The Teaching of Epictetus

Two questions arise in connection with the Stoic cosmogony, which we must briefly discuss before proceeding farther. Are we justified in terming their view of the universe a materialistic one? and what was their doctrine of the destinies of the human soul? Now it is certainly the usual practice among writers on philosophy to reckon the Stoics as materialists, and it is unquestionably true that they denied the possibility of any existence which was not corporeal. Strong as they are on the supremacy of the human soul over the human body, sharp as is the line with which they divide these elements, yet the distinction is a moral, not a metaphysical one – each is an actual material substance. But we shall be seriously mistaken, nevertheless, if we place them in the same class with the scientific materialists of the present day. According to the latter, Thought is no necessary moment in the universe, but merely a product of certain accidental combinations of matter, a product which, when these are dissolved, must disappear from existence, without leaving a trace of its presence behind. Again, according to most modern opponents of the materialistic view, Thought has an independent and immortal being – it existed before matter was, and would continue to exist if all matter were annihilated. The Stoic view differed from each of these modern theories. It held Thought and Matter to be eternal, inseparable, and, indeed, strictly identical. Being in its primitive and purest form was fire, a corporeal substance, but one exhibiting consciousness, purpose, will.

As to the question of the Stoic view of the immortality of the human soul, it does not seem to me to deserve so much discussion as it has received from some commentators. It is obvious that the soul must, in the end, share the lot of all other existences, and be resolved into the Divine Being which was its source. The only question that can arise is whether this resolution takes place at the moment of death, or whether the sense of personal identity persists for a certain period beyond that event; and this question, which Epictetus appears to have been wise enough to leave an open one, is philosophically of very little importance. The soul is immortal, the individual perishes; this is the conclusion of Stoicism, and if we know this, there is little else it can much concern us to know.

The reader who desires to gain a thorough knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy, and of the social and political conditions in which it throve, will find what he seeks in two works to which I have to express my large indebtedness. One is Zeller’s Philosophie der Griechen (Epikureer, Stoiker u. Skeptiker),4 a monument of German research and erudition, in which vast masses of original material for the study of this most interesting, but neglected, epoch of the development of European intellect have been brought together, and interpreted with more than German lucidity and method. The other is Professor Mahaffy’s recent volume, Greek Life and Thought, a study of the Hellenistic period in various aspects, which the scholar will not read without profit, nor the lay-reader without pleasure.

We turn now to that department of the Stoic philosophy with which the reader of Epictetus is most concerned – its Ethics.

The ethical question resolves itself into a search for the supreme object of human endeavor, the Summum Bonum, the absolute and essential good. This, for the Stoic, embodied itself in the formula, “to live according to Nature.” But what is Nature? The will of God, as revealed in the heart and conscience of those who seek to know it, and interpreted through the observation in a reverent and faithful spirit of the facts of life.

Going into the subject more precisely we find certain criteria of moral truth established, προλήψεις, as they were called, that is, primitive, original conceptions, or, as I have rendered them in my translation, “natural conceptions,” dogmas by which all moral questions can be tried. If we inquire into the source of these προλήψεις, we shall find ourselves mistaken in our disposition to think that the Stoics regarded them as innate ideas. Innate they are not, for the Stoics held the soul at birth to be a tabula rasa, or blank page, which only experience could fill with character and meaning. But as Seneca says in his inquiry, “Quomodo ad nos prima boni honestique notitia pervenerit,”5 although Nature alone could not teach us these things, could not equip us with the knowledge of them before we entered upon life, yet the “seeds” of this knowledge she does give us; the soul of every man has implanted in it a certain aptness or, indeed, necessity to deduce certain universal truths from such observation and experience as are common to all mankind; and these truths, the προλήψεις, though not strictly innate, have thus an inevitableness and dogmatic force not possessed by those which one man may reach and another miss in the exercise of the ordinary faculties, by argument, study, and so forth. By these natural conceptions the existence and character of God, and the general decrees of the moral law, are considered to be affirmed. If we inquire further how the Stoic explained the fact that some of these so-called inevitable and universal conclusions are denied in all sincerity by men like Epicurus, who were neither bad nor mad, we strike upon the difficulty which confronts all systems that aim at setting up any absolute body of truth, expressible in human language, in place of that partial, progressive, and infinitely varied revelation of God’s mind and purpose to which the uncolored facts of the world’s religious history seem to testify.

