Discourses

I didn’t write up the discourses of Epictetus the way someone might write up such things, and I didn’t publish them myself either. In fact, I don’t claim to have written them up at all.note

What I did was this: whatever I heard him say, I tried to write down, as far as possible in his very words, and keep as notes for myself for later, a record of his thinking and his frankness.

So naturally they’re the kind of thing one person would say to another on the spur of the moment, not the kind of thing someone would compose for others to read later.

Such as they are, they have somehow, I don’t know how, got out into the world, without my consent or knowledge.

But it matters little to me if I turn out not to be up to writing, and to Epictetus it doesn’t matter in the least if anyone despises his discourses. Even when he was speaking them, it was clear that he aimed at nothing except to move his listeners’ minds toward what is best.

If these discourses achieve just that, they will have, I think, what the discourses of philosophers ought to have.

If not, let those who read them know at least this: when he himself spoke them, his listener couldn’t help feeling exactly what he wanted him to feel.

If the discourses on their own don’t achieve this, perhaps I’m to blame, or perhaps it can’t be otherwise. Farewell.

Among all our other faculties you’ll find none that can study itself, and so none that can approve or disapprove of itself either.

How far does grammar’s power of study extend? As far as telling letters apart. And music’s? As far as telling melodies apart.

Does either of them study itself, then? Not at all. When you’re writing something to a friend, grammar will tell you which letters to write. But whether you should write to your friend or not, grammar won’t tell you. It’s the same with music and melodies: whether you should sing and play the lyre right now, or neither sing nor play, music won’t tell you.

What will tell you, then? The faculty that studies both itself and everything else. And what is that? The faculty of reason. It’s the only one we’ve been given that can understand both itself (what it is, what it can do, and how valuable a thing it is that has come to us) and all the others as well.

What else is it that says gold is beautiful? Gold itself doesn’t say so. Clearly it’s the faculty that makes use of impressions.note

What else judges music, grammar and the other faculties, assesses how they’re used and points out the right moment for using them? Nothing else.

So, as was only fitting, the gods have made only the best thing of all, the one that rules the rest, up to us: the right use of impressions. Everything else they have made not up to us. Was it because they didn’t want to?

I think that if they could have, they’d have entrusted those other things to us too. But they simply couldn’t.

Since we live on earth, bound to a body like this one and to companions like these, how could we not be hindered in these matters by things outside us?

But what does Zeus say?

“As it is, though, make no mistake: this body isn’t yours. It’s just clay, cleverly kneaded.”

“And since I couldn’t do that, I have given you a small portion of myself: this faculty of impulse and repulsion, of desire and aversion, in a word, the faculty that makes use of impressions. If you take care of it and place what is yours in it, you will never be blocked, never hindered; you won’t groan, you won’t blame, you won’t flatter anyone. Well then? Do these seem small things to you?” “Far from it!”

“Are you content with them, then?” “I pray to the gods I may be.”

But as it is, though we could take care of just one thing and attach ourselves to just one, we’d rather take care of many and be tied to many: to our body, our property, a brother, a friend, a child, a slave.

And since we’re tied to many things, we’re weighed down by them and dragged under.

That’s why, if the weather won’t let us sail, we sit there fretting and keep peering out: “What wind is blowing? The north wind.” What’s that to us? “When will the west wind blow?” When it pleases, my good man, or when it pleases Aeolus. God didn’t make you steward of the winds; he made Aeolus.note

What then? We must make the best of what is up to us, and take everything else as it comes by nature. “And how does it come by nature?” As God wills.

“So am I the only one to be beheaded now?” What, then? Did you want everyone beheaded, so you could have some consolation?

Won’t you stretch out your neck the way a certain Lateranus did in Rome, when Nero ordered him beheaded? He stretched out his neck and was struck, and when the blow proved too weak he flinched back a little, and then stretched it out again.note

Even before that, when Epaphroditus, my master and Nero’s freedman, came to him and questioned him about the plot, he said, “If I want anything, I’ll tell your master.”note

“What, then, should we have ready at hand in situations like these?” What else but this: what is mine and what isn’t mine, what I’m allowed and what I’m not?

I must die. Must I die groaning too? I must be put in chains. Wailing too? I must go into exile. Does anyone stop me from going laughing and cheerful, with my life flowing smoothly?

“I’ll throw you in prison.” My poor body, you mean. “I’ll have your head cut off.” Well, when did I ever tell you that mine was the only neck that couldn’t be cut?

These are the things that students of philosophy should rehearse, write down every day and train themselves in.

Thrasea used to say, “I’d rather be killed today than exiled tomorrow.”note

And what did Rufus say to him? “If you choose death as the heavier fate, what a foolish choice! If as the lighter, who gave you the choice? Won’t you practice being content with what you’ve been given?”note

“Good luck to it. But it’s the fifth hour” (the time when he used to exercise and then take a cold bath);note

“let’s go and exercise.” When he’d finished exercising, someone came and told him, “You’ve been condemned.” —“To exile,” he said, “or to death?” —“To exile.” —“And my property?” —“It hasn’t been confiscated.” —“Then let’s go to Aricia and have lunch.”note

—That’s what it means to have rehearsed what one should rehearse: to have trained desire and aversion so that nothing can thwart the one or trap the other. I must die.

If it’s now, I die now. If it’s a little later, I’ll have lunch now, since it’s time, and die later. How? As befits someone giving back what belongs to another.

To a rational creature only what is unreasonable is unbearable; what is reasonable can be borne.

Blows aren’t unbearable by nature. —How so? —Look: Spartans let themselves be whipped once they’ve learned that it’s reasonable.note

—And hanging yourself, isn’t that unbearable? —Well, when someone feels that it’s reasonable, he goes off and hangs himself.

In short, if we pay attention, we’ll find that nothing distresses this creature so much as what is unreasonable, and nothing attracts it so much as what is reasonable.

But what strikes one person as reasonable or unreasonable differs from what strikes another, just as good and bad differ from one person to another, and so do the advantageous and the disadvantageous.

That’s the main reason we need education: to learn to apply our preconception of the reasonable and the unreasonable to particular cases in harmony with nature.note

And in judging what is reasonable and unreasonable, we take into account not only the value of external things but also what fits each person’s own role.note

For one person it’s reasonable to hold the chamber pot, since all he looks at is this: if he doesn’t hold it, he’ll get a beating and no food, and if he does, he’ll suffer nothing harsh or painful.note

But to someone else, not only holding it himself seems unbearable, but even putting up with someone else holding it.

So if you ask me, “Should I hold the chamber pot or not?”, I’ll tell you that getting food has greater value than not getting it, and being flogged has greater disvalue than not being flogged. So if you measure your affairs by these, go and hold it.

“But it wouldn’t be worthy of me.” That’s for you to bring into the inquiry, not me. You’re the one who knows yourself, how much you’re worth to yourself and at what price you sell yourself. Different people sell themselves at different prices.

That’s why, when Florus was considering whether he should go down into Nero’s shows and perform some part himself, Agrippinus told him, “Go down.”note

And when Florus asked him, “Why aren’t you going down?”, he said, “Because I’m not even considering it.”

For once someone stoops to considering such things and starts totting up the values of externals, he’s close to those who have forgotten their own role.

What are you asking me? “Is death preferable, or life?” I say life.

“Pain or pleasure?” I say pleasure. “But if I don’t perform in the tragedy, I’ll have my head cut off.” Go and perform in the tragedy, then. But I won’t.

“Why?” Because you think of yourself as just one thread among all those in the tunic. What follows? That you should take care not to be unlike other people, just as a thread doesn’t want anything that sets it apart from the other threads.

But I want to be the purple, that small bright band that makes the rest look handsome and fine. So why do you tell me, “Be like the majority”? How will I still be the purple then?note

Helvidius Priscus saw this too, and having seen it, he acted on it. When Vespasian sent word to him not to attend the senate, he replied, “It’s in your power not to let me be a senator. But as long as I am one, I must attend.”note

“All right, attend,” he says, “but keep quiet.” “Don’t ask my opinion, and I’ll keep quiet.” “But I have to ask it.” “And I have to say what seems right.” “But if you say it, I’ll have you killed.”

“Well, when did I ever tell you I was immortal? You’ll do your part and I’ll do mine. Yours is to kill, mine to die without trembling; yours to banish, mine to leave without grieving.”

What good did Priscus do, then, being only one man? And what good does the purple do the cloak? What else but that it stands out in it as purple and is displayed there as a fine example to the rest?

Someone else, if Caesar had told him not to come to the senate at a moment like that, would have said, “Thank you for sparing me.”note

A man like that he wouldn’t even have kept from attending. He knew he would either sit there like a jug or, if he spoke, say what he knew Caesar wanted, and pile on still more.

In the same way there was an athlete who was in danger of dying unless his genitals were cut off. His brother, who was a philosopher, came to him and said, “Come on, brother, what are you going to do? Are we cutting off this part and still going on to the gymnasium?” He wouldn’t submit to it; he held firm and died.

Someone asked: How did he do this, as an athlete or as a philosopher? As a man, said Epictetus, but a man who had been proclaimed at Olympia and had competed there, who had spent his life in a place like that, not someone getting his rubdown at Bato’s.note

Someone else would even have had his head cut off, if he could have lived without it.

That’s what regard for one’s role is like, so strong is it in those who make a habit of bringing it, from within themselves, into their deliberations.

“Come on, Epictetus, shave off your beard.” If I’m a philosopher, I say, “I won’t shave.” “Then I’ll take off your head.” If that’s better for you, take it off.note

Someone asked: How, then, will each of us become aware of what fits his role? —How is it, he replied, that when a lion attacks, the bull alone becomes aware of its own strength and throws itself forward to defend the whole herd? Isn’t it clear that as soon as it has the strength, the awareness of it comes too?

So too with us: whoever has strength like that won’t be unaware of it.

But no one becomes a bull all at once, nor a noble human being. You have to train through the winter and prepare yourself, and not rush thoughtlessly at things that don’t concern you.

Just consider at what price you’re selling your choice. Man, if nothing else, don’t sell it cheap. The great and extraordinary may belong to others, to Socrates and people like him.

—Why, then, if we’re born for this, don’t all of us, or most, become like that? —Do all horses become fast? Do all dogs become good trackers?

What then? Because I’m not naturally gifted, am I to give up taking care of myself on that account?

Heaven forbid! Epictetus won’t be better than Socrates; but if he’s not worse, that’s enough for me.

I won’t be Milo either, and yet I don’t neglect my body; nor Croesus, and yet I don’t neglect my property. In short, we don’t give up taking care of anything else just because we despair of reaching the top.note

If a person could take this judgment to heart as it deserves, that we have all come from God in a special way and that God is father of both humans and gods, I think he’ll never think anything ignoble or mean about himself.

If Caesar adopts you, there’ll be no putting up with your airs. And if you know you’re a son of Zeus, won’t you be elated?

As it is, we aren’t. These two things are mingled in our making: the body, which we share with the animals, and reason and intelligence, which we share with the gods. And so most people incline toward the first kinship, the wretched and dead one, and only a few toward the divine and blessed one.

Now since everyone necessarily treats each thing according to the opinion he has of it, those few who think they were born for trustworthiness, self-respect and a secure use of impressions think nothing mean or ignoble about themselves, while the majority do the opposite.

“What am I? A miserable little man,” and, “My wretched bits of flesh.”

Wretched they are, to be sure; but you’ve also got something better than bits of flesh. Why do you let go of that and cling to these?

Because of this kinship, those of us who incline toward it become like wolves, faithless, treacherous and harmful; others like lions, wild, savage and untamed; and most of us like foxes, the misfits, as it were, of the animal world.

For what else is a slanderous, malicious man but a fox, or something even more wretched and base?

So watch out and take care you don’t turn out to be one of these misfits.

Someone making progress has learned from the philosophers that desire is for good things and aversion is toward bad things. He has also learned that the smooth flow of life and freedom from passion come to a person only if he doesn’t fail to get what he desires or fall into what he wants to avoid. So he has removed desire from himself entirely, or put it off for now, and uses aversion only toward things that lie within his choice.

For he knows that if he avoids any of the things outside his choice, he’ll run into one of them someday despite his aversion, and be unhappy.

Now if excellence promises to produce happiness, freedom from passion and a smooth flow of life, then progress toward excellence is certainly progress toward each of these too.

For whatever the perfection of anything ultimately leads to, progress is always an approach toward that.

How is it, then, that we agree that excellence is something like this, and yet look for progress, and show it off, in other things? What is the work of excellence?

A smooth flow of life. Who, then, is making progress? The man who has read lots of Chrysippus’s treatises?note

Is excellence really this, having understood Chrysippus? Because if it is, then admittedly progress is nothing but understanding a great deal of Chrysippus.

As it is, we agree that excellence produces one thing, and yet we declare that the approach to it, progress, produces something else.

“This fellow,” someone says, “can already read Chrysippus on his own.” Well done, by the gods, man, you’re making progress! Some progress!

“Why are you mocking him?” And why are you distracting him from awareness of his own faults? Won’t you show him the work of excellence, so he learns where to look for progress?

Look for it there, you poor wretch, where your work lies. And where does your work lie? In desire and aversion, so you won’t fail to get what you desire or fall into what you’d avoid; in impulse and repulsion, so you won’t go wrong; in assent and suspension of judgment, so you won’t be deceived.

The first fields come first and are the most necessary. But if you’re trembling and grieving while you try not to fall into what you’d avoid, how on earth are you making progress?note

So show me your progress here. It’s as if I said to an athlete, “Show me your shoulders,” and he said, “Look at my jumping weights.” That’s for you and your weights to see to! I want to see what the weights have produced.

“Take the treatise On Impulse and see how well I’ve read it.” Slave! That’s not what I’m after. I want to know how you exercise impulse and repulsion, how you desire and avoid, how you set about things, plan them and prepare for them: in harmony with nature, or out of harmony with it.

If in harmony, show me that and I’ll tell you you’re making progress. If out of harmony, go away, and don’t just expound books: write some like them yourself.

And what good will it do you? Don’t you know the whole book costs five denarii? So does the man who expounds it think he’s worth more than five denarii?

So never look for your work in one place and your progress in another.

Where, then, is progress? Suppose one of you has turned away from externals and turned to his own choice, to work on it and perfect it until it’s in harmony with nature: lofty, free, unhindered, unimpeded, trustworthy, self-respecting.

Suppose he has learned that whoever longs for or flees from what is not up to him can be neither trustworthy nor free, but is bound to be changed and tossed about along with those things, and bound to put himself under others, those who can provide or prevent them.

And suppose that from then on, when he gets up in the morning, he watches over and guards these things; bathes as a trustworthy man, eats as a self-respecting one; and likewise works out his principles in whatever situation comes his way, as the runner does with running and the voice trainer with training the voice.

This is the one who is truly making progress, and this is the one who hasn’t left home for nothing.

But if he’s intent on the skill that’s found in books, works at that and has left home for that, I tell him to go straight back home and not neglect his affairs there.

What he left home for is nothing. The thing is to practice removing from one’s life grief and lamentation, “Alas!” and “Poor me!”, misfortune and bad luck, and to learn

what death is, what exile is, what prison is, what hemlock is, so that one can say in prison, “My dear Crito, if this is what pleases the gods, so be it,” and not those other things: “Poor me, an old man! Was it for this that I kept my gray hairs?”note

Who says such things? Do you think I’m going to name someone obscure and lowly? Doesn’t Priam say them? Doesn’t Oedipus? Why, how many kings say them!

For what else are tragedies but the sufferings of people who have admired externals, put on display in verse of this kind?

If one had to be deceived in order to learn that nothing external and outside our choice matters to us, I for one would want that deception, which would let me live with my life flowing smoothly and free of disturbance. As for you, you’ll see for yourselves what you want.

What, then, does Chrysippus offer us? So that you may know, he says, that these things are not false from which the smooth flow of life comes and freedom from passion arises,

take my books, and you will learn how * and in harmony with nature are the things that make me free from passion. What great good fortune! What a great benefactor, the one who shows the way!

And yet all people have set up temples and altars to Triptolemusnote

because he gave us cultivated food. But to the one who discovered the truth, brought it to light and shared it with all people, not the truth about merely living but about living well, which of you has set up an altar for that, or a temple, or dedicated a statue, or worships God for it?

Because the gods gave us the vine or wheat, we offer sacrifice for that. And because they have produced such fruit in the human mind, through which they meant to show us the truth about happiness, shall we not give thanks to God for that?

If someone, he says, resists what is utterly obvious, it isn’t easy to find an argument that will change his mind.note

That isn’t because of his strength or the teacher’s weakness. When a man has been driven into absurdity and turns to stone, how can anyone still deal with him by argument?

There are two kinds of petrification: petrification of the intellect, and petrification of the sense of shame, when someone is set on neither assenting to what is evident nor abandoning contradictions.

Most of us are afraid of the body going dead, and would try anything to avoid something like that happening to us; but when the soul is going dead, we don’t care at all.

And, by Zeus, in the case of the soul itself, if someone is in such a state that he can follow nothing and understand nothing, we think he too is in a bad way. But if someone’s sense of shame and self-respect has gone dead, we even call that strength!

Do you grasp with certainty that you’re awake?

“No,” he says, “because I don’t when I have the impression in my dreams that I’m awake either.” So this impression doesn’t differ at all from that one? “Not at all.” Am I still talking to this man?

And what fire or what steel am I to apply to him to make him feel that he has gone dead? He feels it and pretends he doesn’t: he’s even worse than a corpse. One man doesn’t see the contradiction: he’s in a bad way.

Another sees it but isn’t moved and makes no progress: he’s in an even more wretched state.

His self-respect and sense of shame have been cut out of him, and his reason hasn’t been cut away but turned into a beast’s.

Am I to call this strength? Heaven forbid! Not unless I also call it strength in debauchees, the kind that lets them do and say whatever comes into their heads in public.

It’s easy to praise providence for everything that happens in the world, if you have two things in you: the ability to see how each thing that happens fits the whole, and a sense of gratitude.

Otherwise, one person won’t see the usefulness of what has happened, and another won’t be grateful for it even if he does see it.

If God had made colors but hadn’t made the power to see them, what use would they have been?

—None at all. —And conversely, if he had made the power, but hadn’t made things such as to fall within the power of sight, what use would that have been?

—None at all.

—And what if he had made both of these, but hadn’t made light? —Even then, no use. —Who is it, then, who fitted this to that and that to this? Who fitted the sword to the scabbard and the scabbard to the sword?

No one? And yet from the very construction of finished products we regularly conclude that they must be the work of some craftsman and weren’t put together at random.

So does each of these reveal its craftsman, while visible things, sight and light don’t?

And male and female, and each one’s eagerness for intercourse, and the capacity to use the organs made for it—don’t these reveal the craftsman either?

So much for these. But then there’s the way our mind is made: we don’t simply receive impressions from sensible things when we encounter them; we also pick something out, subtract, add and combine certain things by means of them, and, by Zeus, pass from some things to others that are related to them in some way. Isn’t even this enough to move some people and shame them out of leaving the craftsman out of account?

Or else let them explain to us what it is that produces each of these things, or how things so wonderful and so skillfully made could come about at random and by chance.

What then? Do these things happen in us alone? Many do happen in us alone, things the rational creature particularly needed; but you’ll find many that we share with irrational animals too.

