Discourses and Selected Writings (32 page)

9.   
[from
Aulus Gellius,
Attic Nights
⁴
XIX 1, 14-21] A renowned Stoic philosopher drew from his satchel Book Five of the
Discourses
of Epictetus, edited by Arrian, writings that undoubtedly agree with those of Zeno and Chrysippus. There (translated from the Greek) we find a passage to this effect:

Impressions (which philosophers call), striking a person’s mind as soon as he perceives something within range of his senses, are not voluntary or subject to his will, they impose themselves on people’s attention almost with a will of their own. But the act of assent (which they call) which endorses these impressions
is
voluntary and a function of the human will. Consequently, when a frightening noise comes from heaven or in consequence of some accident, if an abrupt alarm threatens danger, or if anything else of the kind happens, the mind even of a wise man is inevitably shaken a little, blanches and recoils – not from any preconceived idea that something bad is about to happen, but because certain irrational reflexes forestall the action of the rational mind.

Instead of automatically assenting to these impressions (i.e. these frightening mental images), however (that is), our wise man spurns and rejects them, because there is nothing there that need cause
him
any fear.
⁵
And this, they say, is how the mind of the wise man differs from the fool’s: the latter believes that impressions apparently portending pain and hardship when they strike his mind really are as they seem, so he approves (the word the Stoics use when discussing this matter) them and accepts that he should fear them as if this were self-evident. But the wise man, soon regaining his colour and composure, (does not assent), reaffirms his support of the view he’s always had about such impressions – that they are not in the least to be feared, but are only superficially and speciously frightening.

10. 
[from
Aulus Gellius,
Attic Nights
XVII 19] According to Favorinus,
⁶
Epictetus said that most apparent philosophers were philosophers ‘not in their actions, only their words’. A
more incisive form of the idea was committed to writing in the books that Arrian composed based on Epictetus’ lectures: ‘Whenever,’ Arrian writes, ‘Epictetus noticed a person with no sense of shame but plenty of misplaced energy, vicious in character but possessed of a ready tongue, concerned with everything to the exclusion of his soul, whenever (he says) he saw such a character apply himself to any of various philosophical disciplines – taking up physics, studying logic, exploring various abstract topics of this sort – he’d be moved to cry out, invoking both gods and men, and in the course of his appeal would address these remarks to the person: “Friend, where are you storing all this erudition? Consider whether the receptacle is clean. If it’s being added to the vessel of vague opinion, it’s as good as lost. And if it spoils, it will turn into urine, vinegar or something even worse.” ’

There is absolutely nothing truer than these words, or more important; the greatest of philosophers thus implies that the writings and teachings of philosophy, when emptied into someone vicious and a fake – as into a foul and filthy vessel – become spoiled, degraded, and debased, turning into urine (as he says, in rather Cynic style) or, if it’s possible, something even more disgusting.

According to Favorinus, Epictetus would also say that there were two vices much blacker and more serious than the rest: lack of persistence and lack of self-control. The former means we cannot bear or endure hardships that we have to endure, the latter means that we cannot resist pleasures or other things we ought to resist. ‘Two words,’ he says, ‘should be committed to memory and obeyed by alternately exhorting and restraining ourselves, words that will ensure we lead a mainly blameless and untroubled life.’ These two words, he used to say, were ‘persist
and
resist’.

10a.
[from
Arnobius,
Against the Pagans
⁷
II 78] When the health of our soul and our self-respect is at stake, even irrational measures are justified, as Arrian quotes Epictetus saying, with approval.

11. Archelaus
⁸
invited Socrates to his court with the promise of wealth. But Socrates reported back that ‘In Athens four quarts of barley meal can be bought for a penny, and there are plenty of springs of fresh water. If my means are slight, still I can manage on them, which makes them adequate for my purposes.’ Can’t you see that Polus performed Oedipus as a king no more pleasingly or eloquently than he played Oedipus as a beggar and wanderer?
⁹
Then won’t the good man make as fine a showing as Polus by performing well in every costume in which destiny dresses him? Shouldn’t he imitate Odysseus, who was no less dignified wearing rags than in his royal purple robe?
¹⁰

12. There are some quietly temperamental people who coldly and calmly act the same way as people wholly carried away by anger. Their vice should be avoided too as it is much worse than being boiling mad; people of the latter sort soon get their satisfaction, whereas the former hold on to their anger like patients with a low-grade fever.

