Discourses 2.17 ¶6 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 2.17 ¶6

Give me one young man who has come to the school with this intention, who is become a champion for this matter and says, “I give up everything else, and it is enough for me if it shall ever be in my power to pass my life free from hindrance and free from trouble, and to stretch out (present) my neck to all things 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 out such a man that I may say, “Come, young man, into the possession of that which is your own, for it is your destiny to adorn philosophy: yours are these possessions, yours these books, yours these discourses.” Then when he shall have labored sufficiently and exercised himself in this part of the matter (τόπον), let him come to me again and say, “I desire to be free from passion and free from perturbation; and I wish as a pious man and a philosopher and a diligent person to know what is my duty to the gods, what to my parents, what to my brothers, what to my country, what to strangers.” (I say) “Come also to the second matter (τόπον): this also is yours.”—“But I have now sufficiently studied the second part (τόπον) also, and I would gladly be secure and unshaken, and not only when I am awake, but also when I am asleep, and when I am filled with wine, and when I am melancholy.” Man, you are a god, you have great designs.