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

will, but I was content also. I have not filled a magisterial office, because it was not thy pleasure that I should: I have never desired it. Hast thou ever seen me for this reason discontented? have I not always approached thee with a cheerful countenance, ready to do thy commands and to obey thy signals? Is it now thy will that I should depart from the assemblage of men? I depart. I give thee all thanks that thou hast allowed me to join in this thy assemblage of men and to see thy works, and to comprehend this thy administration.” May death surprise me while I am thinking of these things, while I am thus writing and reading.

“But my mother will not hold my head when I am sick.” Go to your mother then; for you are a fit person to have your head held when you are sick. “But at home I used to lie down on a delicious bed.” Go away to your bed: indeed you are fit to lie on such a bed even when you are in health: do not then lose what you can do there (at home).

But what does Socrates say?452 As one man, he says, is pleased with improving his land, another with improving his horse, so I am daily pleased in observing that I am growing better. “Better in what? in using nice little words?” Man, do not say that. “In little matters of speculation (θεωρήματα)?” what are you saying? “And indeed I do not see what else there is on which philosophers employ their time.” Does it seem nothing to you to have never found fault with any person, neither with God nor man? to have blamed nobody? to carry the same face always in going out and coming in? This is what Socrates knew, and yet he never said that he knew anything or taught anything.453 But if any man asked for nice little words or little speculations, he would carry him to Protagoras or to Hippias; and if any man came to ask for potherbs, he would carry him to the gardener. Who then among you has this purpose (motive to action)? for if indeed you had it, you would both be content in sickness, and in hunger, and in death. If any among you has been in love with a charming girl, he knows that I say what is true.454

VI Miscellaneous

When some person asked him how it happened that since reason has been more cultivated by the men of the present age, the progress made in former times was greater. In what respect, he answered, has it been more cultivated now, and in what respect was the progress greater then? For in that in which it has now been more cultivated, in that also the progress will now be found. At present it has been cultivated for the purpose of resolving syllogisms, and progress is made. But in former times it was cultivated for the purpose of maintaining the governing faculty in a condition conformable to nature, and progress was made. Do not then mix things which are different, and do not expect, when you are laboring at one thing, to make progress in another. But see if any man among us when he is intent upon this, the keeping himself in a state conformable to nature and living so always, does not make progress. For you will not find such a man.

The good man is invincible, for he does not enter the contest where he is not stronger. If you (his adversary) want to have his land and all that is on it, take the land; take his slaves, take his magisterial office, take his poor body. But you will not make his desire fail in that which it seeks, nor his aversion fall into that which he would avoid. The only contest into which he enters is that about things which are within the power of his will; how then will he not be invincible?

Some person having asked him what is common sense, Epictetus replied: As that may be called a certain common hearing which only distinguishes vocal sounds, and that which distinguishes musical sounds is not common, but artificial; so there are certain things which men, who are not altogether perverted, see by the common notions which all possess. Such a constitution of the mind is named common sense.455

It is not easy to exhort weak young men; for neither is it easy to hold (soft) cheese with a hook.456 But those who have a good natural disposition, even if you try to turn them aside, cling still more to reason. Wherefore Rufus457 generally attempted to discourage (his pupils), and he used this method as a test of those who had a good natural disposition and those who had not. For it was his habit to say, “as a stone, if you cast it upwards, will be brought down to the earth by its own nature, so the man whose mind is naturally good, the more you repel him, the more he turns towards that to which he is naturally inclined.”

VII To the Administrator of the Free Cities Who Was an Epicurean

When the administrator458 came to visit him, and the man was an Epicurean, Epictetus said: It is proper for us who are not philosophers to inquire of you who are philosophers,459 as those who come to a strange city inquire of the citizens and those who are acquainted with it, what is the best thing in the world, in order that we also after inquiry may go in quest of that which is best and look at it, as strangers do with the things in cities. For that there are three things which relate to man⁠—soul, body, and things external⁠—scarcely any man