The natural conceptions, as I have said, contain the primary doctrines of ethics. None of these are more important for the Stoic than that which declares essential Good to lie in the active, not the passive side of man; in the will, not in the flesh, nor in anything else which the will is unable to control. But a certain relative and conditional goodness may lie in matters which are yet of no moment to the spiritual man, to that part of him which seeks the essential good. And we must note that when Epictetus speaks of certain things as good or bad or indifferent, he is generally speaking of them in their relation to the spiritual man, and in the most absolute and unconditional sense. No evil can happen to the essential part of man, to that side of him which is related to the eternal and divine, without his own will. Hence the death of a beloved friend, or child, or wife, is no evil; and if it be no evil, we are forbidden to grieve for it, or, in the most usual phrase with Epictetus, we are not to be troubled or confounded by it, ταράσσεσθαι. But if this utterance should shock our natural feelings, it will do something which assuredly Epictetus never meant it to do. It is the soul of man which these events cannot injure, and it is the soul which is forbidden to think itself injured by them. Such love of the individual as may be embraced in the larger love of the All, of God – such grief for bereavements and calamities as does not overwhelm the inner man (ii. 19) in a “wave of mortal tumult,” and dull his vital sense of the great moral ends which he was born to pursue, is repeatedly and explicitly admitted by Epictetus. Thus, in iii. 2, we have him arguing against Epicurus that there are certain natural sympathies between man and his kind, and even convicting Epicurus himself of a secret belief in these sympathies. Epicurus had dissuaded his followers from marriage, and the bringing-up of children, on account of the grief and anxiety which such relations necessarily entail. Not so the Stoics – they pressed their disciples to enter into the ordinary earthly relationships of husband, or wife, or citizen, and this without pretending to have found any means of averting the natural consequences which Epicurus dreaded, although they did profess to have discovered something in man which made him equal to the endurance of them. Again, although the condition of ἀπάθεια, of inward peace, of freedom from passions, is again and again represented by Epictetus as the mark of the perfect sage, we are told that this ἀπάθεια is something quite different from “apathy” – a man is not to be emotionless “like a statue.” And a third passage confirming this view is to be found in Book I., ch. xi. (Schweighäuser), where the conduct of a man who was so afflicted by the illness of his little daughter that he ran away from the house, and would hear news of her only through messages, is condemned, not for the affection and anxiety it proved, but for its utter unreasonableness. “Would you,” asks Epictetus, “have her mother and her nurse and her pedagogue, who all love her too, also run away from her, and leave her to die in the hands of persons who neither love nor care for her at all?” There is a grief which is really a self-indulgence, a barren, absorbing, paralyzing grief, which, to the soul possessed by it, makes every other thing in heaven and earth seem strange and cold and trivial. From such grief alone Epictetus would deliver us, and I think he would have accepted Mr. Aubrey de Vere’s noble sonnet on Sorrow as a thoroughly fit poetic statement of Stoic doctrine on this subject: —

“Count each affliction, whether light or grave,God’s messenger sent down to thee; do thouWith courtesy receive him; rise and bow;And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, cravePermission first his heavenly feet to lave;Then lay before him all thou hast, allowNo cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,Or mar thy hospitality; no waveOf mortal tumult to obliterateThe soul’s marmoreal calmness: Grief should beLike joy, majestic, equable, sedate,Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free,Strong to consume small troubles; to commendGreat thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.”

But the grief that shall do this is a grief that must be felt. And Epictetus assuredly never meant to offer the Stoic philosophy as a mere stupefying anodyne. Make the man a Stoic, and something yet remains to do – to make the Stoic a man. One of these purposes was not more the concern of Epictetus than the other. And he pursued both of them with a strength, sincerity, and sanity of thought, with a power of nourishing the heroic fiber in humanity, which, to my mind, make him the very chief of Pagan moralists.

