Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

were a wise man, and you take your seat and judge how I have explained some word, and how I have babbled whatever came into my head. You come full of envy, and humbled, because you bring nothing from home;392 and you sit during the discussion thinking of nothing else than how your father is disposed towards you and your brother. “What are they saying about me there? now they think that I am improving, and are saying, ‘He will return with all knowledge.’ I wish I could learn everything before I return: but much labor is necessary, and no one sends me anything, and the baths at Nicopolis are dirty; everything is bad at home, and bad here.”

Then they say, no one gains any profit from the school.⁠—Why, who comes to the school? who comes for the purpose of being improved? who comes to present his opinions to be purified? who comes to learn what he is in want of? Why do you wonder then if you carry back from the school the very things which you bring into it? For you come not to lay aside (your principles) or to correct them or to receive other principles in place of them. By no means, nor anything like it. You rather look to this: whether you possess already that for which you come. You wish to prattle about theorems? What then? Do you not become greater triflers? Do not your little theorems give you some opportunity of display? You solve sophistical syllogisms.393 Do you not examine the assumptions of the syllogism named the Liar?394 Do you not examine hypothetical syllogisms? Why then are you still vexed if you receive the things for which you come to the school? “Yes; but if my child die or my brother, or if I must die or be racked, what good will these things do me?”395⁠—Well, did you come for this? for this do you sit by my side? did you ever for this light your lamp or keep awake? or, when you went out to the walking place, did you ever propose any appearance that had been presented to you instead of a syllogism, and did you and your friends discuss it together? Where and when? Then you say, “Theorems are useless.” To whom? To such as make a bad use of them. For eye-salves are not useless to those who use them as they ought and when they ought. Fomentations are not useless. Dumbbells396 are not useless; but they are useless to some, useful to others. If you ask me now if syllogisms are useful, I will tell you that they are useful, and if you choose, I will prove it.397⁠—“How then will they in any way be useful to me?” Man, did you ask if they are useful to you, or did you ask generally? Let him who is suffering from dysentery ask me if vinegar is useful; I will say that it is useful.⁠—“Will it then be useful to me?”⁠—I will say: no. Seek first for the discharge to be stopped and the ulcers to be closed. And do you, O men, first cure the ulcers and stop the discharge; be tranquil in your mind, bring it free from distraction into the school, and you will know what power reason has.

XXII On Friendship398

What a man applies himself to earnestly, that he naturally loves. Do men then apply themselves earnestly to the things which are bad? By no means. Well, do they apply themselves to things which in no way concern themselves? not to these either. It remains then that they employ themselves earnestly only about things which are good; and if they are earnestly employed about things, they love such things also. Whoever then understands what is good, can also know how to love: but he who cannot distinguish good from bad, and things which are neither good nor bad from both, how can he possess the power of loving? To love then is only in the power of the wise.

How is this? a man may say, “I am foolish, and yet I love my child.”⁠—I am surprised indeed that you have begun by making the admission that you are foolish. For what are you deficient in? Can you not make use of your senses? do you not distinguish appearances? do you not use food which is suitable for your body, and clothing and habitation? Why then do you admit that you are foolish? It is in truth because you are often disturbed by appearances and perplexed, and their power of persuasion often conquers you; and sometimes you think these things to be good, and then the same things to be bad, and lastly neither good nor bad; and in short you grieve, fear, envy, are disturbed, you are changed. This is the reason why you confess that you are foolish. And are you not changeable in love? But wealth, and pleasure, and in a word things themselves, do you sometimes think them to be good, and sometimes bad? and do you not think the same men at one time to be good, at another time bad? and have you not at one time a friendly feeling towards them, and at another time the feeling of an enemy? and do you not at one time praise them, and at another time blame them? “Yes; I have these feelings also.” Well then, do you think that he who has been deceived about a man is his friend? “Certainly not.” And he who has selected a man as his friend and is of a changeable disposition, has he good will towards him? “He has not.” And he who now abuses a man, and afterwards admires him? “This man also has no good will to the other.” Well then, did you never see little dogs caressing and playing