The Teaching of Epictetus

CHAPTER XXV

parts of philosophy

1. The first and most necessary point in philosophy is the use of the precepts, for example, not to lie. The second is the proof of these, as, Whence it comes that it is wrong to lie? The third is that which giveth confirmation and coherence to the others, such as, Whence it comes that this is proof? for what is proof? what is consequence? what is contradiction? what is truth? what is falsehood?

2. Thus the third point is necessary through the second, and the second through the first. But the most necessary of all, and that when we should rest, is the first, But we do the contrary. For we linger on the third point, and spend all our zeal on that, while of the first we are utterly neglectful, and thus we are liars; but the explanation of how it is shown to be wrong to lie we have ever ready to hand.

CHAPTER XXVI

memorabilia.126

Hold in readiness for every need, these —

“Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, Destiny, whithersoever ye have appointed me to go, and may I follow fearlessly. But if in an evil mind I be unwilling, still must I follow.”

“That man is wise among us, and hath understanding of things divine, who hath nobly agreed with Necessity.”

But the third also —

“O Crito, if so it seem good to the Gods so let it be. Anytus and Meletus are able to kill me indeed, but to harm me, never.”

THE END

NOTES ON PRINCIPAL PHILOSOPHIC TERMS USED BY EPICTETUS

[I give under this head only those terms the exact force of which may not be apparent to the reader in a mere translation.]

Αἰδήμων. – Pious, reverent, modest. The substantive is αἰδώς, the German Ehrfurcht (Wilhelm Meister, Wanderjahre, Bk. II. ch. ii.), a virtue in high regard with Epictetus, who generally mentions it in connection with that of “faithfulness,” πίστις. In Wordsworth’s poem, “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky,” the “natural piety” which he prays may abide with him in his old age seems to be just that moral sensitiveness or αἰδώς which passes into reverence and worship in the presence of certain things, and into shame and dread in that of others.

Ἀπάθεια. – Peace – that is, peace from passion, πάθη. Πάθος was any affection of the mind causing joy or grief. As it appears from Bk. II. iii. I., ἀπάθεια is not, in Epictetus, the state of absolute freedom from these passions, but that of being able to master them so that they shall not overwhelm the inner man.

Διαρθρωτικός. – That which organizes, constitutes organically, forms into a system. From ἄρθρον, a joint. The word “analyze,” by which Long translates διαρθροῦν, seems to me wanting in the formative sense expressed by the original.

Δόγμα. – An opinion, that which seems (δοκεῖν) true; generally in the special sense of a philosophic dogma.

Ἐυροεῖν. – To prosper; literally, to flow freely, εὔροια, prosperity. A common Stoic phrase for a happy life.

Εὐσέβεια. – Religion, piety. σέβομαι – “to feel awe or fear before God and man, especially when about to do something disgraceful” (Liddell and Scott); to worship, respect, reverence.

Ἡγεμονικόν (τό). – The Ruling Faculty – that in a man which chooses, determines, takes cognizance of good and evil, and sways the inferior faculties (δυνάμεις, powers) to its will. Lotze notes this hegemonic quality in the human soul as that which distinguishes it from the bundle of sensations into which the Association Philosophy would resolve it.

θαυμάζειν. – To admire, be dazzled with admiration by, to worship, to be taken up with a thing so as to lose the power of cool judgment. A frequent word in Epictetus, the sense of which is precisely rendered in Hor. Sat. I, 4, 28, “Hunc capit argenti splendor, stupet Albius ære.”

Ἰδιώτης. – One of the vulgar, an unlettered person; in Epictetus, one uninstructed in philosophy. Originally the word meant one who remained in private life, not filling any public office, or taking part in State affairs. A man might be an ἰδιώτης, or “layman,” with respect to any branch of science or art.

Καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός. – The good and wise man – literally, beautiful and good. A standing phrase to denote the perfection of human character. καλὸς is a word sometimes difficult to render. Curtius connects it etymologically with Sanscrit, kalyas; Gothic, hails=healthy.