It is no purpose of mine to fill this preface with information which the reader can gain without doubt or difficulty from the author whom it introduces, and therefore I shall leave him to discover for himself what the positive ethical teaching of Epictetus was like. Nor is it, unhappily, possible to say much upon another subject on which Epictetus gives us little or no information – his own life and circumstances. Arrian wrote a biography of him, but it is now entirely lost, and the biographical details which have been collected from Simplicius, Suidas, Aulus Gellius, and others are very scanty. He was born at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, and became, how is unknown, a slave of Epaphroditus, a freedman and favorite of Nero, who is recorded to have treated him with great cruelty. One day, it is said, Epaphroditus began twisting his leg for amusement. Epictetus said, “If you go on you will break my leg.” Epaphroditus persisted, the leg was broken, and Epictetus, with unruffled serenity, only said, “Did I not tell you that you would break my leg?” This circumstance is adduced by Celsus in his famous controversy with Origen as an instance of Pagan fortitude equal to anything which Christian martyrology had to show;6 but it is probably a mere myth which grew up to account for the fact mentioned by Simplicius and Suidas that Epictetus was feeble in body and lame from an early age.

Epaphroditus was probably a very bad master, and as a favorite and intimate of Nero’s must have been a bad man; but we have to thank him for the fact that Epictetus, while yet a slave, was sent to attend the philosophic lectures of Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic of Rome, whom both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius mention with great respect. The system of philosophic training had been at this time long organized. There were masters of repute everywhere, who delivered their instruction in regular courses, received a fixed payment for the same, and under whom crowds of young men assembled from far and near to study science and ethics – to receive, in short, what corresponded to a university education in those days. The curious circumstance that a slave like Epictetus could participate in advantages of this kind is generally explained as the result of a fashionable whim which possessed Roman nobles at this time for having philosophers and men of culture among their slaves. Professor Mahaffy, in his Greek Life and Thought (p. 132), commenting on the summons of the two philosophers, Anaxarchus and Callisthenes, to console Alexander after his murder of Cleitus, observes, that it was probably usual to call in philosophers to minister professionally in cases of affliction. From this, to making a philosopher a regular adjunct to a large household, even as the baron of later times kept a fool, the step is not great. But Epaphroditus, one thinks, must have had frequent reason to rue the choice he made in Epictetus, if he expected his domestic philosopher to excuse his misdeeds as Anaxarchus did those of Alexander on the occasion above mentioned.

In the year 94 a. d. the emperor Domitian issued a decree expelling all philosophers from Rome – an easily explainable proceeding on his part if there were any large number of them who, in the words of Epictetus, were able “to look tyrants steadily in the face.” Epictetus must have by this time obtained his freedom and set up for himself as a professor of philosophy, for we find him, in consequence of this decree, betaking himself to Nicopolis, a city of Epirus. Here he lived and taught to a venerable age, and here he delivered the discourses which Arrian has reported for us. He lived with great simplicity, and is said to have had no servant or other inmate of his house until he hired a nurse for an infant which was about to be exposed, according to the practice of those days when it was desired to check the inconvenient growth of a family, and which Epictetus rescued and brought up. The date of his death is unknown.

And now, reader, I will take my leave of you with Arrian’s farewell salutation to Lucius Gellius, which, literally translated, is Be strong. If you need it, I know no teacher better able to make or keep you so than Epictetus. At any rate, to give him a fair chance of doing what it is in him to do for English-speaking men and women is something I have regarded as a sort of duty, a discharge of obligation for his infinite service to myself; which done to the utmost of my powers, the fewest forewords are the best.