13. ‘But,’ someone objects, ‘I see good people dying of cold and hunger.’

Well, don’t you see wicked people dying of luxury, pride and excess?

‘Yes, but it’s demeaning to depend on others for one’s living.’
¹¹

Who is really self-sufficient, fool – apart from the universe itself? In any case, to object to providence on the grounds that the wicked go unpunished since they are rich and powerful is like saying that, if they lost their sight, they escaped punishment since they still had their fingernails intact. Personally, I say that virtue is more valuable than wealth to the same degree that eyes are more valuable than fingernails.

14.  Let’s question those gloomy philosophers
¹²
who say that pleasure is not itself in agreement with nature but a mere byproduct of the things in agreement with nature, like justice, self-control and freedom. Why, then, does the soul delight and ‘find content’, as Epicurus says, in the goods of the body, fragments
which are supposed to be inferior, but not take pleasure in its own (supposedly superior) goods? Well, nature has also endowed mewith a sense of shame, and I blush deeply whenever I catch myself saying anything disgraceful. It’s this reflex that will not allow me to propose pleasure as the good and the goal of life.

15. Women in Rome thumb Plato’s
Republic
because it advocates for the community of women. They attend only to the letter, not the spirit, which was not to encourage one man and one woman to marry and move in together – with the idea that women would then be shared – but to do away with that sort of marriage and introduce a different kind. People in general love to cite authority as a pretext to indulge their vices – when we know that philosophy says we should not even extend a finger without good reason.
¹³

16.  We should realize that an opinion is not easily formed unless a person says and hears the same things every day and practises them in real life.

17. When we are guests at a dinner party, we content ourselves with the food on offer; if anyone were to tell the host to put out fish or cake, he would seem rude. In real life, however, we ask the gods for what they do not give, and this though they have provided us with plenty.

18. It is just charming how people boast about qualities beyond their control. For instance, ‘I am better than you because I have many estates, while you are practically starving’; or, ‘I’m a consul,’ ‘I’m a governor,’ or ‘I have fine curly hair.’ One horse doesn’t say to another, ‘I’m better than you because I have lots of hay and barley, my reins are of gold, and my saddle is embroidered,’ but ‘I’m better because I’m faster than you.’ Every animal is judged better or worse based on its particular virtue or defect. Is man the only creature lacking a virtue, that we have to take account of his hair, his clothes, or his ancestry?

19.  People who are physically ill are unhappy with a doctor who doesn’t give them advice, because they think he has given up on them. Shouldn’t we feel the same towards a philosopher – and assume that he has given up hope of our ever becoming rational – if he will no longer tell us what we need (but may not like) to hear?

20.  People with a strong physical constitution can tolerate extremes of hot and cold; people of strong mental health can handle anger, grief, joy and the other emotions.

21.  It is only right to praise Agrippinus, who never praised himself, although he was a man of the highest character. If he was praised by anyone else, he only became embarrassed. He was more inclined to praise every difficulty he faced: if he had a fever, he composed a paean to fever, if he faced exile or disgrace he would celebrate those. Once, when he was preparing for lunch, a messenger arrived from Rome announcing that Nero had sentenced him to exile. Unflustered he replied, ‘Then why don’t we just move our lunch to Aricia.’
¹⁴

22.  When he was governor, Agrippinus tried to convince the people whom he sentenced that it was for their own good to be sentenced. ‘I don’t at all condemn them in a spirit of malice,’ he said, ‘much less with an eye to seizing their property. I act in a spirit of concern and good will, like a doctor who comforts the patient whom he plans to cut open, and cajoles him into submitting to the operation.’