Οἴησις. – “Conceit” – defined by Cicero as “Opinatio” – intellectual self-sufficiency, the supposing one’s self to know something when one does not. “The first business of a philosopher,” says Epictetus, “is to cast away oἴησις, for it is impossible that one can begin to learn the things that he thinks he knows” (Diss. II. xvii. 1.) He is not, in short, to be “wise in his own conceit.”

ὄρεξις, ἔκκλισις, ὁρμή, ἀφορμή. – Pursuit, avoidance, desire, aversion. According to Simplicius (Comment. Ench. i.), ὄρεξις and ἔκκλισις were used by the Stoics to express the counterparts in outward action of the mental affections, ὁρμὴ and ἀφορμή, and were regarded as consequent upon the latter.

προαίρεσις. – The Will; but as used in Epictetus, this word implies much more than the mere faculty of volition. Literally, it means a choosing of one thing before another; in Epictetus, the power of deliberately resolving or purposing, the exercise of the reflective faculty being implied. It is hardly to be distinguished from τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, q. v.

προλήψεις. – “Natural Conceptions.” See Preface, xxviii., xxix. The “primary truths” of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

Συγκατατίθεσθαι. – To assent to or acquiesce in anything, to ratify by the judgment the emotions produced by external things or events, such as the sense of dread, or pleasure, or reprobation, which they arouse in us. To be on one’s guard against the hasty yielding of this assent is one of Epictetus’s main injunctions to the aspirant in philosophy.

Ταράσσεσθαι. – To be troubled; ἀ-ταραξία, tranquillity. Ταράσσειν is primarily to stir up, confuse, throw into disorder.

φαντασία. – An appearance; with the Stoics, any mental impression as received by the perceptive faculty before the Reason has pronounced upon it, a bare perception.

1

The Encheiridion of Epictetus, Translated into English by T. W. Rolleston. Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1881.

2

Epicteti Dissertationum ab Arriano Digestarum Libri IV. et ex Deperditis Sermonibus Fragmenta. Post Io. Uptoni aliorumque curas, denuo ad Codicum M Storum fidem recensuit, Latina Versione, Adnotationibus, Indicibus illustravit Johannes Schweighäuser, Lipsiæ. MDCCXCIX.

Epicteti Manuale et Cebetis Tabula Græce et Latine. Schw. MDCCXCVIII.

There are two excellent English translations of the whole extant works of Epictetus – one by Mrs. Carter, published in the last century, the other by the late George Long, M. A. (Bohn Series), to both of which, but especially the latter, I desire to record my great obligations.

3

πάντα ῥεῖ, all flows – the cardinal doctrine of the Heracleitean philosophy.

4

An English translation of this work has lately appeared.

5

Ep. 120. 4. ff.

6

Gregory Nazianzen, commenting on this narrative, remarks that it only shows how manfully unavoidable sufferings may be borne.

7

Professor Mahaffy, in his Greek Life and Thought, quotes the full text of this noble Hymn, which, he thinks, “would alone redeem the Hellenistic age, as it stands before us, from the charge of mere artificiality and pedantry.”

8

ἰῆς μίμημα λαχόντες μοῦνον. This is Zeller’s reading, but not Professor Mahaffy’s who has ἑνὸς μίμημα.

9

“Enter by the door” (cf. S. John, x. 1). The parallelisms in thought and expression between Epictetus and the New Testament have often been noticed, and the reader will discover many others, to which I have not thought it necessary to draw attention.

10

“Conceit:” οἴησις, Einbildung.

11

“To be elated:” ἐπαίρεσθαι. One might translate, “to be puffed up,” except that that expression is only used in a bad sense, and one may be “elated” in anything that is truly of the nature of the good. The Stoics distinguished between χαρά, joy, and ἡδονή, pleasure; not rejecting or despising the former.

12

τὰ μέν εἰσιν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, τὰ δὲ οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν. A fundamental distinction in the Epictetean system, which he sometimes expresses by the phrases, τὰ ἡμέτερα and τὰ τῶν ἄλλων – things that are our own and things that belong to others; or τὰ ἴδια and τὰ ἀλλότρια – things that are our proper concern, and things that are alien to us.

