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

or turns to reflect on himself? or when he has gone out says, “The philosopher hit me well: I must no longer do these things.” But does he not, even if you have a great reputation, say to some person, “He spoke finely about Xerxes;”568 and another says, “No, but about the battle of Thermopylae.” Is this listening to a philosopher? XXIV That We Ought Not to Be Moved by a Desire of Those Things Which Are Not in Our Power

Let not that which in another is contrary to nature be an evil to you: for you are not formed by nature to be depressed with others nor to be unhappy with others, but to be happy with them. If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault: for God has made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations. For this purpose he has given means to them, some things to each person as his own, and other things not as his own; some things subject to hindrance and compulsion and deprivation, and these things are not a man’s own; but the things which are not subject to hindrances, are his own. And the nature of good and evil, as it was fit to be done by him who takes care of us and protects us like a father, he has made our own.⁠—But you say: I have parted from a certain person, and he is grieved.⁠—Why did he consider as his own that which belongs to another? Why, when he looked on you and was rejoiced, did he not also reckon that you are mortal, that it is natural for you to part from him for a foreign country? Therefore he suffers the consequences of his own folly. But why do you569 or for what purpose bewail yourself? Is it that you also have not thought of these things? but like poor women who are good for nothing, you have enjoyed all things in which you took pleasure, as if you would always enjoy them, both places and men and conversation; and now you sit and weep because you do not see the same persons and do not live in the same places.⁠—Indeed you deserve this, to be more wretched than crows and ravens who have the power of flying where they please and changing their nests for others, and crossing the seas without lamenting or regretting their former condition.⁠—“Yes, but this happens to them because they are irrational creatures.”⁠—Was reason then given to us by the gods for the purpose of unhappiness and misery, that we may pass our lives in wretchedness and lamentation? Must all persons be immortal and must no man go abroad, and must we ourselves not go abroad, but remain rooted like plants; and if any of our familiar friends goes abroad, must we sit and weep; and on the contrary, when he returns, must we dance and clap our hands like children?

Shall we not now wean ourselves and remember what we have heard from the philosophers? If we did not listen to them as if they were jugglers: they tell us that this world is one city,570 and the substance out of which it has been formed is one, and that there must be a certain period, and that some things must give way to others, that some must be dissolved, and others come in their place; some to remain in the same place, and others to be moved; and that all things are full of friendship, first of the gods,571 and then of men who by nature are made to be of one family; and some must be with one another, and others must be separated, rejoicing in those who are with them, and not grieving for those who are removed from them; and man in addition to being by nature of a noble temper and having a contempt of all things which are not in the power of his will, also possesses this property not to be rooted nor to be naturally fixed to the earth, but to go at different times to different places, sometimes from the urgency of certain occasions, and at others merely for the sake of seeing. So it was with Ulysses, who saw

Of many men the states, and learned their ways.572

And still earlier it was the fortune of Hercules to visit all the inhabited world

Seeing men’s lawless deeds and their good rules of law;573

casting out and clearing away their lawlessness and introducing in their place good rules of law. And yet how many friends do you think that he had in Thebes, how many in Argos, how many in Athens? and how many do you think that he gained by going about? And he married also, when it seemed to him a proper occasion, and begot children, and left them without lamenting or regretting or leaving them as orphans; for he knew that no man is an orphan; but it is the father who takes care of all men always and continuously. For it was not as mere report that he had heard that Zeus is the father of men, for he thought that Zeus was his own father, and he called him so, and to him he looked when he was doing what he did. Therefore he was enabled to live happily in all places. And it is never possible for happiness and desire of what is not present to come together. For that which is happy must have all574 that it desires, must resemble a person who is filled with food, and must have neither thirst nor hunger.⁠—“But Ulysses felt a desire for his wife and wept as he sat on a rock.”⁠—Do you attend to Homer and his stories in everything? Or if Ulysses really wept, what was he