Do they also understand what happens, then? Not at all. Using is one thing, understanding another. God needed them as creatures that use impressions, but us as creatures that understand that use.

That’s why for them it’s enough to eat, drink, rest, mate and do whatever else each of them does. But for us, to whom he gave the faculty of understanding as well,

these things are no longer enough. Unless we act properly, in an orderly way and in keeping with each one’s nature and constitution, we will no longer attain our own end.

For where constitutions differ, works and ends differ too.

So for a creature whose constitution is suited only to using things, any use at all is enough. But a creature whose constitution is also suited to understanding its use will never attain its end unless it adds acting properly.

What then? He makes each of those animals, one to be eaten, another to serve in farming, another to produce cheese, and others for other similar uses. For these, what need is there to understand impressions and be able to tell them apart?

But he brought the human being into the world as a spectator of himself and his works, and not only as a spectator, but as an interpreter of them.

That’s why it’s shameful for a human being to begin and end where the irrational animals do. Rather, he should begin there and end where nature ended with us.

And it ended in contemplation, understanding and a way of life in harmony with nature.

So take care you don’t die without ever having seen these things.

You travel to Olympia to see the work of Phidias, and each of you thinks it a misfortune to die without having seen it.note

But where there’s no need even to travel, where you’re already here, in the presence of his works, will you have no desire to look at them and understand them?

Won’t you realize, then, who you are, what you were born for, and what this spectacle you’ve been admitted to see is [for]?

—But there are unpleasant and hard things in life. —And there aren’t at Olympia? Don’t you get scorched by the heat? Aren’t you crammed together? Isn’t it hard to get a bath? Don’t you get soaked when it rains? Don’t you get your fill of noise and shouting and all the other hardships?

But I suppose you set all this against the splendor of the spectacle, and bear it and put up with it.

Come now, haven’t you received faculties with which to bear whatever happens? Haven’t you received greatness of soul? Haven’t you received courage?

Haven’t you received endurance? And if I’m great-souled, what do I care any longer about anything that may happen? What will unsettle or disturb me, or seem painful to me? Shall I not use my faculty for the purpose for which I received it, but grieve and groan over what happens?

“Yes, but my nose is running.” What have you got hands for, then, slave? Isn’t it so you can wipe your nose?

—But is it reasonable that there should be runny noses in the world?

—And how much better to wipe your nose than to complain! Or what do you think Heracles would have become if there hadn’t been a lion like that, and a hydra, a deer, a boar, and certain unjust and brutal men whom he drove out and cleared away?

And what would he have done if nothing like that had existed? Isn’t it obvious that he’d have wrapped himself up and slept? In the first place, then, he’d never have become Heracles, dozing his whole life away in such luxury and ease; and even if he had, what use would he have been?

What use would his arms have been, and the rest of his strength, his endurance and his nobility, if such circumstances and such material hadn’t shaken him up and trained him?

What then? Should he have created them for himself, and looked for somewhere to get a lion to bring into his own country, and a boar and a hydra?

That would have been folly and madness. But since they did exist and turned up, they were useful for revealing Heracles and training him.

Come, then, now that you’re aware of this, you too look at the faculties you have, and when you’ve looked, say: “Bring on whatever circumstance you like now, Zeus. I have the equipment you’ve given me, and the resources to make something fine of myself through whatever happens.”

No; instead you sit trembling that some things may happen, and wailing, grieving and groaning over the things that do. And then you blame the gods.

For what else follows from such meanness of spirit but impiety as well?

And yet God has not only given us these faculties, with which to bear everything that happens without being humbled or broken by it; but, as befitted a good king and a true father, he gave it to us free of hindrance, free of compulsion, unimpeded. He made it wholly up to us, without keeping even for himself any power to prevent or hinder it.

Though you have these things free and your own, you don’t use them, and you don’t realize what you’ve received and from whom.

Instead you sit grieving and groaning, some of you blind to the giver himself and not recognizing your benefactor, others turning, out of meanness of spirit, to complaints and accusations against God.

And yet I’ll show you that you have the resources and the equipment for greatness of soul and courage. You show me what resources you have for complaining and accusing.

The study of arguments with shifting premises, hypothetical arguments, arguments that reach their conclusion through questioning, and in short all arguments of that kind, is concerned with duty, though most people don’t realize it.note

For in every matter we’re looking for how the good and honorable man may find the right way through it and the right way to conduct himself in it.

So let them say either that the good man won’t stoop to question and answer, or that if he does, he won’t take care to avoid conducting himself carelessly and haphazardly in question and answer.

Or else, if they accept neither of these, they must admit that some study has to be made of these topics, which question and answer chiefly revolve around.

For what does reasoning undertake to do? To affirm what is true, reject what is false and suspend judgment on what is unclear.

So is it enough just to learn this? —It’s enough, he says. —Then is it also enough, for someone who doesn’t want to go wrong in handling money, to hear why you accept genuine drachmas and reject counterfeit ones?

—It isn’t enough. —What must he add to this, then? What else but the ability to test and tell apart genuine drachmas and counterfeit?

So in reasoning too, what has been said isn’t enough; one has to become able to test and tell apart the true, the false and the unclear?

—One has to. —And besides this, what does reasoning prescribe? Accept what follows properly from what you have granted.

Come, then, is it enough here too to know this? It isn’t. You must learn how one thing follows from others, and how sometimes one thing follows from one, sometimes from several together.

Isn’t it necessary, then, for anyone who means to conduct himself intelligently in argument to acquire this too, so as to give demonstrations himself, setting out each point, and follow those of others, and not be led astray by sophists as if they were demonstrating something?

So we’ve arrived at the study of conclusive arguments and logical forms, and training in them, and it has turned out to be necessary.

But there are cases where we have soundly granted the premises and such-and-such follows from them; and though it’s false, it follows nonetheless.

What, then, is my duty? To accept the falsehood?

And how could I? Should I say, “I wasn’t right to grant what was agreed”? But that isn’t allowed either. Or, “It doesn’t follow from what was granted”? That isn’t allowed either.

What should one do in these cases, then? Perhaps this: just as having borrowed isn’t enough to make you still in debt (the loan must also still stand and not have been paid off), so having granted the premises isn’t enough to oblige you to grant the conclusion; you must also still stand by your granting of them.

And if they do remain to the end as they were when they were granted, we are absolutely bound to stand by our granting of them and accept what follows from them *

for this conclusion no longer follows for us or on our account, since we have withdrawn our granting of the premises.

So one must also examine premises of this kind, and the kind of change and shift they undergo, through which, as they shift in the course of the questioning itself, or the answering, or the drawing of the conclusion, or at some other such stage, they give foolish people, who don’t see what follows, occasion to be disturbed. For what purpose?

So that in this area we don’t behave contrary to duty, or at random, or in confusion.

And the same goes for hypotheses and hypothetical arguments. For it’s sometimes necessary to request some hypothesis as a stepping-stone to the argument that follows.

Should we, then, accept every hypothesis that is put forward, or not every one? And if not every one, which?

[What is the inquiry about? About duty.] And once we’ve accepted it, must we stand by it for good, or sometimes abandon it, accepting what follows and not accepting what conflicts with it?

—Yes. —But someone says, “I’ll make you accept a possible hypothesis and then lead you to an impossibility.” Will the man of understanding refuse to engage with him, and run away from examination and discussion?

And who else is there who can use reason and is skilled at question and answer, and, by Zeus, proof against deception and sophistry?

Or will he engage, but not bother to avoid conducting himself carelessly and haphazardly in argument? Then how will he still be the kind of man we conceive him to be?

But without some such training and preparation, is he able to keep track of what follows?

Let them show that, and then all these theories are superfluous; they were absurd all along and inconsistent with our preconception of the good man.

Why are we still lazy, easygoing and sluggish, looking for excuses not to toil or stay up at night perfecting our reason?

—So if I go wrong in these things, have I killed my father? —Slave! Where was there a father here for you to kill? What have you done, then? You’ve committed the only fault there was to commit in this area.

Why, that’s exactly what I said myself to Rufus when he scolded me for not finding the one missing step in some syllogism. “It’s not as if I’d burned down the Capitol,” I said. And he said, “Slave, here the missing step is the Capitol.”note

Or are these the only faults, burning down the Capitol and killing your father? And using your impressions carelessly, pointlessly and haphazardly, failing to follow an argument, a demonstration or a sophism, and in short failing to see, in question and answer, what fits your position and what doesn’t—is none of that a fault?

In as many ways as equivalent statements can be interchanged, in just so many ways can the forms of arguments and enthymemes be varied in reasoning.

Take this form, for example: if you borrowed and haven’t repaid, you owe me the money; it is not the case that you borrowed and haven’t repaid; so you don’t owe me the money.

And no one is better suited to do this skillfully than the philosopher. For if the enthymeme is an incomplete syllogism, clearly someone trained in the complete syllogism would be no less capable with the incomplete one.

Why, then, don’t we train ourselves and one another in this way?

Because even now, when we aren’t training in these things and aren’t being distracted from caring for our character, by me at any rate, we still make no advance toward being good and honorable.

What should we expect, then, if we took on this occupation as well? Especially since it would not only be a distraction from more necessary things, but also no small occasion for conceit and vanity.

For the faculty of argument and persuasion is a great one, especially if it gets plenty of training and also acquires some polish from fine language.

For in general any faculty is dangerous when it comes to the uneducated and weak, since it can make them conceited and puffed up over it.

For by what device could you still persuade a young man who excels in these things that he shouldn’t become an appendage to them, but make them an appendage to himself?

Doesn’t he trample all these arguments underfoot and strut about among us, elated and puffed up, unable to bear it if anyone takes hold of him [at all] to remind him what he’s lacking and where he has gone astray?

What then? Wasn’t Plato a philosopher? —Well, wasn’t Hippocrates a doctor? Yet you see how well Hippocrates expresses himself. Does Hippocrates express himself like that insofar as he’s a doctor?note

Why, then, do you mix up things that just happen to coincide in the same people?

And if Plato was handsome and strong, should I too sit down and work at becoming handsome or strong, as if this were necessary for philosophy, because a certain philosopher happened to be both handsome and a philosopher?

Won’t you notice and distinguish what it is that makes people philosophers from what just happens to belong to them? Come now, if I were a philosopher, would you all have to be lame too? What then?note

Am I doing away with these faculties? Heaven forbid! No more than I would with the faculty of sight.

All the same, if you ask me what a human being’s good is, I can tell you nothing except that it is a certain kind of choice [of impressions].

If what the philosophers say about the kinship between God and humans is true, what else is left for people but Socrates’ way: never, when someone asks where you’re from, to say you’re an Athenian or a Corinthian, but a citizen of the universe?

For why do you say you’re an Athenian, and not just from that corner where your poor body was cast at birth?

Isn’t it obvious that you call yourself an Athenian or a Corinthian from something more authoritative, which takes in not only that corner itself but your whole household and, in short, the place your line of ancestors came down to you from, from somewhere there?

So then, anyone who has studied the government of the universe and learned that “the greatest, most authoritative and most comprehensive of all things is this community made up of humans and God, and that from it the seeds have fallen not only to my father and grandfather, but to all things that are born and grow on earth, and above all to rational beings,

since these alone are by nature fit to share in fellowship with God, being bound up with him through reason,”

why shouldn’t [such a person] call himself a citizen of the universe? Why not a son of God? And why should he fear anything that happens among human beings?

Is kinship with Caesar or some other powerful man in Rome enough to let people live in safety, beyond contempt and fearing nothing at all, while having God as our maker, father and guardian won’t free us from griefs and fears?

—And where am I to get food, someone says, if I’ve got nothing? —And how do slaves manage, how do runaways? What do they rely on when they leave their masters? Their fields? Their servants? Their silver plate? Nothing but themselves. And yet they don’t run short of food.

And is our philosopher, when he goes abroad, going to have to rely and lean on others, and not take care of himself, and be worse and more cowardly than the irrational beasts? Each of them is sufficient for itself and lacks neither its proper food nor a suitable way of life in accordance with nature.

For my part, I think your elder ought to be sitting here not trying to contrive how to stop you from thinking meanly of yourselves, or reasoning about yourselves in a mean and ignoble way,

but guarding against young men of another sort turning up: men who have recognized their kinship with the gods, and that we have these chains fastened on us—the body and its possessions and whatever we need on their account for managing and conducting our lives—and who want to throw them off as burdensome, troublesome and useless, and depart to their kin.

That’s the contest your teacher and educator, if you had a real one, ought to be fighting: you’d come and say, “Epictetus, we can’t stand it any longer, being tied to this poor body, feeding it, giving it drink and rest and cleaning it, and then, because of it, having to humor this person and that.

Aren’t these things indifferents, nothing to us? Isn’t death not bad? Aren’t we kin to God, and didn’t we come from there?

Let us go back where we came from; let us be freed at last from these chains that hang on us and weigh us down.

Here there are robbers and thieves and law courts and so-called tyrants, who think they have some power over us because of our poor bodies and their possessions. Let us show them that they have power over nothing.”

and I, for my part, should be telling them: “People, wait for God. When he gives the signal and releases you from this service, then go off to him. But for the present, put up with living in this place where he has stationed you.”

“Short, after all, is this time of your stay here, and easy for those who are disposed this way. What tyrant, what thief, what law court can still frighten people who have come to count the body and its possessions as nothing? Stay. Don’t leave without good reason.”

Something like this is what should pass between a teacher and the gifted among the young.

But as it is, what happens? The teacher is a corpse, and so are you. When you’ve eaten your fill today, you sit there weeping about tomorrow and where your food will come from.

Slave! If you get it, you’ll have it; if you don’t, you’ll leave. The door is open. Why grieve? Where is there any room left for tears? What occasion for flattery? Why should one person envy another? Why should anyone be awed by people who own a lot, or who are placed in power, especially if they’re strong and hot-tempered?

What will they do to us? What they can do, we won’t care about; what we care about, they can’t do. Who, then, will still rule over someone disposed like this?

How did Socrates stand toward these things? How else than as a man convinced that he was kin to the gods ought to stand?

“If you were to tell me now,” he says, “‘We acquit you on these terms: that you stop holding these discussions you’ve been holding up to now, and that you no longer pester our young men, or our old men either,’

I’ll answer that you’re ridiculous if you think that when your general posts me somewhere, I have to hold that post and guard it and choose to die ten thousand times rather than desert it, but when God has stationed us in some place and way of life, that is the post we should desert.”

That is a human being who is truly kin to the gods.

We, though, think of ourselves as bellies, as guts, as genitals—because we are afraid, because we crave. The people who can help us get these things, we flatter; and those same people, we dread.

Someone once asked me to write to Rome on his behalf. In most people’s eyes he had met with misfortune: once prominent and rich, he had since lost everything and was living here.

So I wrote on his behalf, in a humble tone. But when he read the letter, he handed it back to me and said, “I wanted some help from you, not pity. Nothing bad is happening to me.”

In the same way Rufus, to test me, used to say, “This and that is going to happen to you at your master’s hands.”note

And when I answered, “Such is human life,” he would say, “Then why should I go on petitioning him, when I can get the same things from you?”

Really, if a person has something from himself, it’s superfluous and pointless for him to get it from someone else.

So when I can get greatness of soul and nobility from myself, am I to get a farm from you, and money, or some office? Far from it! I won’t be so blind to my own possessions.

But when someone is cowardly and abject, what else can you do for him but write letters as if for a dead man: “Grant us the corpse of so-and-so and a pint of his blood”?

For in truth that sort of person is a corpse and a pint of blood, and nothing more. If he were anything more, he’d realize that no one is unfortunate because of someone else.

If we were as intensely devoted to our own work as the old men in Rome are to the things they’re keen on, perhaps we too would get something done.

I know a man older than I am, the one who is now in charge of the grain supply in Rome. When he passed through here on his way back from exile, what things he said to me! He ran down the life he’d led before, and promised that for the future, once he was back up there, he’d be keen on nothing but spending the rest of his life in quiet and tranquility. “For how much of it do I have left?”note

—And I told him, “You won’t. The moment you get a whiff of Rome, you’ll forget all this.” And I told him that if he were given even a way into the palace, he’d push his way in, delighted and thanking God.

—“Epictetus,” he said, “if you find me setting so much as one foot in the palace, think whatever you like of me.”

Well, what did he do? Before he reached Rome, letters from Caesar met him on the road; and the moment he got them, he forgot all that, and he has been piling up one thing on top of another ever since.

I’d like to stand beside him now and remind him of what he said as he passed through, and tell him, “How much better a prophet I am than you!”

What, then? Am I saying that the human creature isn’t made for action? Far from it! But why aren’t we people of action?

Take me, to start with. As soon as it’s day, I remind myself a little of what I need to read over with my students. Then I immediately say to myself, “What do I care how so-and-so reads? The first thing is for me to get some sleep.”

And yet how are their affairs like ours? If you look at what they do, you’ll see. What else do they do all day but vote, debate, and deliberate about a bit of grain, a little plot of land, some “progress” of that kind?

Is it the same, then, to take a petition from someone and read, “I beg you to allow me to export a little grain,” and to read, “I beg you to learn from Chrysippus what the government of the universe is, and what sort of place the rational creature has in it; and learn, too, who you are, and what your good and your bad consist in”?

Are these like those? Do they call for the same kind of effort? Is it equally shameful to neglect the one and the other?

What, then? Are we old men the only ones who slack off and nod? No—you young men do it far more.

Why, even we old men, when we see young people playing, get eager to join in the game ourselves. And much more, if I saw them wide awake and eager, would I be eager to join them in serious work myself.

When one of the officials came to see him, Epictetus asked him about his particular circumstances, and then asked whether he had children and a wife.

When the man said he did, he asked further: So how are you getting on with it? —Miserably, he said.

—And Epictetus: How so? People certainly don’t marry and have children in order to be miserable, but rather to be happy.

—But I, he said, am in such a miserable state over my little children that the other day, when my little daughter was sick and seemed to be in danger, I couldn’t bear even to be with her while she was ill. I ran off and stayed away until someone brought me word that she was all right.

—Well then, do you think you acted rightly? —I acted naturally, he said. —Well, convince me of that, he said—that it was natural—and I’ll convince you that everything that happens according to nature happens rightly.

—This is something, he said, that all of us fathers go through, or most of us, anyway. —I don’t dispute with you, he said, that it happens; the question between us is whether it’s right.

Because on that reasoning you’d have to say that tumors, too, come about for the good of the body, because they happen, and in short that going wrong is natural, because nearly all of us, or most of us anyway, go wrong.

So you show me how it’s natural. —I can’t, he said. You show me instead how it isn’t natural and doesn’t happen rightly.

—And Epictetus said: Well, if we were investigating white things and black, what standard would we call in to tell them apart? —Sight, he said. —And if it were hot things and cold, hard and soft, what then? —Touch. —

So since we’re in dispute about what is natural, and what happens rightly or not rightly, what standard would you have us adopt?

—I don’t know, he said. —Well, not knowing the standard for colors and smells, or for flavors, is perhaps no great loss. But not knowing the standard for what is good and bad, and what is natural and unnatural for a human being—does that seem a small loss to you, for the person who doesn’t know it?

—The very greatest. —Come on, tell me: everything that some people think fine and fitting—do they think it rightly? Can all the views that Jews and Syrians and Egyptians and Romans hold about food, as things stand, be right?

