Discourses 4.1 ¶18 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 4.1 ¶18

Well then let us recapitulate the things which have been agreed on. The man who is not under restraint is free, to whom things are exactly in that state in which he wishes them to be; but he who can be restrained or compelled or hindered, or thrown into any circumstances against his will, is a slave. But who is free from restraint? He who desires nothing that belongs to (is in the power of) others. And what are the things which belong to others? Those which are not in our power either to have or not to have, or to have of a certain kind or in a certain manner. Therefore the body belongs to another, the parts of the body belong to another, possession (property) belongs to another. If then you are attached to any of these things as your own, you will pay the penalty which it is proper for him to pay who desires what belongs to another. This road leads to freedom, this is the only way of escaping from slavery, to be able to say at last with all your soul Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O destiny, The way that I am bid by you to go. But what do you say, philosopher? The tyrant summons you to say something which does not become you. Do you say it or do you not? Answer me.—“Let me consider.”—Will you consider now? But when you were in the school, what was it which you used to consider? Did you not study what are the things that are good and what are bad, and what things are neither one nor the other?—“I did.”—What then was our opinion?—“That just and honorable acts were good; and that unjust and disgraceful (foul) acts were bad.”—Is life a good thing?—“No.”—Is death a bad thing?—“No.”—Is prison?—“No.”—But what did we think about mean and faithless words and betrayal of a friend and flattery of a tyrant?—“That they are bad.”—Well then, you are not considering, nor have you considered nor deliberated. For what is the matter for consideration: is it whether it is becoming for me, when I have it in my power, to secure for myself the greatest of good things, and not to secure for myself (that is, not to avoid) the greatest evils? A fine inquiry indeed, and necessary, and one that demands much deliberation. Man, why do you mock us? Such an inquiry is never made. If you really imagined that base things were bad and honorable things were good, and that all other things were neither good nor bad, you would not even have approached this enquiry, nor have come near it; but immediately you would have been able to distinguish them by the understanding as you would do (in other cases) by the vision. For when do you inquire if black things are white, if heavy things are light, and do not comprehend the manifest evidence of the senses? How then do you now say that you are considering whether things which are neither good nor bad ought to be avoided more than things which are bad? But you do not possess these opinions; and neither do these things seem to you to be neither good nor bad, but you think that they are the greatest evils; nor do you think those other things (mean and faithless words, etc.) to be evils, but matters which do not concern us at all. For thus from the beginning you have accustomed yourself. “Where am I? In the schools: and are any listening to me? I am discoursing among philosophers.” But I have gone out of the school. Away with this talk of scholars and fools. Thus a friend is overpowered by the testimony of a philosopher: thus a philosopher becomes a parasite; thus he lets himself for hire for money: thus in the senate a man does not say what he thinks; in private (in the school) he proclaims his opinions. You are a cold and miserable little opinion, suspended from idle words as from a hair. But keep yourself strong and fit for the uses of life and initiated by being exercised in action. How do you hear (the report)—I do not say that your child is dead, for how could you bear that?—but that your oil is spilled, your wine drunk up? Do you act in such a way that one standing by you while you are making a great noise, may say this only: “Philosopher, you say something different in the school. Why do you deceive us? Why, when you are only a worm, do you say that you are a man?” I should like to be present when some of the philosophers is lying with a woman, that I might see how he is exerting himself, and what words he is uttering, and whether he remembers his title of philosopher, and the words which he hears or says or reads.