23.  Nature is amazing and ‘on the side of life’, as Xenophon says.
¹⁵
Take the body – the nastiest and least pleasant thing of all – which we nevertheless love and look after. If we had to look after our neighbour’s body, we’d be sick of it inside of a week. Imagine what it would be like to rise at dawn and brush someone else’s teeth, or wipe their private parts after they’ve answered nature’s call. Really, it’s amazing that we can love something that on a daily basis requires so much of our attention.

I stuff this paunch, then empty it; and what could be more tedious? But God must be obeyed, and so I live on and put up with washing, feeding and housing my miserable body. When I was younger it asked something else of me, and I put up with that too. So why can’t you tolerate it, when nature, which gave you this body, asks for it back?

‘But I love it.’

Wasn’t it nature, as I just finished saying, that made you love it? It’s nature, too, that tells you it’s time to let it go, so that you won’t have to fuss over it any more.

24. Whenever someone dies young, they blame the gods
because they are being taken before their time; an old man who does not die also blames the gods
^∗
for his ailments, because by now he ought to have reached his resting place. Nevertheless, when death approaches he wants to live and sends for the doctor, begging him to spare nothing of his skill and energy. People are strange, Epictetus said: they neither wish to live nor die.

25.  Whenever you set about attacking someone with violent threats, remember to give them fair warning, because you are not a savage animal. And if you refrain from savage behaviour, in the end you will have nothing to regret or explain.

26. [
from
Marcus Aurelius,
The Meditations
¹⁶
IV 41] You are a bit of soul carrying around a dead body, as Epictetus used to say.

27. [
from
Marcus Aurelius,
The Meditations
XI 37] Epictetus said that we must find a method for managing assent. In the field of assent we have to be careful to use it with reservation, with restraint and in the service of society. Drop desire altogether and apply aversion to nothing that is not under our control.

28.
[from
Marcus Aurelius,
The Meditations
XI 38] It is nothing trivial at stake here, Epictetus said, but a question of sanity or insanity.

28a.
[from
Marcus Aurelius,
The Meditations
XI 39] Socrates would say, ‘What do you want? To have the souls of rational or irrational animals?’

‘Rational.’

‘Healthy or unhealthy rational animals?’

‘Healthy’

‘Then why don’t you work at it?’

‘Because we have them already.’

‘Then why are you fighting and quarrelling with one another?’

28b.
[from
Marcus Aurelius,
The Meditations
IV 49, 2-6] ‘Poor me, because this happened to me.’ No, say rather, ‘Lucky me, because though this happened to me I’m still happy, neither broken by present circumstance nor afraid for the future.’ Because the same thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have remained content. So why is the former a misfortune any more than the latter is a blessing? Do you actually call anything a human misfortune that isn’t a perversion of human nature? And don’t you think a perversion of human nature must run counter to nature’s will? Well, you understand its will. So does this misfortune prevent you in any way from being just, generous, sober, reasonable, careful, free from error, courteous, free, etc. – all of which together make human nature complete?

Remember from now on whenever something tends to make you unhappy, draw on this principle: ‘This is no misfortune; but bearing with it bravely is a blessing.’

[1] We are responsible for some things, while there are others for which we cannot be held responsible. The former include our judgement, our impulse, our desire, aversion and our mental faculties in general; the latter include the body, material possessions, our reputation, status – in a word, anything not in our power to control. [2] The former are naturally free, unconstrained and unimpeded, while the latter are frail, inferior, subject to restraint – and none of our affair.

[3] Remember that if you mistake what is naturally inferior for what is sovereign and free, and what is not your business for your own, you’ll meet with disappointment, grief and worry and be at odds with God and man. But if you have the right idea about what really belongs to you and what does not, you will never be subject to force or hindrance, you will never blame or criticize anyone, and everything you do will be done willingly. You won’t have a single rival, no one to hurt you, because you will be proof against harm of any kind.