—How could they? —No, I think it’s absolutely necessary: if the Egyptians’ views are right, everyone else’s aren’t; if the Jews’ are sound, everyone else’s aren’t.

—Of course. —And where there’s not knowing, there’s also ignorance and a lack of education in essential things.

—He agreed. —So now that you’re aware of this, he said, from now on you’ll be keen on nothing else, and set your mind on nothing else, than learning the standard for what is natural and using it to judge each particular case.

For the present, this is as much help as I can give you toward what you want.

Does affection for one’s family seem to you to be natural and fine? —Of course. —Well then: is affection natural and fine, while being reasonable isn’t fine?

—Not at all. —Then does reasonableness conflict with affection? —I don’t think so. —Because if it did, then of two things in conflict, if one is natural, the other would have to be unnatural. Isn’t that so? —Yes, he said.

—Then whatever we find to be at once affectionate and reasonable, we can confidently declare to be right and fine?

—Granted, he said. —Well then: that leaving your sick child, and going off after you’ve left her, isn’t reasonable, I don’t think you’ll dispute. What remains for us to consider is whether it’s affectionate. —Let’s consider it, then. —

Since you felt affection for the child, then, did you do right to run away and leave her? And doesn’t her mother love the child? —She certainly does.

—Then should her mother have left her too, or not? —She shouldn’t. —What about the nurse? Does she love her? —She does, he said. —Then should she have left her too? —Not at all. —And the attendant? Doesn’t he love her?note

—He does. —Then should he, too, have gone off and left her, so that the child was left all alone and helpless because of the great affection of you, her parents, and of those around her—or died in the arms of people who neither loved nor cared for her? —Heaven forbid.

—And yet isn’t it unfair and inconsiderate, when someone thinks something fitting for himself because he is affectionate, not to allow the same to others who are just as affectionate?

—It would be absurd. —Come now: if you were sick, would you want your family—the others, and your children and your wife themselves—to be so affectionate that they left you alone and deserted?

—Not at all. —Would you pray to be so loved by your own people that, because of their excessive affection, you were always left alone when you were ill? Or, on those terms, would you rather pray to be loved by your enemies, if that were possible, so that they would be the ones to leave you alone? If so, the conclusion is that what you did was in no way affectionate.

What, then? Was there nothing that moved you and drove you to leave the child? How could that be? No, it was something like what moved a man in Rome to cover his head while the horse he was backing was running—and then, when it won against all expectation, he needed sponges to bring him round from his faint.

So what is this thing? The precise account perhaps doesn’t belong to the present occasion. But it’s enough to be convinced of this—if what the philosophers say is sound—that we mustn’t look for it somewhere outside, but that one and the same thing is in every case the cause of our doing something or not doing it, of saying something or not saying it, of being elated or downcast, of avoiding something or pursuing it—

the very thing that has now been the cause for both of us: for you, of coming to me and sitting here now listening; for me, of saying these things.

And what is that? Is it anything other than that it seemed right to us? —Nothing else. —And if things had appeared otherwise to us, what would we have done but what seemed right?

So for Achilles too, this was the cause of his grieving, not the death of Patroclus (someone else doesn’t go through all this when his comrade dies),

but that it seemed right to him. And for you, the cause of running away then was just this, that it seemed right to you; and again, if you stay, it will be because it seemed right to you. And now you’re going up to Rome because it seems right to you; and if you change your mind, you won’t go.

In short, neither death nor exile nor pain nor anything else of the sort is the cause of our doing or not doing anything, but our opinions and judgments.

Am I convincing you of this or not? —You are, he said. —Well, as the causes are in each case, so are the results.

So whenever we do something wrongly, from this day on we’ll blame nothing but the judgment we did it from, and we’ll try to root it out and cut it away even more than tumors and abscesses from the body.

And in the same way we’ll declare this same thing to be the cause of what we do rightly.

And we’ll no longer blame a servant or a neighbor or a wife or children as the causes of any evils for us, since we’re convinced that unless it seems to us that things are of a certain kind, we don’t act accordingly; and whether it seems so or not is in our control, not in the control of external things.

—Yes, he said. —From this very day, then, we’ll inspect and examine nothing else—what it’s like or what state it’s in—not our land, not our slaves, not our horses or dogs, but only our judgments. —I hope so, he said.

—So you see that you have to become a student—that creature everyone laughs at—if you really want to make an examination of your own judgments.

And that this isn’t the work of a single hour or day, you realize yourself.

About the gods, there are some who say that the divine doesn’t even exist; others that it exists, but is idle and indifferent and exercises providence over nothing;

a third group, that it both exists and exercises providence, but over great and heavenly things, and over nothing on earth; a fourth, that it does so over earthly and human things as well, but only in general, and not for each individual too;

and a fifth—among them Odysseus and Socrates—who say, “nor do I escape your notice / when I move.”note

Well before anything else, then, we have to examine each of these views and see whether it’s soundly stated or not. For if there are no gods, how can following the gods be our goal?

And if they exist but care for nothing, how will that be sound either?

And even if they exist and do care, but nothing comes from them to human beings—and, by Zeus, to me in particular—how is it sound even so?

Having examined all this, then, the good and noble person has submitted his mind to the one who governs the whole, just as good citizens submit to the law of their city.

And the person being educated should come to his education with this aim: “How can I follow the gods in everything, how can I be content with the divine government, and how can I become free?”

For the free person is the one for whom everything happens according to his choice, and whom no one can hinder.

What, then? Is freedom recklessness? Far from it. Madness and freedom don’t go together.

“But I want everything that seems good to me to come off, however it strikes me.”

You’re mad; you’re out of your mind. Don’t you know that freedom is something fine and worth having? But for me to want, any old way, [and] for whatever happens to strike me any old way to come about—that looks like being not only not fine, but the most shameful thing of all.

What do we do in the case of writing? Do I want to write the name “Dion” however I like? No: I’m taught to want to write it as it ought to be written. What about music? The same.note

And in general, wherever there is an art or a science? Otherwise knowing anything would be worthless, if it adapted itself to everyone’s wishes.

Is it here alone, then, in the greatest and most important thing of all, freedom, that I’m allowed to want at random? Not at all. Being educated means precisely this: learning to want each thing just as it happens. And how does it happen? As the one who ordains it has ordained it.

And he has ordained that there be summer and winter, abundance and scarcity, excellence and vice, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole; and to each of us he has given a body and the parts of a body, and possessions, and companions.

It is with this ordering in mind, then, that we must come to be educated—not to change the conditions (that isn’t given to us, and it wouldn’t be better), but so that, with the things around us being as they are and as their nature is, we may keep our own mind in harmony with what happens.

Why, can we escape other people? How could we? Well then, can we change them while we live with them? And who grants us that?

What’s left, then? What means can be found for dealing with them? One by which they will do what seems right to them, while we are in accord with nature all the same.

But you can’t stand any hardship and you’re never satisfied. If you’re alone, you call it desolation; if you’re with people, you call them schemers and robbers; and you find fault with your own parents and children and brothers and neighbors.

When you’re alone, you ought to call it quiet and freedom, and think of yourself as like the gods; and when you’re with many, not call it a mob or an uproar or a nuisance, but a feast and a festival, and so accept everything contentedly. What, then, is the punishment for those who don’t accept it?

To be just as they are. Is someone discontented with being alone? Let him be in desolation. Is someone discontented with his parents? Let him be a bad son, and grieve. Is he discontented with his children?

Let him be a bad father. “Throw him in prison!” What prison? The one he’s in now. He’s there against his will; and wherever someone is against his will, that is a prison for him. In the same way Socrates wasn’t in prison: he was there willingly.

“So I have to have a lame leg!” Slave! Are you going to accuse the universe over one miserable little leg? Won’t you make a present of it to the whole? Won’t you give it up? Won’t you gladly yield it to the one who gave it?

Will you be indignant and discontented with what Zeus has ordained—what he determined and ordained with the Fates, who were present and spinning the thread of your birth?

Don’t you know how small a part you are compared with the whole? In body, that is; for in reason you are no worse than the gods, and no smaller. The greatness of reason isn’t judged by length or height, but by judgments.

Won’t you, then, place your good there, in that respect in which you are equal to the gods?

“Poor me, to have a father like this, and a mother like this!” Well? Were you allowed to step forward beforehand, make your choice, and say, “Let so-and-so and so-and-so come together at such-and-such an hour, so that I can be born”?

You weren’t. Your parents had to exist first, and then you had to be born. From what sort of people?

From the sort they were. What, then? Since they’re like that, have you been given no means of dealing with it? If you didn’t know what you had the faculty of sight for, you’d be unfortunate and wretched if you shut your eyes when colors were put before you. But since you have greatness of soul and nobility to meet each of these things, and don’t know it, aren’t you even more unfortunate and wretched? Things suited to the faculty you have are put before you;

and you turn it away precisely when you ought to keep it open and seeing.

Why not thank the gods instead, that they’ve set you above all the things they didn’t even make up to you, and made you accountable only for what is up to you? For your parents they’ve left you unaccountable;

for your brothers, they’ve left you unaccountable; for your body, unaccountable; for possessions, death, life.

What, then, have they made you accountable for? For the only thing that is up to you: the proper use of impressions.

So why do you drag onto yourself the things you’re not accountable for? That is making trouble for yourself.

When someone asked how it’s possible to eat in a way that pleases the gods, he said: If it’s possible to eat justly, graciously, fairly, with self-control and decorum, isn’t it also possible to eat in a way that pleases the gods?

And when you’ve asked for hot water and your slave doesn’t respond, or responds but brings it lukewarm, or isn’t even to be found in the house—then not to get angry or burst with rage, isn’t that pleasing to the gods?

—But how can anyone put up with people like that? —Slave! Won’t you put up with your own brother, who has Zeus for his forefather, who has been born, like a son, of the same seed as you and of the same descent from above,

but if you’ve been stationed in some such superior position, will you immediately set yourself up as a tyrant? Won’t you remember what you are and whom you rule—that they are kin, brothers by nature, the offspring of Zeus?

—But I have a deed of sale for them, and they don’t have one for me. —Do you see where you’re looking? At the earth, at the pit, at these wretched laws of the dead; and at the laws of the gods you don’t look?

When someone asked how a person could be convinced that everything he does is watched over by God, he said: Don’t you think that all things are united?

—I do, he said. —Well, don’t you think that earthly things are in sympathy with heavenly ones?

—I do, he said. —Otherwise, how is it that so regularly, as if at God’s command, when he tells the plants to flower, they flower; when to sprout, they sprout; when to bear fruit, they bear it; when to ripen, they ripen; and when, again, to drop their fruit and shed their leaves, and to draw in on themselves and stay still and rest, they stay still and rest?

And how is it that, as the moon waxes and wanes and the sun approaches and withdraws, we see such variation in earthly things, and such change to their opposites?

Are plants and our bodies so bound up with the whole and in sympathy with it, and our souls not much more so?

And are our souls so bound up with God and joined to him, being parts and fragments of him, and yet God doesn’t perceive their every movement as his own and of one nature with him?

You are able to reflect on the divine government and on each divine thing, and at the same time on human affairs; you can be moved by countless things at once, in your senses and in your thought, assenting to some, rejecting others or suspending judgment on them;

you keep in your soul so many imprints from so many and such varied things, and, moved by them, you arrive at ideas corresponding to the things that first made the imprint; you retain art after art, and memories of countless things;

and God isn’t able to oversee all things, to be present with all, and to receive some communication from all?

The sun is able to light so great a part of the universe, leaving unlit only as little as can be covered by the shadow the earth casts. And the one who made the sun itself and drives it round—a small part of himself compared with the whole—he is unable to perceive all things?

But I, he says, can’t keep track of all these things at once. —And does anyone tell you that you have power equal to Zeus?

Even so, he has nonetheless set beside each person, as a guardian, his own guardian spirit, and entrusted him to its keeping—a guardian that never sleeps and can’t be deceived.

To what other guardian, better or more attentive, could he have entrusted each of us? So when you shut your doors and make it dark inside, remember never to say that you are alone;

for you aren’t. God is inside, and your guardian spirit is too. And what need do they have of light to see what you’re doing?

To this God you too ought to swear an oath, as soldiers do to Caesar. They, when they take their pay, swear to put Caesar’s safety before everything; and you, who have been thought worthy of so many and such great gifts, won’t swear—or, having sworn, won’t keep to it?

And what will you swear? Never to disobey, never to accuse, never to find fault with anything he has given, never to do or suffer unwillingly anything that must be.

Is this oath like that one? There they swear to honor no one above Caesar; here, to honor themselves above all.

When someone consulted him about how he could persuade his brother to stop being angry with him,

Philosophy, he said, doesn’t promise to secure for a person anything external. Otherwise it would be taking on something outside its own proper material. As wood is the carpenter’s material, and bronze the sculptor’s, so the material of the art of living is each person’s own life.

—What about my brother’s life, then? —That, again, belongs to his own art; in relation to yours, it’s one of the external things, like land, like health, like a good reputation. Philosophy promises none of these.

“In every circumstance I will keep the ruling center in accord with nature.” —Whose? —“That of the one in whom I exist.”note

—Then how can I stop him from being angry with me? —“Bring him to me and I’ll talk to him; but to you I have nothing to say about his anger.”

When the man consulting him said, This is what I’m asking: how I can be in accord with nature even if he isn’t reconciled with me,

Nothing great, he said, comes into being all at once—not even a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me now, “I want a fig,” I’ll answer, “That takes time.” Let it flower first, then put out its fruit, then ripen.

So the fruit of a fig tree isn’t brought to completion all at once, in a single hour—and you want to acquire the fruit of a human mind in so short a time and so easily? Don’t expect it, not even if I tell you so.

Don’t be surprised that for the other animals what the body needs has been provided ready-made—not only food and drink but a bed as well—and that they don’t need shoes or bedding or clothes, while we need all these things in addition.

Creatures made not for their own sake but for service—it wouldn’t have paid to make them in need of other things.

Just think what it would be like for us to have to worry not only about ourselves but about our sheep and donkeys too: how they’d get dressed, how they’d put on their shoes, how they’d eat, how they’d drink.

No—just as soldiers are ready for their general, shod, clothed, and armed, and it would be dreadful if the commander had to go round putting shoes and clothes on his thousand men, so nature too has made the creatures born for service ready and equipped, needing no further care.

That’s how one small child with a stick can drive a flock of sheep.

But as it is, instead of giving thanks for this—that we don’t have to give them the same care as ourselves—we complain to God about our own lot.

And yet, by Zeus and the gods, any single one of the things that exist would be enough to make you perceive providence—if you have any self-respect and gratitude, that is.

And don’t start on the great things now. Just this: that milk comes from grass, and cheese from milk, and wool from skin—who is it that made these things, or thought them up? “No one,” he says. What colossal obtuseness and shamelessness!

Come on, let’s leave aside nature’s main works and look at its side-works.

Is there anything more useless than the hair on a chin? Well then, hasn’t nature made use even of this in the most fitting way it could? Hasn’t it used it to distinguish male and female?

Doesn’t the nature of each of us shout from far off, “I’m a man. Approach me this way, talk to me this way, don’t look for anything else. Here are the signs”?

And again, with women, just as nature blended something softer into their voices, so it took away the hair. Oh no—the creature should have been left undistinguished, and each of us should have had to announce, “I’m a man”!

How fine the sign is, how becoming and dignified! How much finer than a cock’s comb, how much more magnificent than a lion’s mane!

That’s why we ought to preserve the signs God has given; we ought not to throw them away, or, so far as it lies with us, confuse the sexes that have been distinguished.

Are these the only works of providence in us? And what words are enough to praise them as they deserve, or to set them before our eyes? If we had any sense, what else should we be doing, in public and in private, than hymning the divine, blessing it, and recounting its favors?

Shouldn’t we, as we dig and plow and eat, sing this hymn to God: “Great is God, who has given us these tools to work the earth with”?

“Great is God, who has given us hands, and a throat to swallow with, and a belly, and the power to grow without noticing it, and to breathe while we sleep.”

For each of these we ought to sing hymns, and to sing the greatest and most divine hymn of all for this: that he gave us the faculty of understanding these things and of using them methodically.

What, then? Since most of you have gone blind, shouldn’t there be someone to fill this role and sing the hymn to God on behalf of everyone?

For what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I’d do what nightingales do; if a swan, what swans do.

But as it is, I’m a rational being: I must sing hymns to God. This is my work. I do it, and I won’t desert this post as long as it’s granted me; and I call on you to join me in this same song.

Since reason is what articulates and works out everything else, and it mustn’t itself be left unarticulated, by what is it to be articulated?

Clearly, either by itself or by something else. And that something is either reason, or else it will be something superior to reason—which is impossible.

If it’s reason, who in turn will articulate that? If it articulates itself, then so can the first. If we need yet another, this will go on without end and never stop.

“Yes, but treatment is more urgent,” and so on. So you want to hear about that? Then listen.

But if you say to me, “I don’t know whether your argument is true or false,” and if I say something ambiguous and you tell me, “Make a distinction,” I won’t put up with you any longer; I’ll say to you,

“But treatment is more urgent.” That, I think, is why they put logic first—just as, before measuring grain, we first examine the measure.

If we don’t first determine what a bushel is, and don’t first determine what a scale is, how will we be able to measure or weigh anything?

So here, if we haven’t learned and mastered the standard for everything else, the means by which everything else is learned, will we be able to master or learn anything else?

How could we? “Yes, but a bushel measure is just wood, and bears no fruit.”

But it measures grain. “Logic, too, bears no fruit.” We’ll see about that. But even if one were to grant it, this is enough: logic distinguishes and examines everything else—measures and weighs it, you might say.

Who says this? Only Chrysippus and Zeno and Cleanthes?note

Doesn’t Antisthenes say it? And who was it who wrote, “The beginning of education is the examination of names”? Doesn’t Socrates say it? And of whom does Xenophon write that he began with the examination of names, of what each one means?note

Is this the great and wonderful thing, then—to understand Chrysippus, or explain him? And who says that? Then what is the wonderful thing?

To understand the will of nature. Well then: do you follow it on your own? Then what more do you need? For if it’s true that everyone who does wrong does so unwillingly, and you have learned the truth, you must already be acting rightly.

But, by Zeus, I don’t follow the will of nature. Who, then, explains it? Chrysippus, they say.

I go and look into what this interpreter of nature says. I start not to understand what he means; I look for someone to interpret him. “Look, examine what this means, just as if it were in Latin.”

So what call is there here for the interpreter to put on airs? Chrysippus himself wouldn’t be entitled to, if all he did was interpret the will of nature without following it himself. How much less the man who interprets him?

We don’t need Chrysippus for his own sake, but so that we can follow nature. Nor do we need the diviner for his own sake, but because we think that through him we’ll learn the future and the signs the gods give; nor the entrails for their own sake,

but because signs are given through them; nor do we revere the raven or the crow, but God, who gives signs through them.

So I come to this interpreter and diviner and say, “Inspect the entrails for me: what signs are given me?”

He takes them, spreads them open, and interprets: “Man, you have a choice that is by nature unhindered and unconstrained. That is written here in the entrails.

I’ll show it to you first in the area of assent. Can anyone prevent you from assenting to what is true? No one. Can anyone force you to accept what is false?

