnant and full of such great principles does not also feel his own powers and move toward the acts that answer to them? A bull is not ignorant of his own nature and his own powers when a wild beast appears, and does not wait for somebody to urge him on; nor does a dog when he sees a wild animal.
And if I have the powers of a good man, shall I wait for you to prepare me for my own proper acts? At present I have not got them — believe me. So why do you want me withered before my time, as you have been withered?
When you see another man holding office, set against it the fact that you do not have the desire for office. When you see another man rich, see what you possess instead of riches; because if you possess nothing instead of them, you are miserable, but if you do not have the desire for riches, know that you possess more than he does, and something worth much more.
Another man has a handsome wife: you have the satisfaction of not desiring a handsome wife. Do these things seem small to you? And how much would these very men give — the rich, the powerful, the men who live with handsome women — to be able to despise riches and power and the very women they love and enjoy?
Do you not know what the thirst of a man in a fever is like? It is nothing at all like the thirst of a healthy man. A healthy man stops being thirsty when he has drunk; but the sick man is pleased for a moment and then feels sick, turns the drink into bile, vomits, gets cramps, and is thirstier than before.
That is what it is to desire riches and possess riches, to desire power and possess power, to desire a beautiful woman and sleep with her. Add jealousy to it, and the fear of losing the thing you love, and indecent words, indecent thoughts, unseemly acts.
"And what do I lose?" you will say.
My man, you were modest, and you are not now. Have you lost nothing? Instead of Chrysippus and Zeno you read Aristides and Evenus: have you lost nothing? Instead of Socrates and Diogenes you admire the man who is best at corrupting and seducing women.
You want to look handsome and try to make yourself so, though you are not. You like to show off splendid clothes so as to attract women; and if you find some fine hair oil, you imagine you are happy. But once you never gave a thought to any such thing; you only thought about where there might be decent talk, and a man worth knowing, and a generous idea. And so you slept like a man, walked out like a man, wore a man's dress, and talked in a way that becomes a good man.
And then you say to me, "I have lost nothing"? Do men lose nothing but coin, then? Is self-respect not lost? Is decent behaviour not lost? Has a man who has lost these suffered no loss?
Perhaps you think not one of these is a loss. But there was a time when you counted this the only loss and damage there was, and were anxious that nobody should shift you from those good words and acts.
Notice: you have been shifted from those good words and acts by nobody but yourself. Fight with yourself; restore yourself to decency, to self-respect, to liberty.
If anybody had ever told you this about me — that somebody was forcing me to commit adultery, to wear clothes like yours, to perfume myself with oils — would you not have gone and killed the man who slandered me with your own hand? And now will you not help yourself? And how much easier this help is. There is no need to kill anybody, or put him in chains, or insult him, or go to law: you need only speak to yourself, who will be the most easily persuaded of all, and over whom nobody has more power of persuasion than you have.
First of all, condemn what you are doing; and then, having condemned it, do not despair of yourself, and do not be like those mean-spirited men who, having once given in, surrender completely and are carried off as if by a flood.
See what the trainers of boys do. Has the boy fallen? Get up, they say, and wrestle again until you are made strong. Do something of the same kind yourself — for be assured that nothing is more workable than the human soul. You have only to exercise the will, and the thing is done, it is set right. And on the other hand, only nod off, and the thing is lost; because ruin comes from within, and so does help.
"And then what good do I get?"
And what greater good than this are you looking for? From a shameless man you will become a modest one; from a disorderly man, an orderly one; from a faithless man, a faithful one; from a man of unbridled habits, a sober one. If you are looking for anything more than that, go on doing what you are doing: not even a god can help you now.
All men's difficulties are about external things; their helplessness is about externals. What shall I do? How will it be? How will it turn out? Will this happen, or that? These are all the words of men who are turning toward things outside the power of the will.
Who says, "How am I to avoid assenting to what is false? How am I to avoid turning away from the truth?" If a man has a good enough disposition to be anxious about these things, I shall remind him: why are you anxious? The thing is in your own power. Be easy; do not be hasty in assenting before you apply the natural rule.