T. W. R.

CLEANTHES’ HYMN TO ZEUS.7

Most glorious of the Immortals, many named, Almighty forever.Zeus, ruler of nature, that governest all things with law,Hail! for lawful it is that all mortals should address Thee.For we are Thy offspring, taking the image only of Thy voice,8 as many mortal things as live and move upon the earth.Therefore will I hymn Thee, and sing Thy might forever.For Thee doth all this universe that circles round the earth obey, moving whithersoever Thou leadest, and is gladly swayed by Thee.Such a minister hast Thou in Thine invincible hands; – the two-edged, blazing, imperishable thunderbolt.For under its stroke all Nature shuddereth, and by it Thou guidest aright the Universal Reason, that roams through all things, mingling itself with the greater and the lesser lights, till it have grown so great, and become supreme king over all.Nor is aught done on the earth without Thee, O God, nor in the divine sphere of the heavens, nor in the sea,Save the works that evil men do in their folly —Yea, but Thou knowest even to find a place for superfluous things, and to order that which is disorderly, and things not dear to men are dear to Thee.Thus dost Thou harmonize into One all good and evil things, that there should be one everlasting Reason of them all.And this the evil among mortal men avoid and heed not; wretched, ever desiring to possess the good, yet they nor see nor hear the universal Law of God, which obeying with all their heart, their life would be well.But they rush graceless each to his own aim,Some cherishing lust for fame, the nurse of evil strife,Some bent on monstrous gain,Some turned to folly and the sweet works of the flesh,Hastening, indeed, to bring the very contrary of these things to pass.But Thou, O Zeus, the All-giver, Dweller in the darkness of cloud, Lord of thunder, save Thou men from their unhappy folly,Which do Thou, O Father, scatter from their souls; and give them to discover the wisdom, in whose assurance Thou governest all things with justice;So that being honored, they may pay Thee honor,Hymning Thy works continually, as it beseems a mortal man.Since there can be no greater glory for men or Gods than this,Duly to praise forever the Universal Law.

NOTE: The references in the text refer throughout to the Notes at the end of the volume; each chapter having, where notes are necessary, its own chapter of Notes.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

the beginning of philosophy

1. Wouldst thou be good, then first believe that thou art evil.

2. The beginning of philosophy, at least with those who lay hold of it as they ought and enter by the door,9 is the consciousness of their own feebleness and incapacity in respect of necessary things.

3. For we come into the world having by nature no idea of a right-angled triangle, or a quarter-tone, or a semi-tone, but by a certain tradition of art we learn each of these things. And thus those who know them not, do not suppose that they know them. But good and evil, and nobleness and baseness, and the seemly and the unseemly, and happiness and misfortune, and what is our concern and what is not, and what ought to be done and what not – who hath come into the world without an implanted notion of these things? Thus we all use these terms, and endeavor to fit our natural conceptions to every several thing. He did well, rightly, not rightly, he failed, he succeeded, he is unrighteous, he is righteous– which of us spareth to use terms like these? Which of us will defer the use of them till he hath learned them, even as ignorant men do not use terms of geometry or music? But this is the reason of it: we come into the world already, as it were, taught by Nature some things in this kind, and setting out from these things we have added thereto our own conceit.10 For how, saith one, do I not know what is noble and what is base? Have I not the notion of it? Truly. And do I not apply it to things severally? You do apply it. Do I not, then, apply it rightly? But here lies the whole question, and here conceit entereth in. For setting out from things confessed by all, they go on by a false application to that which is disputed. For if, in addition to those things, they had gained also this power of application, what would then hinder them to be perfect? But now since you think that you apply rightly the natural conceptions to things severally, tell me, whence have you this assurance?

– “Because it seems so to me.”

But to another it seems otherwise – and he, too, doth he think his application right or not?

– “He doth think it.”

Can ye, then, both be rightly applying the conceptions in matters wherein your opinions contradict each other?

– “We cannot.”

Have you, then, aught better to show for your application, or aught above this, that it seemeth so to you? But what else doth a madman do than those things that to him seem right? And doth this rule suffice for him?

– “It doth not suffice.”

Come, then, to that which is above seeming. What is this?

4. Behold, the beginning of philosophy is the observation of how men contradict each other, and the search whence cometh this contradiction, and the censure and mistrust of bare opinion. And it is an inquiry into that which seems, whether it rightly seems; and the discovery of a certain rule, even as we have found a balance for weights, and a plumb line for straight and crooked. This is the beginning of philosophy. Are all things right to all to whom they seem so? But how can contradictory things be right?

– “Nay, then, not all things, but those that seem to us right.”