No one. You see that in this area your faculty of choice is unhindered, unconstrained, unimpeded?

Come on, is it any different in the area of desire and impulse? What can overcome an impulse but another impulse? What can overcome desire and aversion but another desire and aversion?”

“But if someone,” he says, “threatens me with death, he compels me.” “It isn’t the threat that compels you, but the fact that it seems better to you to do something of the sort than to die.

So again it was your own judgment that compelled you: that is, choice compelled choice.

For if God had made that part of himself which he detached and gave to us capable of being hindered or compelled, whether by himself or by anyone else, he would no longer be God, nor would he be caring for us as he should.”

“This is what I find in the victims,” he says. “These are the signs given you. If you want, you’re free. If you want, you’ll find fault with no one and accuse no one, and everything will happen according to your mind and God’s at once.”

It’s for this prophecy that I go to this diviner and philosopher—not admiring him for his interpretation, but admiring what he interprets.

If what the philosophers say is true—that all people have one and the same starting point: that for assent it’s the feeling that something is so, for dissent the feeling that it isn’t, and, by Zeus, for suspending judgment the feeling that it’s unclear,

and likewise for an impulse toward something it’s the feeling that it’s to my advantage; and that it’s impossible to judge one thing advantageous and desire another, or to judge one thing our duty and feel an impulse toward another—then why are we still angry with most people?

—They’re thieves, he says, and muggers. —What does it mean, that they’re thieves and muggers? They’re mistaken about what is good and bad. So should we be angry with them, or pity them?

Show them their mistake, and you’ll see how they give up their wrongdoing. But if they don’t see it, they have nothing higher to go by than what seems right to them.

“So shouldn’t this robber and this adulterer be put to death?”

—Not at all; put it this way instead: “Shouldn’t this man who is mistaken and deceived about the most important things, and blinded—not in the sight that tells white from black, but in the mind that tells good from bad—be put to death?”

Put it like that, and you’ll realize how inhuman what you’re saying is, and that it’s just like saying, “Shouldn’t this blind man be put to death, then, and the deaf one?”

For if the greatest harm is the loss of the greatest things, and the greatest thing in each of us is a choice of the right kind, and someone is deprived of this, why are you still angry with him?

Man, if you must be affected contrary to nature by other people’s evils, pity him rather than hate him. Drop this habit of taking offense and hating.

Don’t those phrases that most of the use: “So these cursed and loathsome !” All right; but how did you suddenly get so wise

that you’re harsh with others? So why do we get angry? Because we prize the material things they take from us. Don’t prize your clothes, and you’re not angry with the thief; don’t prize your wife’s beauty, and you’re not angry with the adulterer.

Understand that a thief and an adulterer have no place among the things that are yours, but only among what belongs to others and is not up to you. If you let these things go and count them as nothing, who are you still angry with? But as long as you prize them, be angry with yourself rather than with them. Look at it this way:

you have fine clothes, your neighbor doesn’t; you have a window, and you want to air them. He doesn’t know what a human being’s good is, but imagines it’s having fine clothes—the very thing you imagine too.

So is he not to come and take them? Look: when you show a cake to greedy people and gulp it all down yourself, you expect them not to snatch it? Don’t provoke them; don’t have a window; don’t air your clothes.

The other day I myself had an iron lamp beside my household gods. I heard a noise at the window and ran down, and found the lamp had been taken. I reasoned that the man who took it had felt an understandable impulse. So what? “Tomorrow,” I said, “you’ll find an earthenware one.”

A person loses only what he has. “I’ve lost my cloak.” Yes, because you had a cloak. “I have a headache.” You don’t have a pain in your horns, do you? So why are you upset? Losses and pains apply only to the things we also possess.

“But the tyrant will chain me.” Chain what? Your leg. “But he’ll cut it off.” Cut what off? Your neck. What, then, won’t he chain or cut off? Your choice. That’s why the ancients gave the command “Know yourself.”

What, then? By the gods, we ought to practice on small things, and, starting from them, move on to greater ones.

“I have a headache.” Don’t say “Oh dear!” “I have an earache.” Don’t say “Oh dear!” I’m not saying you’re not allowed to groan—just don’t groan inside. And if your slave is slow bringing the bandage, don’t yell and writhe and say, “Everyone hates me.” Who wouldn’t hate someone like that?

From now on, relying on these judgments, walk about upright and free—not relying on the size of your body, like an athlete. You shouldn’t be unbeatable the way a donkey is.

Who, then, is unbeatable? The person whom nothing outside his choice can shake. Then I go through each circumstance in turn and study him as I would an athlete. “He has forced his way through the first round. What about the second? What if there’s scorching heat?

What about at Olympia?” And here it’s the same. If you put a bit of money in his way, he’ll despise it. What if it’s a pretty girl? What if it’s in the dark? What if it’s a bit of fame? What about abuse? What about praise? What about death?

He can overcome them all. What if there’s scorching heat—I mean, what if he’s drunk? What if he’s depressed? What about when he’s asleep? That’s the man I call the invincible athlete.

When someone has some advantage, or thinks he has when he hasn’t, it’s absolutely inevitable, if he’s uneducated, that he gets puffed up by it.

Straight away the tyrant says, “I am the most powerful man in the world.” And what can you give me? Can you get me a desire that’s unhindered? Where would you get it? Do you have one yourself? An aversion that never falls into what it avoids? Do you have one? An impulse that never goes wrong?

And where do you have any share in that? Come now: on a ship, do you trust yourself, or the person who knows? And in a chariot, whom do you trust but the person who knows?

And in the other arts? The same. So what can you do? “Everyone attends to me.” Well, I attend to my plate too: I wash it and wipe it, and I drive in a peg for my oil flask. What of it? Are these things better than me? No, but they’re of some use to me, so I attend to them. What else? Don’t I attend to my donkey?

Don’t I wash its feet? Don’t I groom it? Don’t you know that every man attends to himself, and to you just as he does to his donkey? Who attends to you as a human being? Show me.

Who wants to be like you? Who becomes your devoted follower, the way people did with Socrates? “But I can have your head cut off.” Well said! I’d forgotten that I have to attend to you as I would to a fever or cholera, and set up an altar to you, just as in Rome there’s an altar to Fever.note

So what is it that upsets and terrifies most people? The tyrant and his bodyguards? How could it be? Heaven forbid! What is free by nature can’t be disturbed or hindered by anything except itself.

No, it’s his judgments that disturb him. When the tyrant says to someone, “I’ll chain your leg,” the man who sets a high value on his leg says, “No, have mercy!” The man who sets a high value on his own choice says, “If that looks more profitable to you, chain it.” “Don’t you care?”

“I don’t care.” “I’ll show you who’s master.” “You? How? Zeus has set me free. Or do you think he was going to let his own son be made a slave? You’re master of my corpse. Take it.”

“So when you come to me, you aren’t looking after me?” “No, I’m looking after myself. And if you want me to say I look after you too, I say it the way I look after my cooking pot.”

This isn’t selfishness. That’s how the living creature is made: it does everything for its own sake. Even the sun does everything for its own sake, and so, for that matter, does Zeus himself.

But when he wants to be the Rain-Giver and the Fruit-Giver and the “father of men and gods,” you see that he can’t achieve these works or earn these titles unless he’s useful to the common good.note

And in general he has made the nature of the rational creature such that it can attain none of its own goods unless it contributes something useful to the common good.

So doing everything for one’s own sake no longer turns out to be unsociable.

What else do you expect? That someone should stand apart from himself and his own interest? Then how would there still be one and the same starting point for all creatures, their attachment to themselves?note

So what follows? When there are strange judgments underneath about things outside our choice, as though they were good and bad, it’s absolutely inevitable that people will court tyrants.

And if only it were the tyrants alone, and not their chamberlains too! How does a man suddenly become wise when Caesar puts him in charge of the chamber pot? How is it that we immediately say, “Felicio talked such sense to me”?

I’d like to see him thrown off the dung heap, so that you’ll think him a fool again.

Epaphroditus had a shoemaker whom he sold because he was useless. Then by some stroke of fortune the man was bought by one of Caesar’s household and became Caesar’s shoemaker. You should have seen how Epaphroditus honored him:

“How is my good Felicio doing?

I’m so fond of you.” Then if any of us asked, “What’s the master doing?” we were told, “He’s consulting with Felicio about something.”

Hadn’t he sold him as useless? So who suddenly made him wise?

That’s what it means to value something other than what lies in our choice.

“He’s been granted a tribuneship.” Everyone who meets him congratulates him: one kisses his eyes, another his neck, his slaves his hands. He goes home and finds the lamps being lit. He goes up to the Capitol and offers a sacrifice.

Now who has ever offered a sacrifice for having desired well? For having had an impulse in accordance with nature? We thank the gods for whatever we place our good in.

Today someone was talking to me about a priesthood of Augustus. I say to him, “Man, drop the whole thing. You’ll spend a great deal for nothing.”note

—“But those who draw up contracts of sale,” he says, “will write down my name.” —“So will you be standing there to tell the people reading them, ‘That’s me they’ve written’?

And even if you could be there for all of them now, what will you do when you die?” —“My name will remain.” —“Write it on a stone and it’ll remain. But come now, outside Nicopolis who’ll remember you?”note

—“But I’ll wear a gold crown.” —“If you’ve set your heart on a crown, get one made of roses and put that on. It’ll look more elegant.”

Every art and every faculty exists to study certain things that are its chief objects.

Now when the art is itself of the same kind as the things it studies, it necessarily studies itself as well. But when it’s of a different kind, it can’t study itself.

Shoemaking, for instance, deals with leather, but is itself entirely distinct from the material of leather. That’s why it doesn’t study itself.

Grammar, again, deals with speech written in letters. Is grammar itself speech written in letters? Not at all. That’s why it can’t study itself. Now reason: what on earth has nature given it to us for?

For the right use of impressions. And what is reason itself? A system made up of impressions of a certain kind. So by nature it also studies itself.

Again, understanding: what has it come to study? Things good, bad, and neither. What, then, is understanding itself? A good. And what is folly? A bad. So you see that it necessarily studies both itself and its opposite?

That’s why the greatest and first task of the philosopher is to test impressions and tell them apart, and to accept none that hasn’t been tested.

Look at money, where we think something matters to us. See how we’ve even invented an art for it, and how many means the assayer uses to test a coin—sight, touch, smell, and finally hearing:

he throws the denarius down and listens to the ring, and he isn’t satisfied with a single ring; he pays such close attention that he becomes a musician.

In the same way, where we think it makes a difference whether we go wrong or not, we bring great attention to telling apart the things that can lead us astray.

But when it comes to our poor ruling center, we yawn and doze and accept every impression that comes along—because the loss doesn’t show.

So when you want to know how slack you are about good and bad things and how eager about indifferents, consider how you feel about being blinded and how you feel about being deceived, and you’ll realize that you’re far from feeling as you should about good and bad.

“But it takes a great deal of preparation, and a great deal of work and study.” Well, what of it? Do you expect to acquire the greatest of arts on a small outlay?

And yet the chief doctrine of the philosophers is very short. If you want to know, read Zeno’s works and you’ll see.

What’s so long about saying that the goal is to follow the gods, and that the essence of the good is the right use of impressions?

Ask, “What, then, is God, and what is an impression? And what is the nature of the individual, and what is the nature of the whole?”

Now it’s long. And if Epicurus comes along and says that the good must lie in the flesh, it gets long again, and we have to hear what the chief thing in us is, what our substance and essence are. Since it isn’t likely that a snail’s good lies in its shell, is it likely that a human being’s does?

And you yourself, Epicurus, what do you have that’s more authoritative? What is it in you that deliberates, that examines each thing, [that] judges about the flesh itself that it is the chief thing?

And why do you light your lamp and toil for our sake and write such enormous books? So that we won’t be ignorant of the truth? Who are we? What are we to you? And so the argument gets long.

When someone has the right footing in life, he doesn’t gape at things outside himself.

“Man, what do you want to happen to you? For my part, I’m content if my desire and aversion accord with nature, if I use impulse and repulsion as I was born to, and purpose and design and assent. So why do you walk around in front of us as if you’d swallowed a skewer?”

“I’d like the people who meet me to admire me, and to follow me around shouting, ‘What a great philosopher!’”

Who are these people you want to be admired by? Aren’t they the ones you usually say are mad? Well then? You want to be admired by madmen?

Preconceptions are common to all people, and one preconception doesn’t conflict with another. Which of us doesn’t assume that the good is beneficial and worth choosing, and that we must seek and pursue it in every circumstance? Which of us doesn’t assume that the just is fine and fitting?

When, then, does the conflict arise? In applying the preconceptions to particular cases,

when one person says, “He did well, he’s brave,” and another says, “No, he’s out of his mind.” That’s where people’s conflict with one another comes from.

This is the conflict among Jews and Syrians and Egyptians and Romans: not over whether holiness should be put before everything and pursued in every case, but over whether this particular thing, eating pork, is holy or unholy.

You’ll find this conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles too. Call them up before us. What do you say, Agamemnon? Shouldn’t what is proper and right be done?

“Of course it should.” And what do you say, Achilles? Doesn’t it please you that what is right should be done? “Nothing pleases me more.” Now apply your preconceptions. That’s where the conflict begins.

One says, “I shouldn’t have to give Chryseis back to her father.” The other says, “Oh yes, you should.” One of them is certainly misapplying the preconception of what is proper.note

Again, one says, “Very well: if I have to give back Chryseis, I must take the prize of one of you,” and the other, “So you’d take the woman I love?” “Yes, yours,” he says. “Am I to be the only one—” “And am I to be the only one who has nothing?” That’s how conflict arises.

What, then, is education? Learning to apply our natural preconceptions to particular cases in accordance with nature, and further, to distinguish

that of the things that exist, some are up to us and others are not up to us. Up to us are choice and all the acts of choice; not up to us are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country—in short, all those we share our lives with.

Where, then, shall we place the good? To what kind of thing shall we apply it? To what is up to us?

—Then health and soundness of body and life aren’t good, and neither are children or parents or country? —And who’s going to put up with you?

So let’s move it back here again. Is it possible, then, for someone who is harmed and misses out on good things to be happy? —It isn’t. —And to keep up the right * conduct toward those he shares his life with? How is that possible?

For I’m made to pursue my own advantage. If it’s to my advantage to have a farm, it’s to my advantage to take it from my neighbor too; if it’s to my advantage to have a cloak, it’s to my advantage to steal it from the baths too. From this come wars, civil strife, tyrannies, conspiracies.

And how will I still be able to do my duty toward Zeus? If I’m harmed and unlucky, he doesn’t care about me. Then it’s “What have I got to do with him, if he can’t help me?” and again, “What have I got to do with him, if he wants me to be in the state I’m in?” From then on I start to hate him.

Why, then, do we build temples, why set up statues, as if to evil spirits, as if Zeus were a Fever? And how is he still the Savior, and how the Rain-Giver, and how the Fruit-Giver? And yet if we place the essence of the good somewhere here, all this follows.

What, then, are we to do? —This is the inquiry of someone who truly does philosophy and is in labor with it. Right now I can’t see what is good and what is bad. Aren’t I mad?

Yes. But if I place the good somewhere here, in what lies in our choice, everyone will laugh at me. Some gray-haired old man wearing lots of gold rings will come along, shake his head, and say, “Listen to me, child. One should do philosophy, yes, but one should also have a brain. This is nonsense. You learn syllogisms from the philosophers,

but what you ought to do, you know better than the philosophers.” Man, then why are you scolding me, if I know?

What am I to say to this slave?

If I keep quiet, he’ll burst. So I have to say, “Forgive me as you’d forgive lovers. I’m not myself. I’m mad.”

Even Epicurus understands that we’re social by nature; but once he has placed our good in the shell, he can’t say anything else.

For again he holds firmly to this: that nothing detached from the essence of the good should be admired or accepted. And he’s right to hold to it.

Why, then, are we so suspicious, as though we had no natural affection for our offspring? Why do you advise the wise man against raising children? Why are you afraid that because of them he’ll fall into grief?

Does he fall into grief over the mouse that’s raised in his house? What does he care if some tiny mouse cries its heart out indoors?

But he knows that once a baby is born, it’s no longer up to us not to love it and worry about it.

That’s why he says that a man of sense won’t take part in politics either: he knows what a politician has to do. Because of course, if you’re going to live as though among flies, what’s to stop you?

And yet, knowing all this, he dares to say, “Let’s not raise children.” But a sheep doesn’t abandon its offspring, nor does a wolf—and a human being does?

What do you want? For us to be as stupid as sheep? Even they don’t abandon their young. As savage as wolves? Even they don’t abandon theirs.

Come now, who listens to you when he sees his little child fallen on the ground and crying?

For my part, I think that even if your mother and father had foreseen that you were going to say these things, they still wouldn’t have abandoned you.note

It’s difficulties that show what men are. So from now on, when a difficulty befalls you, remember that God, like a trainer, has matched you with a rough young opponent. —

What for? someone says. —So that you can become an Olympic victor; and that doesn’t happen without sweat. It seems to me that no one has had a better difficulty than yours, if you’re willing to use it as an athlete uses a young sparring partner.

And now we’re sending you to Rome as a scout. But nobody sends a coward as a scout, the kind who, if he merely hears a noise or sees a shadow anywhere, comes running back in a panic, saying the enemy is already here.

So now if you too come back and tell us, “Things in Rome are frightening: death is terrible, exile is terrible, abuse is terrible, poverty is terrible; run, gentlemen, the enemy is here!”,

we’ll say to you, “Go away, and make your prophecies to yourself. Our only mistake was sending a scout like you.”

Diogenes, who was sent out as a scout before you, brought us back a different report. He says that death is not bad, since it isn’t shameful either; he says that a bad reputation is the noise of madmen.note

And what things this scout has said about pain, about pleasure, about poverty! He says that being naked is better than any purple-bordered robe; he says that sleeping on the bare ground is the softest bed.

And as proof of each claim he offers his own confidence, his tranquility, his freedom, and then his body too, gleaming and compact.

“No enemy,” he says, “is anywhere near. Everything is full of peace.” How so, Diogenes? “Look,” he says. “Have I been hit? Have I been wounded? Have I run away from anyone?”

That’s what a scout should be. But you come back and tell us one thing after another. Won’t you go back and take a more careful look, without the cowardice?

What am I to do, then? —What do you do when you get off a ship? You don’t take the rudder, do you, or the oars? What do you take, then? Your own things: your oil flask, your bag. So now too, if you remember what’s yours, you’ll never lay claim to what belongs to others.

He tells you, “Take off your broad stripe.” There: a narrow stripe. “Take that off too.” There: just a cloak. “Take off the cloak.”note

“There: I’m naked.” “But you make me envious.” Then take my whole body. When I can throw my body to a man, am I still afraid of him?

But he won’t leave me as his heir. Well? Had I forgotten that none of these things was mine? Then in what sense do we call them ours? As we call the bed in an inn ours. So if the innkeeper dies and leaves you the beds, fine; but if he leaves them to someone else, that person will have them and you’ll look for another bed;

and if you don’t find one, you’ll sleep on the ground—only do it with confidence, snoring away, and remembering that tragedies find their place among the rich and among kings and tyrants, and no poor man fills a part in a tragedy except as a member of the chorus.