13

On the Mons Palatinus in Rome there stood a temple to Fever. Upton quotes from Gruter, p. xcvii., an interesting inscription to this divinity: Febri. Divæ. Febri. Sanctæ. Febri. Magnæ. Camilla. Amata. Pro. Filio. Male. Affecto. P.

14

There is excellent MS. authority for this reading of the passage, which, however, is not Schweighäuser’s. The latter reads: “Be content with them, and pray to the Gods.”

15

“Steward of the winds.” A quotation from Homer, Od. x. 21.

16

“Through not being dazzled,” etc. Ἂν τὰς ὕλας μὴ θαυμάσῃ.

17

Note that in this passage “God” and “the Gods” and “the Divine” are all synonymous terms.

18

Or “of names.”

19

Some texts add “such as Good or Evil.”

20

Apparently a proverb, which maybe paralleled in its present application by Luther’s “Pecca fortiter.”

21

A complex or conjunctive proposition is one which contains several assertions so united as to form a single statement which will be false if any one of its parts is false —e. g., “Brutus was the lover and destroyer both of Cæsar and of his country.” The disjunctive is when alternative propositions are made, as “Pleasure is either good or bad, or neither good nor bad.”

22

I have followed Lord Shaftesbury’s explanation of this passage, which the other commentators have given up as corrupt. It seems clear that whether the passage can stand exactly in the form in which we have it, or not, Lord Shaftesbury’s rendering represents what Epictetus originally conveyed.

23

According to the usual reading, a scornful exclamation – “Thou exhort them!” I have followed the reading recommended by Schw. in his notes, although he does not adopt it in his text.

24

The founder of the Cynic school was Antisthenes, who taught in the gymnasium named the Cynosarges, at Athens; whence the name of his school. Zeller takes this striking chapter to exhibit Epictetus’s “philosophisches Ideal,” the Cynic being the “wahrer Philosoph,” or perfect Stoic. (Phil. d. Gr. iii. S. 752.) This view seems to me no more true than that the missionary or monk is to be considered the ideal Christian. Epictetus takes pains to make it clear that the Cynic is a Stoic with a special and separate vocation, which all Stoics are by no means called upon to take up. Like Thoreau, that modern Stoic, when he went to live at Walden, the Cynic tries the extreme of abnegation in order to demonstrate practically that man has resources within himself which make him equal to any fate that circumstances can inflict.

25

τριβώνιον, a coarse garment especially affected by the Cynics, as also by the early Christian ascetics.

26

“Nor pity.” Upton, in a note on Diss. i. 18. 3. (Schw.), refers to various passages in Epictetus where pity and envy are mentioned together as though they were related emotions, and aptly quotes Virgil (Georg. ii. 499): —

“Aut doluit miserans inopem, aut invidit habenti.”

It will be clear to any careful reader that when Epictetus asserts that certain emotions or acts are unworthy of a man, he constantly means the “man” to be understood as his highest spiritual faculty, his deepest sense of reason, his soul. That we are not to pity or grieve means that that side of us which is related to the divine and eternal is not to be affected by emotions produced by calamities in mere outward and material things. St. Augustine corroborates this view in an interesting passage bearing on the Stoic doctrine of pity (De Civ. Dei. ix. 5; Schw. iv. 132): —

“Misericordiam Cicero non dubitavit appellare virtutem, quam Stoicos inter vitia numerare non pudet, qui tamen, ut docuit liber Epicteti nobilissimi Stoici ex decretis Zenonis et Chrysippi, qui hujus sectæ primas partes habuerunt, hujuscemodi passiones in animum Sapientis admittunt, quem vitiis omnibus liberam esse volunt. Unde fit consequens, ut hæc ipsa non putent vitia, quando Sapienti sic accidunt, ut contra virtutem mentis rationemque nihil possunt.”

The particular utterances of Epictetus here alluded to by St. Augustine must have been contained in some of the lost books of the Dissertations, as nothing like them is to be found explicitly in those which survive, although the latter afford us abundant means for deducing the conclusion which St. Augustine confirms.