On the other side, if a man is uneasy about his desire, in case it fails of its purpose and misses its end, and about his avoidance, in case he falls into what he would avoid, then first I shall love him for it, because he throws away the things other men are in a flutter about, and their fears, and turns his thoughts to his own affairs and his own condition.
Then I shall say to him: if you do not choose to desire what you will fail to get, or to try to avoid what you will fall into, then desire nothing that belongs to others and try to avoid nothing that is not in your power. If you do not keep that rule, you must necessarily fail in your desires and fall into what you would avoid.
Where is the difficulty in that? Where is there room for the words "How will it be?" and "How will it turn out?" and "Will this happen or that?"
Now, is what will happen not outside the will? Yes. And is the nature of good and evil not in the things within the power of the will? Yes. Then is it in your power to treat whatever happens according to nature? Can anybody stop you? Nobody.
So do not say to me any longer, "How will it be?" However it may be, you will dispose of it well, and the result will be a fortunate one for you.
What would Hercules have been if he had said, "How am I to keep a great lion from appearing to me — or a great boar, or savage men"? And what do you care about that? If a great boar appears, you will fight a greater fight; if bad men appear, you will rid the earth of bad men.
"Suppose I lose my life that way, then."
You will die a good man, doing a noble act. Since we must certainly die, a man must necessarily be found doing something — following the farmer's work, or digging, or trading, or serving in a consulship, or suffering from indigestion or from dysentery.
What do you want to be doing when death finds you? For my part I should want to be found doing something that belongs to a man: something generous, useful to the common interest, noble. And if I cannot be found doing anything so great, then at least doing the thing I cannot be blocked from doing, the thing that is permitted me: correcting myself, cultivating the capacity that uses impressions, working at freedom from the passions, giving the relations of life their due. And if I get that far, then also touching on the third topic, security in forming judgments about things.
If death catches me busy about these things, it is enough for me that I can stretch out my hands to God and say: the means I received from you for seeing your administration and following it, I have not neglected. I have not dishonoured you by my acts. See how I have used my senses; see how I have used my preconceptions. Have I ever blamed you? Have I ever been discontented with anything that happens, or wished it otherwise? Have I ever wished to break the relations of things? That you gave me life, I thank you for what you gave. As long as I have used what is yours, I am content; take it back and put it wherever you choose, because it was all yours, and you gave it to me.
Is it not enough to depart in that state of mind? And what life is better and more becoming than that of a man in that state of mind? And what end is happier?
But for this to be possible, a man must take on no small things, and the things he must go without are not small either. You cannot both wish to be consul and to have this, and be eager for lands and have this too, and be anxious about slaves and about yourself. If you wish for anything that belongs to another, what is your own is lost.
That is the nature of the thing: nothing is given or had for nothing. And what is surprising in that? If you want to be consul, you must go without sleep, run about, kiss hands, wear yourself out at other men's doors, say and do a great many things unworthy of a free man, send gifts to many and daily presents to some.
And what is the thing you get? Twelve bundles of rods; to sit three or four times on the tribunal; to put on the games in the Circus and give dinners in little baskets. Or if you do not agree, let somebody show me what there is besides these.
And then, in order to secure freedom from the passions, and peace, and sleeping well when you sleep and being really awake when you are awake, and fearing nothing and being anxious about nothing — will you spend nothing and give no labour?
But if something of yours is lost while you are busy at this, or badly wasted, or another man gets what you should have got, will you be annoyed at once at what has happened? Will you not set on the other side of the account what you are getting, and for what — how much for how much?
Do you expect to have things so great for nothing? And how could you? One kind of work has nothing in common with another. You cannot have both external things, after taking care of them, and your own governing part. If you want those, give this up. If you do not, you will have neither the one nor the other, while you are pulled both ways.
The oil will be spilled, the household pots will be smashed — very well; but I shall be free of the passions. There will be a fire when I am not at home, and the books will be destroyed — but I shall treat impressions according to nature.
"Well, but I shall have nothing to eat." If I am so unlucky, death is a harbour. Death is the harbour for everybody; this is the refuge; and that is why nothing in life is difficult. As soon as you choose, you are out of the house, and the smoke does not trouble you any more.