Kings start out in good fortune: “Hang the palace with garlands!” Then, around the third or fourth act: “Alas, Cithaeron, why did you receive me?” Slave, where are your crowns, where’s your diadem?note

Are your bodyguards no help to you now?

So when you approach one of those people, remember this: you’re approaching a tragic figure—not the actor, but Oedipus himself.

“But so-and-so is blessed: he goes about with a large crowd around him.” Well, I too take my place among the crowd and go about with many people.

If these things are true, and we aren’t being silly or play-acting when we say that a human being’s good lies in choice, and his bad too, and that everything else is nothing to us, why are we still upset, why still afraid? Over the things we care about, no one has any power;

and the things others have power over, we don’t care about. What trouble do we have left?

—But give me instructions. —What instructions am I to give you? Hasn’t Zeus given you instructions? Hasn’t he given you what is yours free from hindrance and obstruction, and what isn’t yours subject to hindrance and obstruction?

So what order did you bring with you when you came from there, what edict? Guard what is yours by every means; don’t reach for what belongs to others. Your trustworthiness is yours *. Who, then, can take these away from you? Who but you will prevent you from using them? And how would you? When you care about what isn’t yours, you’ve lost what is yours.

With advice and orders like these from Zeus, what further ones do you want from me? Am I greater than he is, more trustworthy?

If you keep these, do you need any others besides? Hasn’t he given you these orders? Bring out your preconceptions, bring out the proofs of the philosophers, bring out what you’ve often heard, bring out what you’ve said yourself, bring out what you’ve read, bring out what you’ve practiced.

Up to what point, then, is it right to keep these and not break up the game?

As long as it’s going on pleasantly. At the Saturnalia, someone has been chosen king by lot, since it was decided to play this game. He gives orders: “You, drink; you, mix the wine; you, sing; you, go; you, come.” I obey, so that the game won’t break up on my account.note

“But you: believe that you’re in a bad way.” I don’t believe it. And who will force me to believe it?

Again, we’ve agreed to play the story of Agamemnon and Achilles. The one assigned to be Agamemnon says to me, “Go to Achilles and drag Briseis away.” I go.

“Come.” I come. For as we behave in hypothetical arguments, so we should behave in life too. “Let it be night.” So be it. “Well then, is it day?” No, because I’ve accepted the hypothesis that it’s night.

“Let it be that you believe it’s night.” So be it. “Now actually believe that it’s night.” That doesn’t follow from the hypothesis.

So it is here too. “Let it be that you’re unfortunate.” So be it. “Are you unlucky, then?” Yes. “Well then, are you wretched?” Yes. “Now actually believe that you’re in a bad way.” That doesn’t follow from the hypothesis. And there’s another who forbids me.

How far, then, should we obey such orders? As far as it’s profitable—that is, as long as I preserve what is fitting and consistent.

Now some people are sour and have delicate stomachs, and they say, “I can’t dine with this fellow and put up with him telling us every day how he fought in Mysia: ‘I’ve told you, brother, how I climbed the hill; now I start to be besieged again…’”

Another says, “I’d rather have dinner and listen to him prattle on as much as he likes.”

You too: weigh up these valuations. Only don’t do anything feeling burdened or crushed, or believing that you’re in a bad way. No one forces you to that.

Has someone made smoke in the room? If it’s moderate, I’ll stay; if there’s too much, I go out. Remember this and hold fast to it: the door is open.

But “Don’t live in Nicopolis.” I don’t live there. “Nor in Athens.” Not in Athens either. “Nor in Rome.” Not in Rome either. “Live on Gyara.” I live there. But living on Gyara seems to me like a lot of smoke.note

I withdraw to where no one will prevent me from living. That dwelling is open to everyone.

And past the last little tunic, that is, the body, no one can do anything to me.

That’s why Demetrius said to Nero, “You threaten me with death, but nature threatens you.”note

But if I admire my body, I’ve handed myself over as a slave; if my bit of property, as a slave.

For I immediately give away against myself what I can be caught by. As with the snake that draws in its head, I say, “Strike that part of him he’s guarding.” And you too should know that whatever you want to guard, that’s where your master will attack you.

If you remember these things, whom will you still flatter or fear?

But I want to sit where the senators sit. —Do you see that you’re putting yourself in a tight spot, that you’re squeezing yourself?

—How else will I get a good view in the amphitheater? —Man, don’t watch, and you won’t be squeezed. Why make trouble for yourself? Or wait a little, and when the show is over, sit down in the senators’ seats and sun yourself.

In general, remember this: we squeeze ourselves, we put ourselves in tight spots—that is, our judgments squeeze us and hem us in.

After all, what is being insulted, in itself? Stand beside a stone and insult it. What will you achieve? So if someone listens like a stone, what good is it to the one insulting him? But if the insulter has the weakness of the insulted as a stepping-stone, then he gets somewhere.

“Tear his clothes off him.” Why do you say “him”? Take the cloak and tear it off.

“I’ve insulted you.” Much good may it do you. Socrates practiced these things, and that’s why he always kept one and the same face. But we would rather train and practice anything than how to be unhindered and free.

“The philosophers say paradoxical things.” Aren’t there paradoxes in the other arts? And what’s more paradoxical than piercing someone’s eye so that he can see? If someone said that to a person with no knowledge of medicine, wouldn’t he laugh at the speaker?note

So what’s surprising if in philosophy too many truths seem paradoxical to those who have no experience of it?

When someone was reading hypothetical arguments, he said: This too is a law of hypotheticals, that we must accept what follows from the hypothesis. But far more important is this law of life: to do what follows from nature.

For if in every matter and circumstance we want to keep to what is in accordance with nature, clearly we must aim in everything neither to let what follows escape us nor to accept what conflicts with it.

So the philosophers first train us in theory, where it’s easier, and only then lead us on to harder things. In theory there’s nothing pulling us back from following what we’re taught, but in the business of life there are many distractions. So the man who says he wants to start with life is ridiculous;

it isn’t easy to begin with the harder things.

And this is the defense one should offer parents who are angry that their children are doing philosophy: “Very well, father, I go wrong and don’t know what’s fitting and proper for me. If it can’t be learned or taught, why do you blame me? If it can be taught, teach me; and if you can’t, let me learn it from those who claim to know.

What do you think? That I fall into what’s bad and miss what’s good on purpose? Heaven forbid! So what is the cause of my going wrong?

Ignorance. Don’t you want me to get rid of my ignorance? Whom has anger ever taught to steer a ship, or to play music? So do you think I’ll learn how to live because of your anger?”

Only someone who has come to philosophy with that aim may say these things.

But if someone reads this material and goes to the philosophers only because he wants to show off at a dinner party that he knows hypothetical arguments, what is he doing but trying to get the senator reclining next to him to admire him?

For that’s where the really great resources are, and the riches here look like toys there. That’s why it’s hard there to master one’s impressions, where the things that knock you off balance are so great.

I know someone who wept, clasping Epaphroditus’ knees and saying he was in misery, since he had nothing left but a million and a half.

And what did Epaphroditus do? Laugh at him, as you’re doing? No: he said in amazement, “Poor man, how did you keep silent, how did you bear it?”

When he had thrown the student reading the hypothetical arguments into confusion, and the man who had set him the reading laughed, he said: You’re laughing at yourself. You didn’t train the young man first or find out whether he could follow these things; you’re just using him as a reader.

Well then, he said, do we entrust praise and blame to a mind that can’t follow the analysis of a conjunctive proposition, do we entrust it with judging what is done well or badly? If it speaks ill of someone, does that person take notice, and if it praises someone, is he elated—when it can’t find what follows in such small matters?

This, then, is the beginning of philosophy: awareness of the state of one’s own ruling center. For once someone recognizes that it’s weak, he’ll no longer want to use it for great things.

As it is, some people who can’t swallow a morsel buy a whole treatise and set about eating it. So they throw up or get indigestion; then come cramps and fluxes and fevers. They should have considered first whether they could manage it.

In theory it’s easy to refute someone who doesn’t know; but in matters of life no one submits himself to refutation, and we hate the one who has refuted us.

But Socrates used to say that we should not live an unexamined life.

Impressions come to us in four ways: either things are so and appear so; or they aren’t, and don’t appear to be; or they are, and don’t appear to be; or they aren’t, and appear to be.

So in all these cases, hitting the mark is the job of the educated person. Whatever is troubling us, that’s what we must bring help to. If Pyrrhonian and Academic sophisms are what trouble us, let’s bring help against them;note

if it’s the persuasiveness of things, which makes some things appear good when they aren’t, let’s look for help there; if it’s habit that troubles us, we must try to find help against that.

So what help can be found against habit?

The opposite habit. You hear ordinary people saying, “Poor man, he’s dead. His father is gone, his mother; he was cut off, and before his time, too, and in a foreign land.”

Listen to the arguments on the other side, tear yourself away from these voices, set the opposite habit against the habit. Against sophistical arguments we need logic and practice and exercise in it; against the persuasiveness of things we need to keep our preconceptions clear, polished, and ready to hand.

When death appears to be bad, have ready the thought that it’s our duty to avoid bad things, and that death is inevitable. For what am I to do?

Where am I to escape it? Suppose I’m Sarpedon, son of Zeus, so that I could nobly say, “I’m going out, and I want either to win the prize for valor myself or to give someone else the chance to win it; if I can’t succeed at something myself, I won’t begrudge someone else doing something noble.” Suppose that’s beyond us: doesn’t this other thing at least fall within our reach?note

And where can I escape death? Show me the country, show me the people I can go to whom it doesn’t visit, show me a magic charm. If I don’t have one, what do you want me to do?

I can’t escape death. Am I not to escape the fear of it, then, but die mourning and trembling? For this is how passion is born: wanting something and not having it happen.

So if I can change external things to suit my own wish, I change them; if not, I want to blind whoever stands in my way.

For it’s human nature not to put up with being deprived of the good, not to put up with falling into the bad.

And then finally, when I can neither change the circumstances nor blind the one in my way, I sit and groan and abuse whomever I can, Zeus and the other gods. For if they don’t care about me, what have I got to do with them?

“Yes, but you’ll be impious.” So what will I get that’s worse than what I have now? In sum, remember this: unless piety and self-interest coincide, piety can’t be preserved in anyone. Don’t these things seem urgent?

Let the Pyrrhonist and the Academic come and oppose me. For my part, I have no leisure for these things, and I can’t argue the case for common experience.

Even if I had a little lawsuit about a plot of land, I’d call in someone else to plead for me. So what am I content with on this subject?

How perception comes about—whether through the whole or from a part—perhaps I don’t know how to explain; both views trouble me. But that you and I are not the same person, I know very precisely.

How do I know? When I want to swallow something, I never carry the morsel there, but here; when I want to take bread, I’ve never taken the broom, but always go for the bread as if at a target.

And you who abolish the senses, do you yourselves do anything different? Which of you, wanting to go to the baths, has gone to the mill instead?

—Well then? Shouldn’t we, as far as we can, hold on to these things too—preserving common experience and fortifying ourselves against the arguments against it?

—And who says otherwise? But that’s for someone who can, who has the leisure. The one who is trembling and upset and whose heart is breaking inside should spend his time on something else.

What is the cause of our assenting to something? That it appears to be so.

So it’s impossible to assent to what appears not to be so. Why? Because this is the nature of the mind: to nod yes to what is true, to be dissatisfied with what is false, and to suspend judgment about what is unclear.

What’s the proof of this? “Be convinced, if you can, that it’s night right now.” Impossible. “Stop being convinced that it’s day.” Impossible. “Be convinced, or stop being convinced, that the number of stars is even.” Impossible.

So when someone assents to what is false, know that he didn’t want to assent to what is false—“every soul is deprived of truth against its will,” as Plato says—but the falsehood seemed true to him.note

Come now, in actions what do we have corresponding to the true and the false here? Duty and what is contrary to duty, the beneficial and the harmful, what suits me and what doesn’t, and so on.

“So can’t someone think a thing is to his advantage and still not choose it?” He can’t.

What about the woman who says: “I understand what evil I’m about to do, / but my rage is stronger than my better counsels”? It’s because she thinks this very thing—indulging her rage and taking revenge on her husband—more advantageous than saving her children.note

“Yes, but she’s deceived.” Show her clearly that she’s deceived and she won’t do it. But as long as you don’t show her, what can she follow except what appears to her?

Nothing. So why are you angry with her, because the poor woman has gone astray about the most important things and been turned from a human being into a viper? Why not rather, if anything, pity her? As we pity the blind and the lame, why not pity those blinded and lamed in what matters most?

Whoever clearly remembers this—that for a human being the measure of every action is what appears to him (and it either appears rightly or wrongly: if rightly, he’s blameless; if wrongly, he himself pays the penalty, since it’s impossible for the one who goes astray to be one person and the one harmed another)—will be angry with no one, annoyed with no one, will abuse no one, blame no one, hate no one, take offense at no one.

So even such great and terrible deeds have this origin, what appears? This and no other.

The Iliad is nothing but an impression and the use of impressions. It appeared right to Alexander to carry off Menelaus’ wife; it appeared right to Helen to follow him.note

Now if it had appeared to Menelaus that it was a gain to be rid of such a wife, what would have happened? We’d have lost not only the Iliad but the Odyssey too. —

So such great things hang on so small a matter? —And what do you call “such great things”? Wars and civil strife and the deaths of many men and the razing of cities? And what’s so great about those? —Nothing? —

What’s great about many cattle dying, and many sheep, and many nests of swallows or storks being burned and destroyed?

—So these things are like those? —Very much alike. Human bodies perished—and so did those of cattle and sheep. Human dwellings were burned—and so were storks’ nests.

What’s great or terrible about that? Or show me how a man’s house differs from a stork’s nest as a dwelling.

—So a stork and a human being are alike? —What are you saying? In body, very much alike. [Except that the houses are built of beams and tiles and bricks, and the nest of sticks and mud.]

So a human being differs from a stork in nothing? —Heaven forbid! But he doesn’t differ in these things. —In what, then, does he differ?

—Look and you’ll find that he differs in something else. See whether it isn’t in understanding what he does, whether it isn’t in his sociability, his trustworthiness, his self-respect, his steadfastness, his intelligence.

Where, then, are the great bad and the great good in human beings? Where the difference is. If this is preserved and stays well walled in, and his self-respect, trustworthiness and intelligence aren’t destroyed, then the man himself is preserved; but if any of these is lost or taken by siege, then the man himself is lost too. That is where the great things are.

Did Alexander come to grief in a great way, as they say, when the Greeks attacked, and when they sacked Troy, and when his brothers were dying?

Not at all: no one comes to grief through what someone else does. What was being sacked then was storks’ nests. His real downfall came when he lost the man of self-respect, the trustworthy man, the man who honored his host, the decent man.

When did Achilles come to grief? When Patroclus died? Heaven forbid! It was when he got angry, when he wept over a girl, when he forgot that he was there not to acquire mistresses but to make war.

Those are human downfalls; that is the siege, that is the razing of the city: when right judgments are torn down, when those things are destroyed.

—So when women are carried off and children taken captive, and the men themselves are slaughtered, aren’t these things bad?

—Where do you get this extra opinion from? Teach me too. —No: where do you get the idea that they aren’t bad?

—Let’s go to the standards; bring out the preconceptions.

This is why one can’t marvel enough at what goes on. When we want to judge weights, we don’t judge at random; when we judge what is straight and what is crooked, not at random either;

in short, where it matters to us to know the truth in a given area, none of us will ever do anything at random.

But where the first and only cause lies of acting rightly or going wrong, of life flowing smoothly or roughly, of misfortune or good fortune, there alone are we careless and rash. Nowhere anything like a scale, nowhere anything like a ruler: something appears, and at once I act on what appeared.

Am I better than Agamemnon or Achilles, so that, while they did and suffered such terrible things by following what appeared to them, what appears wouldn’t be enough to do the same to me?

And what tragedy has any other origin? Euripides’ Atreus—what is it? What appeared. Sophocles’ Oedipus—what is it? What appeared. The Phoenix?

What appeared. The Hippolytus? What appeared. So what kind of person do you think takes no care of this? And what do we call those who follow every appearance? —Madmen. —And are we doing anything different?

The essence of the good is a certain kind of choice; the essence of the bad, a certain kind of choice.

What, then, are external things? Materials for choice, in dealing with which it will attain its own good or bad. How will it attain the good?

If it doesn’t marvel at the materials. For judgments about the materials, if they are right, make choice good; if crooked and distorted, bad.

This is the law God has laid down, and he says, “If you want something good, get it from yourself.” You say, “No, from someone else.” No: from yourself.

So when the tyrant threatens me instead of inviting me, I say, “Whom is he threatening?” If he says, “I’ll put you in chains,” I say, “He’s threatening my hands and feet.”

If he says, “I’ll cut your head off,” I say, “He’s threatening my neck.” If he says, “I’ll throw you in prison,” “He’s threatening my whole miserable flesh.” And if he threatens exile, the same.

—So he isn’t threatening you at all? —If I’m convinced that these things are nothing to me, not at all. But if I’m afraid of any of them, it’s me he’s threatening.

So whom am I afraid of? The master of what? Of the things up to me? There’s no such person. Of the things not up to me? And what do I care about them?

So do you philosophers teach contempt for kings? —Heaven forbid! Which of us teaches anyone to dispute with them over the things they have power over?

Take my body, take my property, take my reputation, take the people around me. If I persuade any of them to dispute you for these, then you really can accuse me.

“Yes, but I want to rule your judgments too.” And who gave you that power?

How can you conquer another person’s judgment? “By applying fear to it,” he says, “I’ll conquer it.” You don’t realize that it conquered itself; it wasn’t conquered by anything else. Nothing else can conquer choice, except choice itself.

That’s why God’s law is the strongest and most just: let the better always prevail over the worse.

“Ten are stronger than one.” For what? For chaining, for killing, for dragging off wherever they like, for taking away what a man has. So the ten beat the one in the respect in which they are stronger.

In what, then, are they worse? If the one has right judgments and they don’t. Well then? Can they win in this? How could they? If we stand on a scale, mustn’t the heavier pull it down?

So Socrates had to suffer these things at the hands of the Athenians? —Slave, why do you say “Socrates”? Say it as the matter really is: so Socrates’ poor body had to be carried off and dragged to prison by those who were stronger, and someone had to give hemlock to Socrates’ poor body, and it had to grow cold?

Does that seem astonishing to you, unjust? Is that why you blame God? Did Socrates, then, have nothing in exchange for these things? Where did the essence of the good lie for him?

Whom shall we listen to, you or him? And what does he say? “Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they can’t harm me.” And again: “If this is what pleases God, so be it.”note

But show me that someone with worse judgments gets the better of someone who is better in his judgments. You won’t show it; not even close. For this is the law of nature and of God: let the better always prevail over the worse. In what? In that in which it is better.

One body is stronger than another, the many than the one, the thief than the one who isn’t a thief.

That’s why I lost my lamp too: in staying awake, the thief was better than I was. But he paid a steep price for that lamp: for a lamp he became a thief, for a lamp untrustworthy, for a lamp a brute. That seemed profitable to him.

All right. But someone has grabbed me by the cloak and is dragging me into the marketplace, and then others shout, “Philosopher, what good have your judgments done you? Look, you’re being dragged off to prison; look, you’re about to have your head cut off.”