27

This cake seems to form a ridiculous anti-climax. But it appears to have been a vexed question in antiquity whether an ascetic philosopher might indulge in this particular luxury (πλακοῦς). Upton quotes Lucian and Diogenes Laertius for instances of this question being propounded, and an affirmative answer given (in one instance by the Cynic, Diogenes). The youth in the text is being addressed as a novice who must not use the freedom of an adept.

28

Upton quotes from Cymbeline: —

“Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,

Art they not, but in Britain? Prythee, think,

There’s living out of Britain!”

But Epictetus means more than this in his allusion to sun and stars. – See Preface, xxiv. This passage would lead us to suppose that Epictetus believed in a personal existence continued for some time after death. In the end, however, even sun and stars shall vanish. – See ii. 13, 4.

29

Being arrested by Philip’s people, and asked if he were a spy, Diogenes replied, “Certainly I am, O Philip; a spy of thine ill-counsel and folly, who for no necessity canst set thy life and kingdom on the chances of an hour.”

30

According to Upton’s conjecture, these were gladiators famous for bodily strength; and also, one would suspect, for some remarkable calamity.

31

This highly crude view of the Trojan war might have been refuted out of the mouth of Epictetus himself. Evil-doers are not to be allowed their way because they are unable to hurt our souls, but the hurt may be in the cowardice or sloth that will not punish them.

32

By wearing his cloak half falling off, in negligent fashion. Nothing is finer or more characteristic in Epictetus than his angry scorn of the pseudo-Stoics of his day.

33

ἀνάκρινον τὸ δαιμόνιον. The allusion evidently is to the genius or divine spirit by which Socrates felt himself guided.

34

Crates was a disciple of Diogenes. His wife was named Hipparchia. Upton quotes Menander (apud Diog. L.), “Thou wilt walk about with me in a cloak as once did his wife with Crates the Cynic.”

35

Danaus, father of the fifty Danaidæ. Æolus is mentioned in Od. x. as having six sons and six daughters.

36

τραπεζῆας πυλαωρούς. Il. xxi. 69.

37

That is, he capped the quotation by quoting the following line (Il. ii. 24, 25). Not a very striking intellectual effort; but Epictetus evidently considered it a meritorious thing to know Homer well enough to quote him in one’s sleep, and he was right.

38

From a poem of Cleanthes.

39

According to the view of James Harris, in a long and valuable note communicated to Upton, the “master-argument” was so called from the supreme importance of the issues with which it dealt. On these issues different leaders of the Stoics took different sides, Diodorus holding both future and past things to be necessary, Cleanthes both contingent, and Chrysippus past things to be necessary and future contingent. Any two of the three propositions mentioned in the text exclude the third. For modern philosophy the distinction between the possible and the certain in the phenomenal world has, of course, no real existence; the possible being simply that of which we do not know whether it will come to pass or not.

40

Of course Epictetus here speaks ironically; all this is just what it is the business of a thinker to do.

41

Epictetus, I suppose, means to complain that the current phrases of philosophy are dealt out in glib answer to great ethical questions, just as Homer might be quoted for an event in the life of Odysseus, by persons who in neither case think of gaining that vital conviction which only the strenuous exercise of one’s own reason can produce. A little later he represents Hellanicus, the historian, as quoted on the distinction between good and evil, who never treated that subject. If it is to be a mere question of authority, one name is as good as another, since none is any use at all.

“Indifferent,” be it observed, is morally indifferent – that which has in itself no bearing on our moral state. See Chap. II. 2.

42

The followers of Aristotle called themselves Peripatetics.

43

The word in the Greek is περιστάσεις, literally circumstances, but the word is evidently used in a bad sense, as equivalent to afflictions. Doom is likewise etymologically a neutral word, but one which has received an evil meaning.

44

Socrates’s faith in his genius or “Dæmon” was well known. In this passage from his Apologia (which Epictetus gives from a bad text), it is doubtless the manner only that conveyed the idea of mockery. Neither Socrates nor any one else ever had better evidence of God’s existence than His voice in our conscience.

45

Briefly, the three divisions seem to be Action, Character, and Judgment. The last is to be approached through training in logic, in the penetration of fallacies, etc., by which means a man is to arrive at such an inward and vital conviction of the truth that he can never for a moment be taken off his guard by the delusion of Appearance.