And why to you more than the Syrians, or to the Egyptians? Why more than to me or to any other man? Not at all more. Seeming, then, doth not for every man answer to Being; for neither in weights or measures doth the bare appearance content us, but for each case we have discovered some rule. And here, then, is there no rule above seeming? And how could it be that there were no evidence or discovery of things the most necessary for men? There is, then, a rule. And wherefore do we not seek it, and find it, and, having found it, henceforth use it without transgression, and not so much as stretch forth a finger without it? For this it is, I think, that when it is discovered cureth of their madness those that mismeasure all things by seeming alone; so that henceforth, setting out from things known and investigated, we may use an organized body of natural conceptions in all our several dealings.

5. What is the subject about which we are inquiring? Pleasure? Submit it to the rule, cast it into the scales. Now the Good must be a thing of such sort that we ought to trust in it? Truly. And we ought to have faith in it? We ought. And ought we to trust in anything which is unstable? Nay. And hath pleasure any stability? It hath not. Take it, then, and fling it out of the scales, and set it far away from the place of the Good. But if you are dim of sight, and one balance doth not suffice, then take another. Is it right to be elated in what is good? Yea. And is it right to be elated then in the presence of a pleasure? See to it that thou say not it is right; or I shall not hold thee worthy even of the balance.11 Thus are things judged and weighed, when the rules are held in readiness. And the aim of philosophy is this, to examine and establish the rules. And to use them when they are known is the task of a wise and good man.

CHAPTER II

on the natural conceptions

1. The natural conceptions are common to all men, and one cannot contradict another. For which of us but affirms that the Good is profitable, and that we should choose it, and in all circumstances follow and pursue it? Which of us but affirms that uprightness is honorable and becoming? Where, then, doth the contradiction arise? Concerning the application of the natural conceptions to things severally. When one saith, He did well, he is a worthy man, and another, Nay, but he did foolishly, then there is a contradiction among men, one with another. And there is the same contradiction among the Jews and the Syrians and the Egyptians and the Romans; not whether that which is righteous should be preferred to all things and in all cases pursued, but whether this be righteous or unrighteous, to eat the flesh of swine. And ye can discover the same contradiction in the matter of Achilles and Agamemnon. For call them before us: What sayest thou, Agamemnon, Should not that which is right and fair come to pass?

– “That should it.”

And what sayest thou, Achilles, Doth it not please thee that what is fair and right should be done?

– “Of all things this doth most please me.”

Then make application of your natural conceptions. Whence arose this dispute? The one saith: I am not bound to deliver up Chryseis to her father. And the other saith: Thou art bound. Assuredly one of them must ill apply the conception of duty. And again the one saith: Therefore if I should deliver up Chryseis, it is meet that I take his prize from one of you. And the other: Wouldst thou, then, take from me my beloved? He saith: Yea, even thine. And shall I alone, and I alone, have nothing? And thus ariseth the contradiction.

2. What is it, then, to be educated? It is to learn to apply the natural conceptions to each thing severally according to nature; and further, to discern that of things that exist some are in our own power12 and the rest are not in our own power. And things that are in our own power are the will, and all the works of the will. And things that are not in our own power are the body, and the parts of the body, and possessions and parents and brethren and children and country and, in a word, our associates. Where now shall we place the Good? To what objects shall we apply it? To those which are in our own power? Then is health not good, and whole limbs and life? and are not children and parents and country? And who will bear with you if you say this? Let us, then, transfer it to these things. Now, can one be happy who is injured, and has missed gaining what is good? He cannot. And can such a one bear himself towards his fellows as he ought? How is it possible that he should? For I have it of nature that I must seek my own profit. If it profits me to own a piece of land, it profits me to take it from my neighbor. If it profits me to have a garment, it profits me to steal it from the bath. And hence wars, seditions, tyrannies, conspiracies. And how shall I be able to maintain a right mind towards God? for if I suffer injury and misfortune, it cannot be but He neglects me. And what have I to do with Him if He cannot help me? And, again, what have I to do with Him if He is willing to let me continue in the evils in which I am? Henceforth I begin to hate Him. Why, then, do we build temples and set up statues to Zeus as we do to powers of evil, such as Fever?13 And how is He now the Saviour and the Raingiver and the Fruitgiver? And verily, all this follows, if we place anywhere in external things the nature and being of the Good.