And what introductory course could I have taken so that, if someone stronger grabs my cloak, I won’t be dragged? So that, if ten men pull me about and throw me into prison, I won’t be thrown in?

Have I learned nothing else, then? I’ve learned to see that whatever happens, if it’s outside my choice, is nothing to me.

Hasn’t that done you any good, then? So why look for the benefit anywhere but in what you learned?

So, sitting in prison, I say, “This man shouting these things doesn’t hear what the words mean or follow what’s being said, and he has never cared at all to know what philosophers say or do. Let him be.”

“But come out of prison again.” If you no longer need me in prison, I come out; if you need me again, I’ll go back in.

For how long? As long as reason chooses that I stay with my body. When it doesn’t, take it, and good health to you.

Only not irrationally, only not out of weakness, not on any passing pretext. For again, God doesn’t want that: he needs such a world, and such beings living on the earth. But if he sounds the retreat, as he did for Socrates, we must obey the one who gives the signal, as we would a general.

Well then? Should we say these things to the crowd? —What for?

Isn’t it enough to be persuaded oneself? When children come up to us clapping and say, “Today is the good Saturnalia,” do we say, “These things aren’t good”? Not at all: we clap along with them.

So you too, when you can’t change someone’s mind, recognize that he’s a child and clap along with him; and if you don’t want to do that, just keep quiet.

We must remember these things, and when we’re called into some such difficulty, know that the moment has come to show whether we’ve been educated.

For a young man going from school into a difficulty is like someone who has practiced analyzing syllogisms: if someone puts an easy one to him, he says, “Give me one that’s cleverly tangled instead, so I can get some exercise.” And athletes, too, are unhappy with lightweight young sparring partners:

“He can’t lift me,” he says. Now there’s a young man with real talent. But not you: when the moment calls, apparently you have to weep and say, “I wanted to go on learning.” Learning what? If you didn’t learn these things [not] to show them in action, what did you learn them for?

I’d expect one of you sitting here to be in agony inside himself and saying, “Why doesn’t a crisis like the one that came to him come to me now? Am I to waste away sitting in a corner when I could be crowned at Olympia? When will someone announce a contest like that for me?” That’s how you should all feel.

Among Caesar’s gladiators there are some who are indignant that nobody brings them out or matches them against anyone, and they pray to God and go to the managers begging to fight. And will none of you turn out to be like that?

I’d like to sail over for just this purpose and see what my athlete is doing, how he’s working at his assigned theme.

“I don’t want this sort of theme,” he says. What, is it up to you to take whatever theme you like? You’ve been given a body like this, parents like these, brothers like these, a country like this, a position in it like this; and then you come and tell me, “Change my theme.” Well then, don’t you have the resources to make use of what you’ve been given?

“It’s yours to set the problem, mine to work at it well.” But no: “Don’t give me this kind of conditional premise, give me that kind; don’t draw this conclusion, draw that one.”

Perhaps a time will come when tragic actors think they are their masks and boots and trailing robes. Man, these are your material and your theme.

Say something, so we know whether you’re a tragic actor or a clown; everything else the two have in common.

That’s why, if someone takes away his boots and his mask and brings him on stage as a mere shade, is the tragic actor lost, or does he remain? If he has a voice, he remains.

So too here. “Take a governorship.” I take it, and having taken it I show how an educated man conducts himself.

“Take off the broad stripe, put on rags, and come forward in that role.” What of it? Haven’t I been given the chance to bring a fine voice to that too?

“How do you come on stage now, then?” As a witness summoned by God.

“Come, you, and bear witness for me; for you are worthy to be brought forward as a witness by me. Is anything outside choice good or bad? Do I harm anyone? Have I made each person’s benefit depend on someone else, and not on himself?”

What testimony do you give God? “I’m in a terrible state, Lord, and unlucky; nobody cares about me, nobody gives me anything, everyone blames me and speaks ill of me.”

Is this the testimony you’re going to give, disgracing the summons he issued—because he honored you with this honor and thought you worthy to be brought forward as so important a witness?

But the one with authority has declared, “I judge you to be impious and unholy.” What has happened to you? “I’ve been judged impious and unholy.”

Nothing else? “Nothing.” Now if he had passed judgment on some conditional proposition and declared, “I judge the proposition ‘If it is day, it is light’ to be false,” what would have happened to the conditional? Who is being judged here, who has been condemned? The conditional, or the man who was deceived about it?

So who on earth is this man with the authority to declare anything about you? Does he know what is pious or impious? Has he studied it? Learned it? Where? From whom?

And then a musician pays him no attention when he declares that the highest string is the lowest, nor does a geometer, if he rules that the lines drawn from the center to the circumference aren’t equal;

and will the truly educated man pay any attention to an uneducated person ruling on what is holy and unholy, unjust and just? What an injustice on the part of the educated that would be! Is this, then, what you learned here?

Won’t you leave the little arguments about these things to others, to lazy little men, so they can sit in a corner collecting their little fees, or grumbling that nobody gives them anything—while you step forward and put to use what you’ve learned?

It isn’t little arguments that are lacking now; the books of the Stoics are crammed with them. What is lacking, then? The one who will use them, who will bear witness to the arguments by what he does.

Take up this role for me, so that we no longer use ancient examples in the school but have an example from our own time too.

Whose business is it, then, to be a spectator of these things? The one who has leisure. For the human being is an animal that loves to watch.

But it’s shameful to watch these things the way runaway slaves do. One should sit undistracted and listen now to a tragic actor, now to a lyre-player—not the way they do. One of them stops and applauds the actor, and at the same moment glances around; then if anyone says the word “master,” they’re instantly in a flurry and upset.

It’s shameful for philosophers, too, to watch the works of nature like that. For what is a master? A human being isn’t master of a human being; death and life, pleasure and pain are the masters.

Because, without these, bring me Caesar and you’ll see how steady I am. But when he comes with them, thundering and lightning, and I’m afraid of them, what else have I done but recognize my master, like the runaway?

And as long as I get some respite from these things, I’m like a runaway watching a play: I bathe, I drink, I sing—but all of it in fear and misery.

But if I free myself from my masters—that is, from the things that make masters fearsome—what trouble do I have any more, what master?

What then? Should we proclaim this to everyone? —No; we should make allowances for laymen and say, “This man is recommending to me what he thinks is good for himself. I forgive him.”

Socrates, too, forgave the jailer who wept because he was about to drink the poison, and said, “How nobly he’s wept for us!”

Does he say to him, then, “That’s why we sent the women away”? No, he says that to his friends, to those able to hear it; the jailer he humors like a child.

Whenever you go in to see one of the powerful, remember that there is another who sees from above what is happening, and that you must please him rather than this man.

So he asks you: “Exile, prison, chains, death, disgrace—what did you call them in the school?” “Indifferents.”

“And what do you call them now? Have they changed at all?” “No.” “Have you changed, then?” “No.” “Tell me, then, what things are indifferent.” “Things outside our choice.” “Tell me what follows, too.”

“Things outside our choice are nothing to me.” “Tell me also what you people held to be goods.” “Choice of the right kind, and the use of impressions.” “And the goal?” “To follow you.”

“Do you still say this now?” “I say the same now.” Then go in with confidence, remembering these things, and you’ll see what a young man who has trained in what he should is like among people who haven’t.

For my part, by the gods, I imagine you’ll feel something like this: “Why were we making such huge, elaborate preparations for nothing?”

“Is this what power was? Is this what the anterooms, the chamberlains, the sword-bearers amounted to? Was it for this I listened to all those lectures? This was nothing, and I was preparing as if for something great.”

What the philosophers maintain may perhaps seem paradoxical to some; still, let’s examine as best we can whether it’s true that we should do everything at once cautiously and confidently.

For caution seems somehow to be the opposite of confidence, and opposites can’t possibly coexist.

But what many find paradoxical on this topic depends, I think, on something like this: if we claimed that caution and confidence should be applied to the same things, people would be right to accuse us of combining what can’t be combined.

As it is, what’s so strange about the claim? For if the things we’ve often said and often demonstrated are sound—that the essence of the good lies in the use of impressions, and likewise that of the bad, while things outside our choice admit the nature neither of the bad nor of the good—

what paradox are the philosophers maintaining when they say, “Where things outside choice are concerned, have confidence; where things within choice are concerned, have caution”?

For if the bad lies in a bad choice, it’s right to use caution toward these things alone; and if things outside our choice and not up to us are nothing to us, we should use confidence toward them.

And so we’ll be cautious and confident at the same time—yes, by Zeus, confident because of our caution. For by being cautious about what is really bad, we’ll end up confident about what isn’t.

As it is, we go through what deer go through: when the does take fright and flee the feathers, where do they turn, where do they retreat to as a safe place? To the nets. And so they perish, having got what’s frightening and what’s safe the wrong way round.note

We’re the same. Where do we use fear? On things outside our choice. And where, on the other hand, do we carry on confidently, as if there were nothing to fear? In things within our choice.

Being deceived, acting rashly, doing something shameless, desiring something with shameful lust—none of it matters to us, so long as we hit the mark in things outside our choice. But where there’s death or exile or pain or disgrace, there we’re ready to retreat, there we’re in a flurry.

And so, as you’d expect of people who go wrong about the most important things, we turn what is naturally confident into rashness, recklessness, brazenness, shamelessness, and what is naturally cautious and self-respecting into cowardice and abjectness, full of fears and disturbances.

For if someone moves his caution to where choice and the acts of choice are, then the moment he wants to be cautious he’ll also have his aversion in his own power. But if he puts it where things not up to us and outside our choice are, directing his aversion at what is in others’ power, he will necessarily be afraid, be unsettled, be disturbed.

For it isn’t death or pain that is frightening, but the fear of pain or death. That’s why we praise the one who said, “Death is not the terrible thing, but dying shamefully.”

So our confidence ought to be turned toward death, and our caution toward the fear of death. As it is, we do the opposite: toward death, flight; toward our judgment about it, heedlessness, carelessness, indifference.

Socrates was right to call these things bogeymen. For just as masks seem terrible and frightening to children through inexperience, we react in much the same way to events, and for no other reason than children do to bogeymen.

For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Lack of learning. Since where a child does know, it’s no worse off than we are.

What is death? A bogeyman. Turn it around and take a good look: see, it doesn’t bite. The poor body has to be separated from the little breath, as it was separated before, either now or later. So why are you upset if it’s now? If not now, then later.

Why? So that the cycle of the universe may be completed; for it needs things present, things to come, and things already accomplished.

What is pain? A bogeyman. Turn it around and take a good look. The poor flesh is moved roughly, then smoothly again. If it doesn’t profit you, the door is open; if it does, bear it.

For in every situation the door must be open; and then we have no trouble.

What, then, is the fruit of these judgments? The one that ought to be finest and most fitting for those who are truly being educated: tranquility, fearlessness, freedom.

For on these matters we shouldn’t trust the many, who say that only the free may be educated, but rather the philosophers, who say that only the educated are free.

—How’s that? —Like this: is freedom anything other than being able to live as we wish? “Nothing else.” Tell me, then, people: do you wish to live going wrong? “We don’t.” Then no one who goes wrong is free.

Do you wish to live in fear, in grief, in disturbance? “Not at all.” So no one who is afraid, or grieving, or disturbed is free; but whoever is rid of griefs and fears and disturbances is, by the same road, rid of slavery too.

So how can we trust you any longer, dearest lawgivers? “We allow no one to be educated except the free”? For the philosophers say, “We allow no one to be free except the educated” —that is, God doesn’t allow it.

—So when someone turns his own slave around before the praetor, has he done nothing? —He’s done something. —What? —He’s turned his own slave around before the praetor. —Nothing else? —Yes: he also has to pay the five percent tax on him.note

—What then? Hasn’t the one this was done to become free? —No more than he’s become free of disturbance.

Because you, who can turn others around—have you no master? Not money, not a girl, not a boy, not the tyrant, not some friend of the tyrant? Then why do you tremble when you go off to some situation like that?

That’s why I often say, “Practice these things and keep them ready to hand: toward what you should be confident and toward what cautious—confident toward things outside our choice, cautious about things within it.”

—But haven’t I read you my work? Don’t you know what I can do?

—Do in what? In fancy little phrases. Keep your little phrases! Show me how you stand with regard to desire and aversion—whether you fail to get what you want, whether you fall into what you don’t want. As for those little periods of yours, if you’ve any sense, you’ll take them off somewhere and blot them out.

—What? Didn’t Socrates write? —Who wrote as much? But how? Since he couldn’t always have someone to test his judgments or to be tested by him in turn, he tested and examined himself, and was always working through some one preconception in a practical way.

That’s what a philosopher writes. Fancy phrases, and the method I’m talking about, he leaves to others—to the insensible or the blessed, to those at leisure because of their tranquility, or to those who in their folly take no account of what follows.

And now, when the moment calls, will you go off and show those things, and read them out, and show off? “Look how I compose dialogues!”

Don’t, man; say this instead: “Look how I don’t fail to get what I desire. Look how I don’t fall into what I avoid. Bring on death and you’ll see; bring on pains, bring on prison, bring on disgrace, bring on condemnation.”

That’s the display of a young man who has come from school. Leave the rest to others; let nobody ever hear a word from you about them, and if anyone praises you for them, don’t put up with it; seem to be nobody and to know nothing.

Let it be clear you know only this: how never to fail to get what you desire and never to fall into what you avoid.

Let others practice lawsuits, others problems, others syllogisms; you practice dying, being chained, being tortured, being exiled.

Do all this with confidence, trusting in the one who called you to it, who judged you worthy of this post; stationed in it, you’ll show what a rational ruling center can do when it’s drawn up against the forces outside our choice.

And so that paradox will no longer seem either impossible or paradoxical: that one must be cautious and confident at the same time—confident toward things outside our choice, cautious in things within it.

You who are off to court, see what you want to preserve and where you want to succeed.

For if you want to keep your choice in accordance with nature, you have complete security, complete ease; you have no trouble.

For if you want to preserve what is up to you, which is self-governing and free by nature, and are content with that, what else do you care about? Who is master of these things, who can take them away?

If you want to be self-respecting and trustworthy, who won’t let you? If you want not to be hindered or compelled, who will compel you to desire what you don’t think you should, who to avoid what doesn’t seem so to you?

But what? He’ll do things to you that seem frightening; but how can he make you suffer them while you’re trying to avoid them?

So when desire and aversion are up to you, what else do you care about?

This is your introduction, this your narrative, this your proof, this your victory, this your peroration, this your acclaim.

That’s why Socrates said to the man reminding him to prepare for his trial, “Don’t you think I’ve been preparing for it my whole life?”

—“What sort of preparation?” —“I’ve guarded what is up to me,” he says. —“How so?” —“I have never done anything wrong, in private or in public.”

But if you want to preserve outward things too—your poor body, your bit of property, your little standing—I tell you: start right now making every preparation possible, and then consider both the character of the judge and your opponent.

If you have to clasp knees, clasp knees; if weep, weep; if wail, wail.

For once you’ve made what is yours subordinate to outward things, be a slave from then on, and don’t pull against it, wanting to be a slave one moment and not wanting to the next,

but simply and with your whole mind be one thing or the other: free or slave, educated or uneducated, a thoroughbred gamecock or a craven one. Either hold out under the blows until you die, or give up at once. Don’t let it be your lot to take a great many blows and give up afterward.

If that’s shameful, draw the distinction right now: “Where is the nature of bad and good? Where truth is. Where truth and nature are, there caution belongs; where truth is, there confidence belongs, where nature is.”

Because do you think that if Socrates had wanted to preserve outward things, he’d have come forward and said, “Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they can’t harm me”?

Was he such a fool as not to see that this road doesn’t lead there, but somewhere else? Why is it, then, that he takes no account of them and even provokes them?

Like my friend Heraclitus: he had a little lawsuit about a bit of land in Rhodes, and after proving to the judges that he was in the right, he came to his peroration and said, “But I won’t beg you, nor do I care what judgment you’ll give; it’s you rather than I who are on trial.”note

And so he wrecked his little case. What need was there? Just don’t beg; don’t add, “And I’m not begging.” Unless it’s the right moment to provoke the judges on purpose, as it was for Socrates.

And you, if you’re preparing a peroration like that, why go up to speak at all, why answer the summons?

For if you want to be crucified, wait, and the cross will come. But if reason decides that you should answer the summons and do your part to persuade, you must do what follows from that—while still keeping what is your own.

That’s why it’s ridiculous, too, to say, “Give me some advice.” What advice should I give you? Say rather, “Make my mind able to adapt to whatever happens.”

Because the other is like an illiterate man saying, “Tell me what to write when I’m set some name.”

For if I say “Dion,” and then the teacher comes along and sets him not Dion’s name but Theon’s, what will happen?

What will he write? But if you’ve practiced writing, you’re prepared for whatever is dictated; if not, what advice can I give you now? For if circumstances dictate something else, what will you say or do?

So remember this general principle and you won’t be at a loss for advice. But if you gape after outward things, you’ll inevitably be tossed up and down at your master’s will.

And who is master? Whoever has power over any of the things you’re eager for or trying to avoid.

Diogenes put it well to the man who asked him for a letter of recommendation: “That you’re a man,” he said, “he’ll know as soon as he sees you. Whether you’re good or bad he’ll know if he has the skill to tell the good from the bad; and if he hasn’t, he won’t know even if I write to him ten thousand times.”

It’s as if a drachma asked to be recommended to someone so as to be tested. If he’s an assayer of silver, you’ll recommend yourself.

So in life, too, we ought to have something like what we have for silver, so that I can say, as the assayer says, “Bring me any drachma you like and I’ll tell you what it is.”

And with syllogisms I can say, “Bring me any one you like and I’ll distinguish for you the one that can be analyzed from the one that can’t.” Why? Because I know how to analyze syllogisms; I have the ability that someone able to recognize correct reasoning about syllogisms must have.

But in life, what do I do? Now I call a thing good, now bad. What’s the cause? The opposite of what it is with syllogisms: ignorance and inexperience.

As he was saying that man is born for trustworthiness, and that whoever overturns it overturns what is distinctive of man, in came one of those reputed to be men of letters, who had once been caught in adultery in the city.

And he said: But if we set aside this trustworthiness we’re born for and make designs on our neighbor’s wife, what are we doing? What else but destroying and doing away with something? With what? With the trustworthy man, the self-respecting man, the man of piety.

Only these? Aren’t we doing away with neighborliness, and friendship, and the city? What place are we assigning ourselves? What am I to treat you as, man? As a neighbor, as a friend? What sort? As a citizen? What shall I trust you with?

Now if you were a pot so rotten that it couldn’t be used for anything, you’d be thrown out on the dunghill, and nobody would pick you up even from there;

but if, being a man, you can’t fill any human place, what shall we do with you? Granted you can’t hold the place of a friend—can you hold that of a slave? And who will trust you? So won’t you consent to be thrown out on some dunghill yourself, like a useless pot, like dung?

Then you’ll say, “Nobody pays any attention to me, a man of letters!” That’s because you’re bad and useless. It’s as if wasps complained that nobody pays attention to them, but everyone runs away from them, and anyone who can swats them and knocks them down.

You have a sting that throws anyone you strike into trouble and pain. What do you want us to do with you? There’s nowhere to put you.

