The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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p. 355
gave no thanks to God for it all, but rather made fastidious faces, and persisted in boldly asserting that they gained nothing whatever from the whole feast. This was the expedient of the Stoics; they were therefore mere braggarts, and stand to the Cynics in much the same relation as well-fed Benedictines and Augustines stand to Franciscans and Capucines. Now the more they neglected practice, the more they refined the theory. I shall here add a few proofs and supplementary details to the exposition of it given at the close of our first book.
If we search in the writings of the Stoics which remain to us, all of which are unsystematically composed, for the ultimate ground of that irrefragible equanimity which is unceasingly demanded of us, we find no other than the knowledge that the course of the world is entirely independent of our will, and consequently, that the evil which befalls us is inevitable.
If we have regulated our jlaims by a correct insight into this, then mourning, •ejoicing, fearing, and hoping are follies of which we are 10 longer capable. Further, especially in the commenaries of Arrian, it is surreptitiously assumed that all that s ovk e<f> rjuLv (i.e., does not depend upon us) is at once Iso ov Trpos r)fia<i (i.e., does not concern us).
Yet it emains true that all the good things of life are in the ower of chance, and therefore whenever it makes use of lis power to deprive us of them, we are unhappy if we ave placed our happiness in them.
From this unworthy ite we are, in the opinion of the Stoics, delivered by the ght use of reason, by virtue of which we regard all these lings, never as ours, but only as lent to us for an inifinite time ; only thus can we never really lose them. herefore Seneca says (Ep. 98) : " Si, quid humanarum rum varietas possit, cogitaverit, ante quam senserit," and iogenes Laertius (vii. I.
87) : " Iaov Be ea-Tt ro icar aperrjv v T© kclt e/jbireiptav roav (pvaet avfificuvovTav ^jjp" (Secun- "m virtutem vivere idem est, quod secundum experientiam <mm, quce secundum naturam accidunt, vivere.) The pas356 FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.
sage in Arrian's "Discourses of Epictetus," B. iii., c. 24, 84-89, is particularly in point here; and especially, as a proof of what I have said in this reference in § 16 oi the first volume, the passage : " Tovto 7a? eo-rt to cutloi T049 avOpoTTois rravTtov twu /caiccov to Ta? 7rpo\r}-^rei<; t<x* Koivas /xi] Sirvaadat eipapfio^eiv toi? em fiepow;," Ibid. iv. 1.
42. (Hax enim causa est hominibus omnium malorum quod anticipation's generates rebus singularibus accom modare non possunt.) Similarly the passage in "Marcu, Aurelius " (iv. 29) : " Et %evo<; tcoo-fiov 6 p,r\ yvcopi^a ra ev avrw oma, ov% rynov ^ei/09 Kai o fit] yva>pi%(o ra yvyv ofteva;" that is: "If he is a stranger to th universe who does not know what is in ic, no les is he a stranger who does not know how things g on in it.
Also Seneca's eleventh chapter, "Be Trai quilitate Animi" is a complete proof of this view. Tl opinion of the Stoics amounts on the whole to thi that if a man has watched for a while the juggling illusic of happiness and then uses his reason, he must recogni: both the rapid changes of the dice and the intrinsic wort) lessness of the counters, and therefore must hencefonl remain unmoved.
Taken generally the Stoical point view may be thus expressed : our suffering always arisl from the want of agreement between our wishes and t'l course of the world. Therefore one of these two mt^ be changed and adapted to the other. Since now tA course of things is not in our power (ovk €<f> f}fiiv), *l must direct our volitions and desires according to tt course of things: for the will alone is eft 77/uu.
T)i adaptation of volition to the course of the external wor , thus to the nature of things, is very often understcl under the ambiguous Kara <pvaiv ^rjv. See the " Discour 1 of Epictetus," ii. 17, 21, 22. Seneca also denotes t3 point of view (Ep. 119) when he says: "Nihil inter*, utrum non desideres, an habeas. Summa rei in utroque t eadem: non torqueberis. Also Cicero (Tusc iv. 26) f the words : " Solum habere velle, summa dementia t *
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