Why are you anxious, then? Why do you lose your sleep? Why do you not say at once, having considered where your good and your evil lie: both of them are in my power. Nobody can deprive me of the good, and nobody can involve me in the bad against my will. Why do I not throw myself down and snore? Everything I have is safe.
As for the things that belong to others, the man who gets them will see to them, as they are handed out by the one who has the power. Who am I to want them this way or that? Was a power of choosing them given to me? Has anybody made me the distributor of them? What I have power over is enough for me: I ought to manage that as well as I can, and let the master of the rest choose about the rest.
When a man has these things before his eyes, does he lie awake and toss about? What would he have, and what does he regret — Patroclus, or Antilochus, or Menelaus? When did he ever suppose that any friend of his was immortal? When did he not have it in front of his eyes that tomorrow or the day after, he or his friend must die?
"Yes," he says, "but I thought he would outlive me and bring up my son."
You were a fool for that, and you were reckoning on what was uncertain. Then why do you not blame yourself, instead of sitting crying like a girl?
"But he used to set my food in front of me."
Because he was alive, you fool; now he cannot. Automedon will set it in front of you, and if Automedon dies too, you will find somebody else. If the pot your meat was cooked in gets broken, must you die of hunger because you have not got the pot you were used to? Do you not send out and buy a new pot?
He says:
No greater evil than this could fall on me. — Iliad xix 321.
Why is this your evil? Then instead of getting rid of it, do you blame your mother for not foretelling it to you, so that you might have gone on grieving from that moment?
What do you think — do you not suppose Homer wrote this so that we might learn that men of the noblest birth, the strongest, the richest, the handsomest, are not prevented from being utterly wretched and unlucky, when they do not hold the judgments they ought to hold?
Some people raise the question whether the social feeling is contained in man's nature. And yet I think these same people would have no doubt that a love of cleanliness certainly is; and that if man is distinguished from the other animals by anything, he is distinguished by this.
When we see some other animal cleaning itself, we usually remark on it with surprise and add that the animal is behaving like a man. And on the other hand, if a man blames an animal for being dirty, we say at once, as though making an excuse for it, that of course the animal is not a human creature. So we suppose there is something superior in man, and that we first receive it from the gods.
Since the gods are by nature pure and free of corruption, then so far as men come near them by reason, so far do they hold to cleanliness and to the habit of it. But since it is impossible for a man's nature to be altogether pure, being mixed out of such materials, reason is applied as far as it can be, and reason tries to make human nature love cleanliness.
The first and highest cleanliness, then, is the cleanliness in the soul; and we say the same about dirt. Now you could not detect dirt in the soul as you could on the body; but in the soul, what else could you find but what makes her filthy with regard to the acts that are her own? And the acts of the soul are movement toward an object and away from it, desire, avoidance, preparation, purpose, assent.
So what is it in these acts that makes the soul filthy and unclean? Nothing but her own bad judgments. Therefore the dirt of the soul is her bad opinions, and the cleaning of the soul is the planting of proper opinions in it; and the clean soul is the one that has proper opinions, since the soul alone in her own acts is free of disturbance and pollution.
Now we ought to work at something like this in the body too, so far as we can. It was impossible for the nose not to run, when man has such a mixture in his body; and so nature made hands, and made the nostrils themselves as channels for carrying the fluids off. So if a man sniffs them back up, I say he is not doing a man's act.
It was impossible for a man's feet not to get muddy and dirty when he goes through dirty places; and so nature made water, and hands. It was impossible for no dirt to be left in the teeth after eating; and so, she says, clean the teeth. Why? So that you may be a man and not a wild beast or a hog.
It was impossible that from sweat and the pressure of clothes some dirt should not be left on the body needing to be cleaned off; and so water, oil, hands, towels, scrapers, soda and sometimes every other kind of means are necessary for cleaning it.
You do not behave so. But the smith will take the rust off the iron and will have tools ready for the purpose; and you wash the dish yourself when you are going to eat, unless you are altogether filthy and dirty. And will you not wash your body and make it clean?
"Why?" he answers.