What then? Aren’t women common property by nature? I say so too. And the roast piglet is common to the guests; but once it’s been divided into portions, go on, if you like, and grab your neighbor’s portion, steal it on the sly, or slip your hand down beside him and nibble, and if you can’t tear off any meat, grease your fingers and lick them. A fine fellow to drink and dine with—a real Socratic!note

Come on, isn’t the theater common to the citizens? So when they’ve taken their seats, go on, if you like, and throw one of them out.

In the same way, women too are common by nature. But once the lawgiver, like a host at dinner, has distributed them, won’t you look for your own portion, instead of snatching and nibbling at someone else’s?

“But I’m a man of letters, and I understand Archedemus.” Well then, understand Archedemus and be an adulterer and untrustworthy, and instead of a man, a wolf or an ape. What’s to stop you?note

Materials are indifferent, but the use of them is not indifferent.

How, then, is one to preserve steadiness and calm and at the same time carefulness—neither careless nor slapdash?

By imitating dice players. The counters are indifferent, the dice are indifferent; how do I know how they’ll fall? But to use carefully and skillfully the way they’ve fallen—that is my job.

So in life, too, the principal task is this: distinguish things, separate them, and say, “Externals are not up to me; choice is up to me.

Where shall I look for the good and the bad? Within, in what is mine.” But in what belongs to others, never call anything good or bad, benefit or harm, or anything of the sort.

What then? Should we use these things carelessly? Not at all. For that, again, is bad for our choice, and so contrary to [its] nature.

Rather, carefully, because the use is not indifferent, and at the same time steadily and calmly, because the material is not what matters.

For where what matters is, there nobody can hinder or compel me. Where I can be hindered and compelled, getting those things isn’t up to me and isn’t good or bad; but the use of them is either bad or good, and that is up to me.

It’s hard to mix and combine these—the carefulness of someone attached to materials and the steadiness of someone who pays them no heed—but it isn’t impossible. Otherwise happiness would be impossible.

It’s like what we do on a voyage. What can I do? Choose the captain, the sailors, the day, the moment.

Then a storm strikes. What’s it to me any more? My part has been done. The problem belongs to someone else—the captain. But now the ship is sinking.

What can I do, then? The only thing I can: I drown without fear, not screaming or accusing God, but knowing that what has come into being must also perish.

For I am not eternity, but a human being, a part of the whole as an hour is of the day. I must come on like the hour and pass like an hour.

So what difference does it make to me how I pass—by drowning or by fever? For I have to pass by something of the sort.

You’ll see skilled ballplayers doing this too. None of them fusses about the ball as something good or bad, but about throwing and catching.

That’s where the timing lies, the skill, the speed, the good judgment: I can catch it without even holding out my cloak, and he catches it whenever I throw.

But if we catch or throw it anxious and afraid, what game is left? Where will anyone keep steady, where will anyone see the next move in it? One will say “Throw!”, another “Don’t throw!”, another “Don’t toss it up!” That’s a brawl, not a game.

So Socrates knew how to play ball. How? He knew how to play in the courtroom. “Tell me, Anytus,” he says, “how can you say I don’t believe in a god? What do you think divine spirits are? Aren’t they either children of gods, or some mixture of men and gods?”

And when he agreed: “Then who do you think could believe that mules exist but not donkeys?” —as though he were playing with a ball. And what was the ball in play there at the time? Imprisonment, exile, drinking poison, losing his wife, leaving his children orphans.

These were the things in play, and he played with them; but he played none the less, and handled the ball with perfect timing. So we too should have all the care of the finest ballplayer, but the indifference of someone playing for a mere ball.

For in any case one has to exercise skill on some external material—not taking it up for its own sake, but, whatever it is, displaying one’s skill in handling it. So too the weaver doesn’t make the wool, but works skillfully on whatever wool he’s given.

Someone else gives you food and property, and can take these very things away, and the body itself too. You, then, take the material and work it. Then, if you come through unharmed,

others who meet you will congratulate you on being saved; but the one who knows how to look at such things, if he sees you conducted yourself decently in it, will praise you and share your pleasure, and if he sees you were saved through some disgraceful conduct, the opposite. For where rejoicing is reasonable, so is rejoicing with someone.

How, then, are some external things said to be according to nature and others contrary to nature? As if we were detached from everything. For I’ll say it’s natural for the foot to be clean; but if you take it as a foot and not as something detached, it will be fitting for it to step into mud and tread on thorns, and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body; otherwise it will no longer be a foot. We should think something like this about ourselves too.

What are you? A human being. If you look at yourself as something detached, it’s natural to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you look at yourself as a human being and part of some whole, then for the sake of that whole it’s fitting for you now to be sick, now to go on a voyage and run risks, now to be in want, and sometimes to die before your time.

So why are you upset? Don’t you know that just as that foot would no longer be a foot, so you would no longer be a human being? For what is a human being? Part of a city—first of the one made up of gods and men, and then of the one said to be closest to it, which is a small copy of the whole.

“So I’m to be put on trial now?” So is someone else to have a fever now, someone else go to sea, someone else die, someone else be condemned? For in a body like this, in this world that surrounds us, among these companions of our life, it’s impossible that such things shouldn’t befall different people in different ways.

So your job is to come and say what you should, and to handle these things as is fitting.

Then the judge says, “I judge you guilty.” “Good luck to you. I’ve done my part; whether you’ve done yours, you’ll see for yourself.” For he runs some risk too—don’t forget that.

The conditional proposition is indifferent; the judgment about it is not indifferent, but is either knowledge or opinion or error. So too, life is indifferent; the use of it is not indifferent.

So when someone tells you that these things too are indifferent, never become careless; and when someone urges you to be careful, never become abject and dazzled by materials.

It’s good, too, to know your own preparation and ability, so that where you haven’t prepared you keep quiet and aren’t upset if others have the advantage of you there.

For you, too, will expect to have the advantage in syllogisms, and if they’re upset at that, you’ll console them: “I learned them, and you didn’t.”

So too, where some experience is needed, don’t look for the advantage that comes from it, but give way on that to those who have the experience, and be content with being steady.

“Go and pay your respects to so-and-so.” “I do.” “How?” “Not abjectly.” “But you were shut out.” “Yes, because I haven’t learned to get in through the window. When I find the door shut, I have to either go away or go in through the window.”

“But talk to him, too.” “I do.”

“In what way?” “Not abjectly.” “But you didn’t get what you wanted.” Well, was that your job? It was his. So why lay claim to what belongs to someone else? If you always remember what is yours and what belongs to someone else, [and] you won’t be disturbed.

That’s why Chrysippus puts it well: “As long as what comes next is unclear to me, I always hold to what is better suited for obtaining the things in accordance with nature; for God himself made me disposed to select them.

But if I knew that I was fated to be sick now, I’d even have an impulse toward it; for the foot too, if it had a mind, would have an impulse to get muddy.”

Because what are ears of grain produced for? Isn’t it so that they may also ripen and dry? And they do ripen—but isn’t it so that they may also be harvested?

For they don’t come into being as detached things. So if they had feelings, should they pray never to be harvested? But never to be harvested is a curse for ears of grain.

So too, you should know that for human beings not dying is a curse: it’s like never ripening, never being harvested.

But since we are at once the ones who must be harvested and also aware that we are being harvested, that’s why we’re upset. For we neither know what we are, nor have we studied what belongs to human beings as horsemen study what belongs to horses.

Now Chrysantas, when he was about to strike an enemy, heard the trumpet sounding the recall and held back; so much more important did it seem to him to carry out the general’s order than to do what he himself wanted.note

But none of us is willing, even when necessity calls, to obey it readily; instead, weeping and groaning, we suffer what we suffer and call it “circumstances.”

What circumstances, man? If by circumstances you mean what stands around you, everything is circumstances; but if you mean hardships, what hardship is there in what has come into being perishing?

And what destroys it is a sword, or a wheel, or the sea, or a roof tile, or a tyrant. What does it matter to you by which road you go down to Hades?

They’re all equal. And if you want to hear the truth, the shorter one is the one the tyrant sends you by. No tyrant ever took six months to cut a man’s throat, but a fever often takes a year. All these things are noise and the bluster of empty names.

“My head is in danger before Caesar.” And isn’t mine in danger, living in Nicopolis, where there are so many earthquakes? And you yourself, when you cross the Adriatic, what’s in danger? Isn’t it your head?

“But my opinion is in danger too.” Your own? How? Who can compel you to hold an opinion you don’t want to? Someone else’s? And what danger is it to you if others hold false opinions?

“But I’m in danger of being exiled.” What is being exiled? Being somewhere other than Rome? “Yes. And what if I’m sent to Gyara?” If it suits you, you’ll go; if not, you have somewhere to go instead of Gyara—where the man sending you to Gyara will go too, whether he likes it or not.

Why, then, do you go up to it as if to something great? It’s smaller than your preparation—so that a talented young man may say, “It wasn’t worth it to have heard so much, written so much, and sat so long at the feet of an old man not worth much.”

Just remember that division by which what is yours is marked off from what is not yours. Never lay claim to anything that belongs to others.

The tribunal and the prison are each a place, the one high, the other low; but your choice, if you want to keep it the same in each, can be kept the same.

And we’ll be emulators of Socrates when we can write hymns of praise in prison.

But as we are now, consider whether we’d put up with it in prison if someone said to us, “Would you like me to read you some hymns?” “Why are you bothering me? Don’t you know the troubles I’m in? For I’m in the middle of—” The middle of what? “I’m about to die.” And will other people be immortal?

Because we consult diviners at the wrong time, many of us neglect many duties.

For what can the diviner see beyond death, or danger, or disease, or things of that kind generally?

So if I have to run a risk for a friend, and if it’s even my duty to die for him, where’s the occasion for consulting a diviner any more? Don’t I have the diviner within, who has told me the essence of good and bad, who has explained the signs of both?

So what further need do I have of entrails or birds? And am I to put up with him when he says, “It’s in your interest”? Does he know what’s in anyone’s interest?

Does he know what is good? Has he learned the signs of goods and bad things, as he has the signs in entrails? For if he knows the signs of these, he knows those of the fine and the shameful, the just and the unjust, too.

Man, you tell me what’s signified—life or death, poverty or wealth; but whether these things are beneficial or harmful, am I going to ask you?

Why don’t you give your opinion on questions of grammar? And yet here, where all of us human beings go astray and fight with one another, you do?

That’s why the woman spoke well who wanted to send Gratilla, in exile, her shipload of monthly provisions; when someone said, “Domitian will confiscate them,” she said, “I’d rather he took them than that I didn’t send them.”note

What is it, then, that makes us consult diviners so constantly? Cowardice—fear of outcomes. That’s why we flatter the diviners: “Sir, will I inherit from my father?” “Let’s see; let’s make a sacrifice about it.” “Yes, sir, as fortune wills.” Then if he says, “You’ll inherit,” we thank him as if we’d received the inheritance from him. That’s why they go on making fools of us.

What then? We should go without desire or aversion, the way a traveler asks someone he meets which of two roads leads where he’s going, with no desire for the right-hand one to lead there rather than the left; for he doesn’t want to go down either one in particular, but whichever leads there.

That’s how we should come to God as a guide—the way we use our eyes, not begging them to show us these things rather than those, but accepting the impressions of whatever they show us.

As it is, we clutch the augur’s bird trembling, and calling on God we beg him:

“Lord, have mercy; let me come out of this.” Slave! Do you want anything other than what is best? And is anything better than what seems good to God?

Why, as far as it lies with you, do you corrupt the judge and lead the counselor astray?

God is beneficial; but the good is beneficial too. It’s reasonable, then, that where the essence of God is, there too is the essence of the good.

What, then, is the essence of God? Flesh? Heaven forbid. Land? Heaven forbid. Reputation? Heaven forbid. Mind, knowledge, right reason.

There, then, and nowhere else, look for the essence of the good. For do you look for it in a plant? No. In an irrational animal? No. So if you look for it in a rational being, why look anywhere but in what distinguishes it from irrational things?

Plants aren’t even capable of using impressions; that’s why you don’t speak of the good in their case. The good, then, requires the use of impressions.

Only that? For if only that, then say that goods, and happiness and unhappiness, exist in the other animals too.

But you don’t say so, and you’re right; for even if they have the use of impressions in the fullest measure, they certainly don’t have awareness of their use of impressions. And with good reason: they were born to serve others, not to be of primary account themselves.

Take the donkey: was it born to be of primary account? No; but because we needed a back able to carry something. But, by Zeus, we also needed it to walk; that’s why it acquired the use of impressions as well, since otherwise it couldn’t walk.

And there, more or less, it stops. But if it had somehow also acquired awareness of its use of impressions, then clearly, by reason, it would no longer be subject to us or render us these services, but would be our equal and like us.

Won’t you, then, look for the essence of the good there, where, if it’s absent, you refuse to speak of the good in any other thing?

“What then? Aren’t those creatures works of the gods too?” They are, but not of primary account, nor parts of the gods.

But you are of primary account; you are a fragment of God; you have within yourself a part of him. Why, then, are you ignorant of your kinship? Why don’t you know where you have come from?

Won’t you remember, when you eat, who you are that eat, and whom you are nourishing? When you have sex, who you are that do it? When you keep company, when you exercise, when you converse, don’t you know that you are nourishing God, exercising God? You carry God around with you, you wretch, and you don’t know it.

Do you think I mean some god of silver or gold, outside you? You carry him within yourself, and you don’t notice that you’re defiling him with impure thoughts and filthy actions.

And if a statue of God were present, you wouldn’t dare do any of the things you do. But when God himself is present within you, seeing and hearing everything, aren’t you ashamed to think and do such things, you who are blind to your own nature and under God’s wrath?

Why, then, when we send a young man out from school to some line of action, are we afraid that he’ll do something badly, eat badly, have sex badly, that rags will humble him or fine clothes puff him up?

This one doesn’t know his own god; this one doesn’t know with whom he is setting out. And are we to put up with him saying, “I wish I had you with me”?

Don’t you have God there? And having him, do you look for someone else?

Will he tell you anything other than this? Why, if you were a statue by Phidias, his Athena or his Zeus, you’d remember both yourself and the craftsman, and if you had any sense at all, you would try [would] to do nothing unworthy of the one who made you or of yourself, and not to appear in an unbecoming posture to those looking at you;

but as it is, because Zeus made you, you don’t care what sort of person you show yourself to be? And how is the one craftsman like the other, or the one work like the other?

What work of a craftsman has straightaway within itself the powers that its construction displays? Isn’t it stone, or bronze, or gold, or ivory? And Phidias’s Athena, once she has stretched out her hand and received the Victory on it, stands like that for all eternity; but the works of God move, breathe, use impressions, test them.

Being the work of this craftsman, do you disgrace it? What’s more, he not only made you, but entrusted you to yourself alone and placed you in your own keeping—

and won’t you remember even that, but disgrace the trust as well? If God had entrusted some orphan to you, would you neglect him like this?

He has handed you over to yourself and says, “I had no one more trustworthy than you. Keep this person for me as he is by nature: self-respecting, trustworthy, high-minded, undaunted, free from passion, undisturbed.” And then you don’t keep him?

“But people will say, ‘Where did this fellow get that lofty brow and solemn face?’” Not yet as it deserves. “For I don’t yet have confidence in what I’ve learned and assented to; I’m still afraid of my own weakness.

Just let me gain confidence, and then you’ll see the look one should have and the bearing one should have; then I’ll show you the statue, when it’s finished, when it’s polished.

What do you think? A lofty brow? Heaven forbid. Did the Zeus at Olympia put on a lofty brow? No, his gaze is fixed, as befits one about to say, ‘No word of mine can be taken back or prove false.’note

That’s how I’ll show myself to you: trustworthy, self-respecting, noble, undisturbed—

What, then? Someone immortal and ageless, perhaps? Someone who never falls ill? No: someone who dies like a god, who is ill like a god. This I have, this I can do; the rest I neither have nor can do.

I’ll show you the sinews of a philosopher. What sinews? Desire that never fails to get what it wants, aversion that never falls into what it would avoid, impulse as it ought to be, purpose that is careful, assent that is never rash. That’s what you’ll see.”

Simply fulfilling the promise of a human being is no ordinary thing.

For what is a human being? —“A rational, mortal animal,” someone says. —Then, straight away, what does being rational set us apart from? —From wild beasts. —And from what else?

—From sheep and the like. —Then take care you never do anything the way a wild beast does. Otherwise you’ve destroyed the human being; you haven’t fulfilled the promise. Take care you never do anything the way a sheep does. Otherwise, that way too, the human being is destroyed.

So what do we do like sheep? When we act for the sake of our belly, for the sake of our genitals, at random, in a filthy way, without paying attention, where have we sunk to? To the level of sheep.

What have we destroyed? Our rationality. When we act combatively, harmfully, angrily, aggressively, where have we sunk to?

To the level of wild beasts. So then, some of us are big wild beasts, and others small, spiteful little beasts, the kind that make you say, “Let it be a lion that eats me, at least!”

And through all of these the promise of a human being is destroyed.

For when is a conjunction preserved? When it fulfills its promise; so a conjunction is preserved when it is made up of true parts. When is a disjunction? When it fulfills its promise. When are pipes, a lyre, a horse, a dog?

So what’s surprising if a human being too is preserved in the same way, and destroyed in the same way?

Each thing is strengthened and preserved by the actions that correspond to it: the carpenter by carpentry, the grammarian by grammar. But if he gets into the habit of writing ungrammatically, his art is bound to be corrupted and destroyed.

In the same way, self-respecting actions preserve the self-respecting person and shameless ones destroy him; trustworthy actions preserve the trustworthy person, and their opposites destroy him.

And conversely, the opposite actions strengthen the opposite kinds of people: shamelessness the shameless, untrustworthiness the untrustworthy, abuse the abusive, anger the angry, and taking and giving out of all proportion the lover of money.

That’s why philosophers advise us not to be content with learning alone, but to add practice, and then training.

For over a long time we’ve grown used to doing the opposite, and it’s the opinions opposed to the right ones that we have ready to hand. So unless we make the right ones ready to hand as well, we’ll be nothing but interpreters of other people’s judgments.

Right now, which of us can’t give a technical lecture on good and bad? That of the things that exist, some are good, some bad, and some indifferent; good are the excellences and what shares in them; bad, the opposite; indifferent, wealth, health, reputation.

Then, if in the middle of our talking there’s a louder noise than usual, or one of those present laughs at us, we’re thrown into a panic.

Where are those things you were saying, philosopher? Where were you bringing them out from when you said them? From your lips, just from there. So why do you defile help that belongs to others? Why do you gamble with the most important things?

For it’s one thing to store bread and wine in a pantry, and another to eat them. What’s eaten is digested, distributed, and becomes sinews, flesh, bones, blood, a good complexion, easy breathing. What’s stored away you can take out and show whenever you like, readily enough, but it does you no good, except so far as it makes you seem to have it. For what difference does it make whether you expound these doctrines or those of people who think differently?

Sit down now and give a technical lecture on the doctrines of Epicurus, and maybe you’ll do it more usefully than Epicurus himself. So why do you call yourself a Stoic? Why do you deceive the multitude? Why do you play the part of a Jew when you’re a Greek?