46

2. Passions, passionless, τὰ πάθη, ἀπαθής. – See Index of Philosophic Terms.

47

Euripides. – Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus, is reported to have said, “Take the chance of dying nobly when thou canst, lest after a little death indeed come to thee, but a noble death no more.”

48

This phrase of the “open door” occurs frequently in Epictetus, usually when, as here, he is telling the average non-philosophic man that it is unmanly to complain of a life which he can at any time relinquish. The philosopher has no need of such exhortation, for he does not complain, and as for death, is content to wait God’s time. But the Stoics taught that the arrival of this time might be indicated by some disaster or affliction which rendered a natural and wholesome life impossible. Self-destruction was in such cases permissible, and is recorded to have been adopted by several leaders of the Stoics, generally when old age had begun to render them a burden to their friends.

49

Nay, thou shalt exist, etc. – This is the sense given by Zeller’s punctuation. Schweighäuser’s text would be rendered, “Thou shalt not exist, but something else will,” etc. Upton changes the text (on his own authority) by transposing an οὐκ. “Thou shalt exist, but as something else, whereof the universe has now no need.”

50

This does not appear to have been the law in Epictetus’s time, for he himself was educated while a slave. But it was a common provision in antique states.

51

The ceremony in manumitting a slave.

52

Chap. VI. i. is a passage from the lost Fifth Book of the Discourses, preserved for us in a rather obscure Latin translation by Aulus Gellius. During a storm at sea, a certain Stoic on board was observed by him to look pale and anxious, though not indeed showing the signs of panic exhibited by the other passengers. Questioned afterwards by Gellius on this apparent feebleness in his professed faith, the Stoic produced the Fifth Book of Epictetus, and read this passage.

53

The third Earl of Shaftesbury, an enthusiastic student of Epictetus, had this dish of water and ray of light engraved, and placed, with the inscription, πάντα ὑπόληψις – All is Opinion – as an emblem at the front of his Characteristics. The passage, though interesting, is obscure. At one time the “appearances,” φαντασίαι, are compared to the ray of light; at another, the doctrines (literally “arts,” i. e., arts of life taught by philosophy) and virtues. Probably the explanation is to be found in the view of the Stoics that at birth the human soul is a tabula rasa, or blank sheet; all our knowledge coming from without; that is, from the “appearances” which surround us. Moral and philosophic convictions are thus, like all other mental states, the result of external impressions.

54

The school of Plato was continued at Athens under the title of the Academy. In its later days it produced little except logical puzzles.

55

“Friend, if indeed, escaping from this war, we were destined thereafter to an ageless and deathless life, then neither would I fight in the van nor set thee in the press of glorious battle. But now, since death in a thousand kinds stands everywhere against us, which no man shall fly from nor elude, we go; either we shall give glory to another, or he to us.” – Sarpedon’s speech, Iliad, xii. 322-8.

56

General consent. – The well-known philosophic doctrine, that what all men unite in believing must be true, which has so often been made the basis of arguments against Skepticism in various forms.

57

See Chap. IV. i.

58

He drew water by night for his gardens, and studied philosophy in the day. —Diog. Laert. [Upton.]

59

A most characteristic feature of the whole Stoic school was its treatment of ancient mythology and legend. These things were closely and earnestly studied, with a constant view to the deeper meanings that underlay the vesture of fable, an attitude which contrasts very favorably with Plato’s banishment of the poets from his Republic for “teaching false notions about the Gods.”

60

Gyara, an island in the Ægean, used as a penal settlement.

61

The captain … the driver– literally, “to him who has knowledge” (of the given art).

62

Liberator – καρπιστής. The person appointed by law to carry out the ceremony of the manumission of slaves.

63

This chapter seems to me to contain a truth expressed so baldly and crudely as to appear a falsehood. The reader’s mind will be fixed upon the truth or falsehood according as he is or is not capable of reading Epictetus with understanding.

64

This earthen lamp was sold, according to Lucian, at the death of Epictetus for 3,000 drachmæ (about £120). —Adv. Indoct. 13.

65

Parodying a verse of Euripides on the stream of Dirce in Bœotia. The Marcian aqueduct brought water to Rome.