I will tell you again. In the first place, so that you may do a man's acts; and then, so that you may not be disagreeable to the people you spend your time with.
You are doing something of the kind even in this, and you do not notice it: you think you deserve to stink. Let it be so — deserve to stink. But do you think that the men who sit beside you, who recline at table with you, who kiss you, deserve it too? Either go off into a desert, where you deserve to go, or live by yourself and smell yourself; because it is only just that you should have the enjoyment of your own filth to yourself. But when you are in a city, to behave so thoughtlessly and foolishly — what sort of character do you think that belongs to?
If nature had entrusted a horse to you, would you have overlooked him and neglected him? Consider now that you have been entrusted with your own body as with a horse. Wash it, wipe it, take care that nobody turns away from it and nobody gets out of its way. And who does not get out of the way of a dirty man, a stinking man, a man whose skin is foul — more than he gets out of the way of a man smeared with dung? That smell is from outside and put on him; the other comes from want of care, from inside, and from a body in a manner rotting.
"But Socrates washed himself seldom."
Yes — but his body was clean and handsome, and so agreeable and pleasant that the most beautiful and the most noble young men loved him and wanted to sit beside him rather than beside men with the handsomest bodies. He could have gone without the bath and without washing altogether if he had chosen; and even so his rare use of water had its effect. If you will not wash in warm water, wash in cold.
But Aristophanes says:
The pale ones, the unshod — those are the men I mean. — The Clouds, line 102.
Aristophanes also says of Socrates that he walked on air and stole clothes from the wrestling school. But everybody who has written about Socrates gives exactly the contrary evidence in his favour: they say he was pleasant not only to hear but to look at. And they write the same about Diogenes.
For we ought not to put the crowd off philosophy even by the look of the body. As in everything else, a philosopher should show himself cheerful and untroubled; and so he should in the things that concern the body. See, gentlemen, that I have nothing and want nothing; see how I am without a house, without a city, an exile if it happens so, and without a hearth — and I live with less trouble and more happily than all the well-born and the rich. And look at my poor body too, and see that it is not damaged by my hard way of living.
But if a man says this to me who has the look and the face of a condemned criminal — what god will persuade me to come near philosophy, if it makes men like that? Far from it. I would not choose to, even if it were going to make me a wise man.
For my part I would rather a young man taking his first steps toward philosophy came to me with his hair carefully trimmed than dirty and rough; because there is a certain notion of beauty in him, and a desire for what is becoming, and where he thinks it is, there he tries to have it. It is only necessary to show him what it is, and to say: young man, you are looking for beauty, and you do well. Then you should know that it grows in that part of you where you have the rational faculty. Look for it where you have your movements toward things and away from them, where you have your desires and your avoidances; that is what you have in you of a superior kind. The poor body is by nature only earth. Why do you labour over it for nothing? If you learn nothing else, in time you will learn that the body is nothing.
But if a man comes to me smeared with filth, dirty, with a moustache down to his knees, what can I say to him? By what likeness am I to lead him on? What has he busied himself with that resembles beauty, so that I could change him and say: beauty is not in this, but in that? Would you have me tell him that beauty does not consist in being smeared with dung but lies in the rational part? Has he any desire for beauty? Has he any picture of it in his mind? Go and talk to a hog and tell him not to roll in the mud.
This is why the words of Xenocrates touched Polemo — because he was a lover of beauty. He came into the room with certain sparks in him of the love of beauty, but he was looking for it in the wrong place.
Nature has not even made the animals dirty that live with man. Does a horse ever wallow in mud, or a well-bred dog? The hog does, and the filthy geese, and worms and spiders, which are kept furthest from human company. Then will you, being a man, choose not to be like the animals that live with men, but rather like a worm or a spider?
Will you not wash yourself somewhere, sometime, in whatever way you choose? Will you not wash the dirt off your body? Will you not come clean, so that the people who keep company with you may take pleasure in being with you? And do you come with us into the temples in this state, where it is not permitted to spit or blow the nose — being a heap of spit and snot yourself?
What then? Does anybody require you to adorn yourself? Far from it — except to adorn what we really are by nature: the rational faculty, the judgments, the actions. As for the body, only so far as cleanliness goes, only so far as not to give offence.