Don’t you see how each person comes to be called a Jew, a Syrian, an Egyptian? And when we see someone hedging between the two, we usually say, “He isn’t a Jew, he’s just playing the part.” But when he takes on the state of mind of someone who has been immersed and has made his choice, then he really is a Jew, and is called one.note

So we too are counterfeit converts, immersed in name only: Jews in word, something else in deed, with no real feeling for the reasoning we profess, far from putting into practice the things we say—the very things we pride ourselves on, as if we knew them.

So it is that we, who can’t even fulfill the promise of a human being, take on that of a philosopher as well—a burden as heavy as if someone who couldn’t lift ten pounds wanted to hoist the stone of Ajax.note

Consider who you are. First of all, a human being: that is, someone who has nothing more authoritative than choice, with everything else subordinate to it, while choice itself is not enslaved or subject to anything.

So consider what reason sets you apart from. You’re set apart from wild beasts, you’re set apart from sheep.

Beyond that, you’re a citizen of the world and a part of it—not one of the parts that serve, but one of those that lead; for you can understand the divine government of things and reason out what follows from it.

What, then, is the promise of a citizen? To treat nothing as a private advantage, to deliberate about nothing as though cut off from the whole, but to be like the hand or the foot: if they had reason and understood their natural constitution, they would never exert impulse or desire in any way except by referring it to the whole.

That’s why the philosophers are right to say that if the good and noble man knew in advance what was going to happen, he would even cooperate with being ill, dying and being maimed, because he would see that this is allotted him by the ordering of the universe, and that the whole is more important than the part, and the city than the citizen.

But as it is, since we don’t know in advance, it’s our duty to hold on to whatever is naturally more fit to be chosen, since we were born for this too.

Next, remember that you are a son. What is the promise of this role? To regard everything that is his as his father’s, to obey him in everything, never to criticize him to anyone or say or do anything to harm him, to give way to him in everything and yield, helping him as far as he can. After this, know that you are also a brother.

To this role too you owe deference, obedience, kind words, never contesting with him any of the things outside your choice, but gladly giving them up, so that you may have the larger share in the things within your choice.

For see what it means to gain his goodwill in exchange for a lettuce, if it comes to that, or a seat—what an advantage that is!

After that, if you’re a member of some city’s council, remember that you’re a councilor; if young, that you’re young; if old, that you’re old; if a father, that you’re a father.

For each of these names, when you stop to reflect on it, always sketches out the actions that belong to it.

But if you go off and run down your brother, I tell you, “You’ve forgotten who you are and what your name is.”

Then, if you were a smith and used your hammer the wrong way, you’d have forgotten the smith; but if you’ve forgotten the brother, and become an enemy instead of a brother, will it seem to you that you’ve traded nothing for nothing?

And if instead of a human being, a gentle and social creature, you’ve become a wild beast—harmful, treacherous, biting—have you lost nothing? Must you lose some cash to be harmed? Does the loss of nothing else harm a human being?

Then if you lost your grammar or your music, you’d count its loss as damage; but if you lose your self-respect, your restraint and your gentleness, you think the matter is nothing?

And yet those things are lost through some external cause outside our choice, but these through our own doing; and those it’s neither fine to have nor shameful to lose, but with these, not having them and losing them is shameful, disgraceful and a misfortune. What does the man lose who takes the passive role in sex with men?

His manhood. And the one who does it to him? Many other things, and he too loses his manhood no less. What does the adulterer lose?

The self-respecting man, the self-controlled man, the decent man, the citizen, the neighbor. What does the angry man lose? Something else. The frightened man?

Something else. No one is bad without loss and damage. So then, if you look for damage in terms of cash, all of these are unharmed, have lost nothing, and even, as it may happen, gain and profit, whenever some cash comes their way through one of these deeds.

But see: if you reduce everything to a bit of cash, not even the man who loses his nose will have been harmed. —“Yes, he will,” he says, “because his body has been mutilated.”

—Come now: and the man who has lost his very sense of smell, does he lose nothing? Is there no power of the soul, then, that benefits the one who acquires it and damages the one who loses it?

—What sort do you mean? —Don’t we have a natural sense of self-respect? —We do. —Isn’t the man who loses it damaged? Isn’t he deprived of something, doesn’t he lose something that belongs to him?

Don’t we have a natural trustworthiness, a natural affection, a natural wish to help, a natural tolerance of one another? So is the man who lets himself be damaged in these respects to be unharmed and without loss?

What, then? Am I not to harm the one who harmed me? —First look at what harm is, and remember what you’ve heard from the philosophers.

For if the good lies in choice, and the bad likewise in choice, see whether what you’re saying doesn’t come to this: “What, then?

Since he harmed himself by doing me some wrong, am I not to harm myself by doing him some wrong?”

So why don’t we picture it like that? Why do we think that where there’s some damage to the body or to property, there’s harm, but where it’s to our choice, there’s no harm at all?

For the man who has been deceived, or who has done wrong, doesn’t get a headache, or a pain in his eye or his hip; he doesn’t lose his field.

And these are the only things we care about. But whether our choice will be self-respecting and trustworthy or shameless and untrustworthy, that doesn’t bother us in the slightest—except in the school, and only as far as our little arguments go.

And so we make progress as far as our little arguments go, but outside them not the slightest bit.

The beginning of philosophy, at least for those who take it up as they should and come in by the front door, is an awareness of your own weakness and incapacity in the things that matter most.

For we don’t come into the world with any natural concept of a right-angled triangle or a quarter-tone; we’re taught each of them through some technical instruction, and that’s why those who don’t know them don’t think they know them, either.

But who has come into the world without an innate concept of good and bad, fine and shameful, fitting and unfitting, happiness, what is proper and what falls to us, what we ought to do and what we ought not to do?

That’s why we all use these words and try to apply our preconceptions to particular cases.

“He did well”; “as he should”; “not as he should”; “he was unlucky”; “he was lucky”; “he’s unjust”; “he’s just.” Which of us holds back from these words? Which of us puts off using them until he’s learned, the way people who don’t know do with terms about lines or sounds?

The reason is that in this area we come already taught to some extent by nature, as it were, and starting from this we’ve added conceit as well.

—“Why,” he says, “don’t I know what’s fine and what’s shameful? Don’t I have a concept of it?” —You do. —“Don’t I apply it to particular cases?” —You do. —“Then don’t I apply it well?”

—That’s where the whole question lies, and that’s where conceit comes in. For starting from these agreed points, people advance to what’s disputed by applying them inappropriately.

Since if they had acquired this too, on top of the rest, what would stop them from being perfect?

But now, since you think you also apply your preconceptions to particular cases appropriately, tell me, where do you get that from? —“It seems so to me.” —But it doesn’t seem so to someone else, and he too thinks he applies them well. Or doesn’t he?

—He does. —So can the two of you apply your preconceptions appropriately in matters where you hold conflicting opinions?

—We can’t. —Then can you show us anything higher than your own opinion that would help us apply them better? And does the madman do anything other than what seems good to him? So is this criterion enough for him too? —It isn’t. —Then we must come to something higher than seeming. What is it?

Look, here’s the beginning of philosophy: an awareness of how people conflict with one another, a search for what causes the conflict, a rejection and distrust of mere opinion, an inquiry into whether an opinion is correct, and the discovery of a standard, just as we discovered the scale for weights, and the carpenter’s rule for straight and crooked.

—Is this the beginning of philosophy? Is everything that seems so to everyone right? —And how can things that conflict be right? —Then not all of them, but the ones that seem so to us.

Why those rather than what seems so to the Syrians, why rather than to the Egyptians, why rather than what appears so to me or to so-and-so? —No reason. —So what seems so to each person isn’t enough to make it so. For even with weights and measures we aren’t content with how things merely look; we’ve discovered a standard for each.

So here is there no standard higher than seeming? And how can the most necessary things in human life be beyond evidence and discovery? —Then there is one.

—Then why don’t we look for it and find it, and having found it, use it from then on without deviating, without stretching out so much as a finger without it?

For this, I think, is what, once found, cures of their madness those who use mere seeming as the measure of everything; so that from then on, starting from things that are known and clearly distinguished, we can use our preconceptions, properly articulated, in particular cases.

What’s the subject under examination? —Pleasure.

—Bring it to the standard, throw it on the scale. Must the good be the kind of thing it’s right to be confident in and to trust? —It must. —Then is it right to be confident in something unstable?

—No. —Is pleasure something stable, then? —No. —Then pick it up, throw it off the scale, and drive it far out of the territory of good things.

But if you’re not sharp-sighted and one scale isn’t enough for you, bring another. Is it right to be elated at the good? —Yes. —Then is it right to be elated at a pleasure when it’s present? Careful you don’t say it is; otherwise I won’t think you even worthy of the scale.

That’s how things are judged and weighed, once the standards are ready;

and this is what doing philosophy is: examining and establishing the standards;

while actually using what you’ve come to know—that is the work of the good and noble man.

What you have to learn in order to know how to use reason in argument has been worked out precisely by our school. But when it comes to using these things properly, we’re completely untrained.

At any rate, give any one of us you like a layman to talk with, and he can’t find a way to deal with him. He stirs the fellow up a little, and if the man answers at cross-purposes, he can’t handle him any more; from then on he either abuses him or laughs at him and says, “He’s a layman; there’s no dealing with him.”

But a guide, when he comes across someone who’s lost, leads him to the right road; he doesn’t laugh at him or abuse him and walk off.

You too: show him the truth, and you’ll see that he follows. But as long as you don’t show it to him, don’t laugh at him; rather, recognize your own incapacity.

So how did Socrates do it? He compelled the man he was talking with to be his witness, and needed no other witness. That’s why he could say, “I don’t care about the others; I’m always satisfied with my opponent as my witness. And I don’t put the question to the vote of the others, only of the man I’m talking with.”

For he set out so clearly what followed from people’s concepts that anyone at all would recognize the contradiction and back away from it.

“Does the envious man rejoice?” —“Not at all; he’s distressed, rather.” He moved his partner by proposing the opposite. “Well, then: do you think envy is distress at bad things? And how could there be envy of bad things?”

So he made the man say that envy is distress at good things. “Well, then: could anyone envy things that are nothing to him?”

—“Not at all.” And so, having filled out and articulated the concept, he’d leave, without saying, “Define envy for me,” and then, when the man had defined it, “Your definition’s bad, for the definition isn’t coextensive with the thing defined” —

technical terms, and so tiresome and hard for laymen to follow, and yet we can’t do without them.

But the things by which the layman himself, following his own impressions, might concede a point or reject it—those are exactly what we’re quite unable to move him with.

And so, naturally enough, those of us with any caution at all, aware of this incapacity of ours, keep away from the business.

But most people, the rash ones, once they’ve got themselves into something like this, make a muddle and are muddled, and in the end they go off having abused and been abused.

The first and most characteristic thing about Socrates was that he never lost his temper in argument, never came out with anything abusive, never anything insolent, but put up with those who abused him and put an end to quarrels.

If you want to know how great his power was in this, read Xenophon’s Symposium, and you’ll see how many quarrels he settled.

That’s why, reasonably enough, among the poets too, the highest praise goes to the line: “Swiftly and skillfully he put an end even to a great quarrel.”

What then? Nowadays the business isn’t very safe, especially in Rome. For the man who does it obviously won’t be able to do it in a corner; he’ll have to go up to some ex-consul, perhaps, a rich man, and ask him:

“Can you tell me, you there, who you’ve entrusted your horses to?” “I can.” “To just anyone, someone who knows nothing about horses?” “Not at all.” “Well, then: who have you entrusted your gold or your silver or your clothes to?” “Not to just anyone either.”

“And your own body—have you ever considered entrusting it to someone to look after it?” “Of course.” “To an expert, obviously, in training or medicine?” “Certainly.”

“Are these the most important things you have, or have you acquired something else better than all of them?” “What do you mean?” “The thing, by Zeus, that uses these very things, and tests each of them, and deliberates.”

“Do you mean the soul?” “You’ve understood correctly; that’s exactly what I mean.” “By Zeus, I think this is by far the best thing I have.”

“Then can you tell me how you’ve taken care of your soul? For it’s not likely that a man as wise as you and as respected in the city would carelessly and at random let the best thing he has be neglected and go to ruin.”

“Not at all.” “But have you taken care of it yourself? Did you learn how from someone, or work it out yourself?” From here on comes the danger: first, that he may say,

“What business is it of yours, my good man? Are you my master?” And then, if you keep on bothering him, he may haul off and punch you.

I was once an enthusiast for this practice myself, before I ran into all this.

When I see someone anxious, I say: what on earth does this man want? If he didn’t want something that isn’t up to him, how could he still be anxious?

That’s why the lyre-player isn’t anxious when he sings on his own, but he is when he walks into the theater, even if he has a fine voice and plays beautifully. For he wants not only to sing well but also to win applause, and that’s no longer up to him.

So where he has knowledge, there he’s confident: bring any layman you like, and he pays no attention. But where he doesn’t know and hasn’t practiced, there he’s anxious.

What is it about? He doesn’t know what a crowd is, or what a crowd’s praise is. He’s learned to strike the top string and the bottom one, but what praise from the many is and what power it has in life, he neither knows nor has practiced.

So he’s bound to tremble and turn pale. Now, when I see someone afraid, I can’t say he isn’t a lyre-player; but I can say something else—and not just one thing, but many.

And first of all I call him a foreigner and say: this man doesn’t know where on earth he is; though he’s lived here so long, he doesn’t know the city’s laws and customs, what’s permitted and what isn’t. He’s never even called in a lawyer to tell him and explain what the law is.

He doesn’t write a will without knowing how it should be written or calling in someone who knows, nor does he otherwise seal a bond or draw up a guarantee; but he uses desire and aversion, impulse, intention and purpose without a lawyer.

How without a lawyer? He doesn’t know that he wants what isn’t granted and doesn’t want what is inevitable, and he doesn’t know either what is his own or what belongs to others. If he did know, he’d never be hindered, never be frustrated; he wouldn’t be anxious.

Of course not. Does anyone fear things that aren’t bad, then? —No. —Well, then: things that are bad, but that it’s up to him to prevent from happening?

—Not at all. —So if the things outside our choice are neither good nor bad, and everything within our choice is up to us, and no one can take those things from us or force on us any of them that we don’t want, where’s the room for anxiety any more?

But we’re anxious about our poor body, our bit of property, what Caesar will think—and about what’s within, not at all. Are we anxious about not forming a false opinion? —No; that’s up to me. —About exercising an impulse contrary to nature? —Not about that either. —

So when you see someone turning pale, just as the doctor says from his complexion, “This man’s spleen is affected, that one’s liver,” so you too should say, “This man’s desire and aversion are affected; they aren’t going smoothly, they’re inflamed.”

For nothing else changes a man’s color, or makes him tremble or his teeth chatter, or makes him shift from knee to knee and crouch on his feet.

That’s why Zeno wasn’t anxious when he was about to meet Antigonus: for Antigonus had no power over any of the things Zeno admired, and Zeno paid no attention to the things Antigonus did have power over.note

But Antigonus was anxious when he was about to meet Zeno, and with good reason: he wanted to please him, and that lay outside himself. Zeno didn’t want to please Antigonus, any more than any other expert wants to please someone with no skill.

Do I want to please you? What for? Do you know the standards by which one human being is judged by another? Have you taken the trouble to learn what a good man is and what a bad man is, and how each comes to be so? Then why aren’t you good yourself?

—“How am I not?” he says. —Because no good man grieves or groans, no one wails, no one turns pale and trembles or says, “How will he receive me? How will he listen to me?”

Slave! However he sees fit. So why do you care about what belongs to others? Now, isn’t it his fault if he receives what comes from you badly? —Of course. —And can the fault be one person’s and the harm another’s? —No. —Then why are you anxious about what belongs to others?

—Yes, but I’m anxious about how I’ll talk to him. —What, can’t you talk to him however you like? —But I’m afraid I’ll be thrown off.

—When you’re about to write the name “Dion,” you’re not afraid you’ll be thrown off, are you? —Not at all. —What’s the reason? Isn’t it that you’ve practiced writing? —Of course. —Well, then: if you were about to read, wouldn’t you be in the same state? —The same. —What’s the reason? That every art has something strong and confident about it within its own sphere.

So haven’t you practiced talking? And what else were you practicing in the school? —Syllogisms and shifting arguments. —What for? Wasn’t it so as to converse skillfully? And doesn’t “skillfully” mean at the right moment, safely and intelligently, and besides that without stumbling and without being tripped up, and on top of all that, confidently? —Yes.

—So when you’re a horseman and you’ve ridden out onto the plain against a foot soldier, you’re anxious—where you’re trained and he’s untrained? —Yes, but he has the power to kill me.

—Then tell the truth, you poor wretch; stop bragging, don’t claim to be a philosopher, don’t ignore who your masters are. But as long as your body gives them this handle to grab you by, follow anyone who’s stronger than you.

Socrates had practiced speaking—the man who talked the way he did to the tyrants, to the jurors, in prison. Diogenes had practiced speaking—the man who spoke the way he did to Alexander, to Philip, to the pirates, to the man who bought him *

to those who have made it their concern, the confident ones. But you, go about your own business and never leave it: go off into your corner, sit down, weave syllogisms and put them to someone else:

there’s no man in you to lead a city.

When one of the Romans came in with his son and listened to one of the readings, he said, “This is the method of teaching,” and fell silent.note

When the man asked him to go on to what followed, he said, “Every art is tedious for the layman who has no experience of it, while it’s being taught.”

And the products of the arts show at once what they’re useful for, what they were made for, and most of them also have something attractive and charming about them.

Take a shoemaker: being there and following how someone learns the trade is no fun, but the shoe is useful, and not unpleasant to look at, either.

And a carpenter’s training is particularly tiresome for a layman who happens to be there, but the work displays what the art is useful for.

You’ll see it much more with music. If you’re there while someone’s being taught, the lesson will seem to you the most unpleasant thing of all; yet the products of music are sweet and delightful for laymen to hear.

And here too, we picture the work of the one who does philosophy as something like this: that he must bring his will into harmony with what happens, so that nothing that happens happens against our will, and nothing that doesn’t happen fails to happen when we want it to.

The result for those who have established this is that they never fail to get what they desire, never fall into what they would avoid, and live out their lives free of pain, fear and disturbance, both on their own and with their associates, maintaining their relationships, both natural and acquired: son, father, brother, citizen, husband, wife, neighbor, fellow traveler, ruler, subject.

That’s how we picture the work of the one who does philosophy. Next, then, we ask how this is to be achieved.

Now, we see that the carpenter becomes a carpenter by learning certain things, and the helmsman becomes a helmsman by learning certain things. So perhaps here too it isn’t enough to want to become good and noble, but one also needs to learn certain things? So we ask what these are.

The philosophers say that the first thing to learn is this: that there is a God, that he provides for the universe, and that it’s impossible to escape his notice, not only in what you do, but even in what you intend or think. Next, what the gods are like.

For whatever they are found to be like, the man who means to please and obey them must try, as far as he can, to become like them:

if the divine is trustworthy, he too must be trustworthy; if free, he too must be free; if beneficent, he too beneficent; if magnanimous, he too magnanimous; and so, as one who emulates God, he must do and say everything that follows from that.

So where should we begin? —If you’ll condescend to it, I’ll tell you: first you have to understand the words. —So I don’t understand the words now?

—You don’t. —Then how is it that I use them? —The way illiterate people use articulate speech, the way cattle use impressions. Using is one thing, understanding another.