Encheiridion — Epictetus

Gbe Discourses of JEpfctetus ts Have you not abundance of noise, clamor, and other disagreeable things ? But I suppose that setting all these things off against the magnificence of the spectacle, you bear and endure. Well then and have you not received faculties by which you will be able to bear all that happens ? Have you not received greatness of soul ? Have you not received manliness ? Have you not received endurance ?

And why do I trouble myself about anything that can happen if I possess greatness of soul ? What shall distract my mind, or disturb me, or appear painful ? Shall I not use the power for the purposes for which I received it, and shall I grieve and lament over what happens ?

Come, then, do you also having observed these things look to the faculties which you have, and when you have looked at them, say : Bring now, O Zeus, any difficulty that thou pleasest, for I have means given to me by thee and powers for honoring myself through the things which happen.

You do not so ; but you sit still, trembling for fear that some things will happen, and weeping, and lamenting, and groaning for what does happen ; and then you blame the gods. For what is the consequence of such meanness of spirit but impiety? And yet God has not only given us these faculties, by which we shall be able to bear everything

16 Zbe Discourses of £pictetu0 that happens without being depressed or broken by it ; but, like a good king and a true father, He has given us these faculties free from hindrance, subject to no compulsion, unimpeded, and has put them entirely in our own power, without even having reserved to Himself any power of hindering or impeding.

You, who have received these powers free and as your own, use them not ; you do not even see what you have received, and from whom ; some of you being blinded to the giver, and not even acknowledging your benefactor, and others, through meanness of spirit, betaking yourselves to fault-finding and making charges against God.

Yet I will show to you that you have powers and means for greatness of soul and manliness ; but what powers you have for finding fault and making accusations, do you show me. how from the fact that we are akin to God a Man may Proceed to the Consequences.— I indeed think that the old man ought to be sitting here, not to contrive how you may have no mean thoughts nor mean and ignoble talk about yourselves, but to take care that there be not among us any young men of such a mind, that when they have recognized their kinship to God, and that we are fettered by

Gbe SMscourees of Bpictetus 17 these bonds, the body, I mean, and its possessions, and whatever else on account of them is necessary to us for the economy and commerce of life, they should intend to throw off these things as if they were burdens painful and intolerable, and to depart to their kinsmen. But this is the labor that your teacher and instructor ought to be employed upon, if he really were what he should be.

You should come to him and say : Epictetus, we can no longer endure being bound to this poor body, and feeding it, and giving it drink and rest, and cleaning it, and for the sake of the body complying with the wishes of these and of those. Are not these things indifferent and nothing to us ; and is not death no evil ? And are we not in a manner kinsmen of God, and did we not come from him ?

Allow us to depart to the place from which we came ; allow us to be released at last from these bonds by which we are bound and weighed down. Here there are robbers and thieves and courts of justice, and those who are named tyrants, and think tha.c they have some power over us by means of the body and its possessions. Permit us to show them that they have no power over any man.

And I on my part would say : Friends, wait for God : when he shall give the signal and release you from this service, then go to him ; but for the pres- 2