But if you are told that you ought not to wear clothes dyed with purple, off you go and smear your cloak with dung, or tear it.
"But how am I to have a neat cloak?"
Man, you have water. Wash it.
Here is a young man worth loving; here is an old man worth loving and being loved by in return; a fit person to be entrusted with a son's education, to whom daughters and young men shall come as the occasion arises — so that the teacher may deliver his lessons to them on a dunghill.
Let it not be so. Every deviation comes from something that is in man's nature; but this deviation comes near to being something that is not in man's nature at all.
When you have let your attention go for a short time, do not imagine you will get it back whenever you choose. Have this thought ready instead: because of the fault you committed today, your affairs must be in a worse state for everything that follows.
In the first place — and this causes the most trouble — a habit of not attending is formed in you; and then a habit of putting your attention off. And by putting it off, you drive away, again and again, the happiness of life, and proper behaviour, and being and living in line with nature.
If putting attention off is profitable, then leaving it out altogether is more profitable still. And if it is not profitable, why do you not keep your attention going all the time?
"Today I want to play."
Well — ought you not to play with attention?
"I want to sing."
And what stops you singing with attention? Is there any part of life left out, that attention does not reach to? Will you do a thing worse by using attention and better by not attending at all?
And what else in life is done better by men who do not attend? Does a man who works in wood work better by not attending? Does the captain of a ship handle her better by not attending? Is any of the smaller acts done better by inattention?
Do you not see that once you have let your mind loose, it is no longer in your power to call it back — either to decency, or to self-respect, or to moderation? You do whatever comes into your head, obeying your inclinations.
What ought I to attend to, then? First to the general principles, and to having them ready — not sleeping, not getting up, not drinking, not eating, not spending time with men, without them. That no man is master of another man's will, and that in the will alone lie the good and the bad. So no man has the power either to procure any good for me or to involve me in any evil; I alone have power over myself in these things.
And when these things are secured to me, why do I need to be disturbed about externals? What tyrant is formidable? What disease? What poverty? What insult from anybody?
Well — I have not pleased a certain person. Is pleasing him my work, my judgment? No. Then why should I trouble myself about him? "But he is supposed to be somebody." He will see to that himself, and so will the men who think it. But I have one whom I ought to please, one I ought to submit to and obey: God, and those next after him.
He has placed me with myself, and put my will under my own control alone, and given me rules for the right use of it. And when I follow those rules in syllogisms, I do not care about any man who says something different; in trick arguments I care about nobody. Then why, in greater matters, am I annoyed by men who blame me?
What is the cause of this disturbance? Nothing but that I am not trained in this matter. For every science despises ignorance and the ignorant — and not only the sciences but the crafts. Produce any shoemaker you like, and he laughs at the crowd where his own trade is concerned. Produce any carpenter.
So first we ought to have these rules ready and do nothing without them, and we ought to keep the soul aimed at this mark: to chase nothing external, nothing that belongs to others, but to do as the one who has the power has appointed. We should chase the things within the power of the will altogether, and everything else as it is permitted.
Next to this, we ought to remember who we are and what our name is, and try to direct our duties toward the character of each of our relations: what is the season for singing, what the season for play, and in whose presence; what the consequence of the act will be; whether the men with us will despise us or we shall despise them; when to make a joke, and whom to laugh at; and on what occasion to go along with people and with whom — and, in going along with them, how to keep our own character.
Wherever you have wandered from any of these rules, the damage is immediate — not from anything external, but from the act itself.
What then? Is it possible to be free of faults, if you do all this? It is not possible; but this is possible: to direct your efforts unceasingly at being faultless. We must be content if, by never letting this attention go, we escape at least a few errors.
But when you say, "Tomorrow I will start paying attention," you must be told that what you are saying is: "Today I will be shameless, careless of time and place, mean. It will be in other men's power to give me pain. Today I will be quick-tempered and envious."
See how many evil things you are allowing yourself. If it is good to use attention tomorrow, how much better to use it today? If it is in your interest to attend tomorrow, much more today — so that you may be able to do it tomorrow too, and not put it off again to the day after.
