Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

If you seek anything more than this, go on doing what you are doing: not even a God can now help you. X What Things We Ought to Despise, and What Things We Ought to Value

The difficulties of all men 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, will that? All these are the words of those who are turning themselves to things which are not within the power of the will. For who says, “How shall I not assent to that which is false? how shall I not turn away from the truth?” If a man be of such a good disposition as to be anxious about these things, I will remind him of this: Why are you anxious? The thing is in your own power: be assured; do not be precipitate in assenting before you apply the natural rule. On the other side, if a man is anxious (uneasy) about desire, lest it fail in its purpose and miss its end, and with respect to the avoidance of things, lest he should fall into that which he would avoid, I will first kiss (love) him, because he throws away the things about which others are in a flutter (others desire) and their fears, and employs his thoughts about his own affairs and his own condition. Then I shall say to him: if you do not choose to desire that which you will fail to obtain, nor to attempt to avoid that into which you will fall, desire nothing which belongs to (which is in the power of) others, nor try to avoid any of the things which are not in your power. If you do not observe this rule, you must of necessity fail in your desires and fall into that which you would avoid. What is the difficulty here? 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 not that which will happen independent of the will? Yes. And the nature of good and of evil, is it not in the things which are within the power of the will? Yes. Is it in your power then to treat according to nature everything which happens? Can any person hinder you? No man. No longer then say to me, “How will it be?” For however it may be, you will dispose of it well,757 and the result to you will be a fortunate one. What would Hercules have been if he said, “How shall a great lion not appear to me,” or “a great boar,” or “savage men?” And what do you care for that? If a great boar appear, you will fight a greater fight; if bad men appear, you will relieve the earth of the bad. “Suppose then that I lose my life in this way.” You will die a good man, doing a noble act. For since we must certainly die, of necessity a man must be found doing something, either following the employment of a husbandman, or digging, or trading, or serving in a consulship, or suffering from indigestion or from diarrhea. What then do you wish to be doing when you are found by death? I for my part would wish to be found doing something which belongs to a man: beneficent, suitable to the general interest, noble. But if I cannot be found doing things so great, I would be found doing at least that which I cannot be hindered from doing, that which is permitted me to do: correcting myself, cultivating the faculty which makes use of appearances, laboring at freedom from the affects (laboring at tranquillity of mind), rendering to the relations of life their due; if I succeed so far, also (I would be found) touching on (advancing to) the third topic (or head): safety in the forming judgments about things.758 If death surprises me when I am busy about these things, it is enough for me if I can stretch out my hands to God and say: The means which I have received from thee for seeing thy administration (of the world) and following it, I have not neglected: I have not dishonored thee by my acts. See how I have used my perceptions, see how I have used my preconceptions: have I ever blamed thee? have I been discontented with anything that happens, or wished it to be otherwise? Have I wished to transgress the (established) relations (of things)? That thou hast given me life, I thank thee for what thou hast given. So long as I have used the things which are thine, I am content; take them back and place them wherever thou mayest choose; for thine were all things, thou gavest them to me.759⁠—Is it not enough to depart in this state of mind, and what life is better and more becoming than that of a man who is in this state of mind? and what end is more happy?760

But that this may be done (that such a declaration may be made), a man must receive (bear) no small things, nor are the things small which he must lose (go without). You cannot both wish to be a consul and to have these things (the power of making such a dying speech), and to be eager to have lands, and these things also; and to be solicitous about slaves, and about yourself. But if you wish for anything which belongs to another, that which is your own is lost. This is the nature of the thing: nothing is given or had for nothing.761 And where is the wonder? If you wish to be a consul, you must keep awake, run about, kiss hands, waste yourself with exhaustion at other men’s doors, say and do many