When a man seems to us to have talked frankly about his own affairs, how is it that we are drawn into revealing our own secrets to him in turn, and think this is being frank ourselves?
In the first place, because it seems unfair to have listened to a neighbour's business and not tell him ours in return. And next, because we think we shall not look like frank men if we say nothing about our own affairs. Indeed men often say, "I have told you all my business, and will you tell me nothing of yours? Where is that done?"
And besides, we have the idea that we can safely trust a man who has already told us his own business, because the notion comes into our minds that this man could never give our affairs away, since he would be careful that we should not give away his.
This is also how the incautious are caught by the soldiers at Rome. A soldier sits down beside you in ordinary clothes and begins to speak ill of Caesar; and then you, as though you had been given a pledge of his good faith by his having started the abuse, say what you think as well — and then you are led away in chains.
Something of the kind generally happens to us too. Now this man has confidently entrusted his affairs to me: am I to do the same with any man I meet? No — because when I have heard, I keep quiet, if that is my disposition; but he goes out and tells everybody what he has heard.
And then if I hear what he has done, if I am a man like him, I decide to get my own back and give away what he told me. I disturb others and am disturbed myself. But if I remember that one man does not injure another, and that every man's own acts injure or profit him, then I secure this much: that I do nothing like him. And still I suffer what I suffer, through my own silly talking.
"True — but it is unfair, when you have heard your neighbour's secrets, to tell him nothing in return."
Did I ask you for your secrets, my man? Did you tell me your affairs on terms, that you should hear mine in return? If you are a babbler and think everybody you meet is a friend, do you want me to be like you too?
And why, if you did well in entrusting your affairs to me, and it is not well for me to entrust mine to you, do you want me to be so rash? It is exactly as if I had a watertight cask and you had one with a hole in it, and you came and deposited your wine with me so that I could put it in my cask, and then complained that I would not entrust my wine to you — because you have a cask with a hole in it.
Where is the equality there? You entrusted your affairs to a man who is faithful and self-respecting, a man who thinks that only his own actions harm or help him and that nothing external does. And would you have me entrust mine to you — a man who has dishonoured his own faculty of will, and who wants to gain some small piece of money, or some office, or promotion at court, even if you were going to murder your own children like Medea?
Where is the fairness in that? Show me instead that you are faithful, self-respecting and steady; show me that your judgments are friendly ones; show me that your cask has no hole in it — and you will see how I shall not wait for you to trust me with your affairs, but shall come to you myself and ask you to listen to mine.
For who does not choose to use a good vessel? Who does not value a kindly and faithful adviser? Who will not gladly welcome a man ready to take a share, as we might say, in the difficulty of his circumstances, and by that very act to lighten the load by taking part of it?
"True — but I trust you, and you do not trust me."
In the first place, you do not even trust me. You are a babbler, and for that reason you cannot hold anything in. Indeed, if it were true that you trust me, you would entrust your affairs to me alone. But as it is, whenever you see a man at leisure you sit down beside him and say: "Brother, I have no friend kinder than you or dearer; I ask you to listen to my affairs." And you do it even to men who are not known to you at all.
And if you really do trust me, plainly you trust me because I am faithful and self-respecting, not because I have told you my affairs. So allow me to hold the same opinion about you.
Show me that when one man tells another his affairs, the man who tells them is faithful and self-respecting. If that were so, I would go about telling my affairs to every man, if that would make me faithful and self-respecting. But it is not so; it takes principles that are not common.
So if you see a man busy about things that do not depend on his will, and putting his will in subjection to them, you must understand that this man has ten thousand people to compel him and block him. He needs no pitch and no wheel to make him declare what he knows: a little girl's nod, if it comes to that, will move him — the coaxing of somebody from Caesar's court, the desire for an office or an inheritance, and endless things of the same kind.
So among your general principles you must remember that talk about secret matters requires good faith, and requires judgments to match it. And where are we to find those easily now? Or if you cannot answer that, let somebody point me out a man who can say: I care only about what is my own, about what cannot be blocked, about what is free by nature. This I hold to be the nature of the good; and let everything else be as it is allowed to be. I do not concern myself.