# All the Works of Epictetus, Which Are Now Extant/Book 4/Chapter 10

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CHAPTER X.
What Things we are to despise, and on what to place a distinguished Value.
§. 1.The Doubts and Perplexities of all Men are concerning Externals. What they shall do? How it may be? What will be the Event Whether this Thing may happen, or that? All this is the Talk of Persons engaged in Things independent on Choice. For who says, How shall I do, not to assent to what is false? How, not to dissent from what is true? If any one is of such a good Disposition, as to be anxious about these Things, I will remind him: Why are you anxious? It is in your own Power. Be assured. Do not rush upon Assent before you have applied the natural Rule. Again, if he be anxious, for ​fear his Desire should be ineffectual and disappointed, or his Aversion incurred, I will first kiss him, because, slighting what others are in a Flutter and terrified about, he takes care of what is his own; where his very Being is: then I will say to him; If you would not be disappointed of your Desires, or incur your Aversions, desire nothing that belongs to others; be averse to nothing not in your own Power; otherwise your Desire must necessarily be disappointed, and your Aversion incurred. Where is the Doubt here? Where the room for, How will it be? What will be the Event? And, Will this happen, or that? Now is not the Event independent on Choice?——"Yes."——And doth not the Essence of Good and Evil consist in what depends on Choice?——"Yes."——It is in your Power then, to treat every Event conformably to Nature? Can any one restrain you?——"No one."——Then do not say to me any more, How will it be? For, however it be, you will set it right, and the Event to you will be lucky.
§. 2. Pray what would Hercules have been, if he had said, "What can be done to prevent a great Lion, or a great Boar, or savage Men, from coming in my Way?" Why, what is that to you? If a great Boar should come in your Way, you will fight the greater Combat: if wicked Men, you will deliver the World from wicked Men.——"But then if I should die by this Means?"——You will die a good Man, in the Performance of a gallant Action. For since, at all Events, one must die, one must necessarily be found doing something, either tilling, or digging, or trading, or serving a Consulship, or sick of an Indigestion, or a Flux. At what Employment then would you have Death find you? For my Part I would have it be some humane, beneficent, public spirited, gallant Action. But if I cannot be found doing any such great Things, yet, at least, I would be doing what I am ​incapable of being restrained from, what is given me to do, correcting myself, improving that Faculty which makes use of the Appearances of Things, to procure Tranquillity, and render to the several Relations of Life their Due; and, if I am so fortunate, advancing to the third Topic, a Security of judging right If Death overtakes me in such a Situation, it is enough for me, if I can stretch out my Hands to God, and say, "The Opportunities which Thou hast given me, of comprehending and following [the Rules] of thy Administration, I have not neglected. As far as in me lay, I have not dishonoured Thee. See how I have used my Perceptions; how, my Pre-conceptions. Have I at any time found fault with Thee? Have I been discontented at Thy Dispensations; or wished them otherwise? Have I transgressed the Relations of Life? I thank Thee, that Thou hast brought me into Being. I am satisfied with the Time that I have enjoyed the Things, which Thou hast given me. Receive them back again, and assign them to whatever Place Thou wilt; for they were all Thine, and Thou gavest them to me."
§. 3. Is it not enough to make one's Exit in this State of Mind? And what Life is better, and more becoming than that of such a one? Or what Con​clusion happier? But, in order to attain these Advantages, there are no inconsiderable Things, both to be taken and lost. You cannot wish both for a Consulship and these too, nor take Pains to get an Estate and these too, or be solicitous both about your Servants and yourself. But, if you wish any thing absolutely, of what belongs to others, what is your own is lost. This is the Nature of the Affair. Nothing is to be had for nothing. And where is the Wonder? If you would be Consul, you must watch, run about, kiss Hands, be wearied down with waiting at the Doors of others, must say and do many slavish Things, send Gifts to many, daily Presents to some. And what is the Consequence [of Success]? Twelve Bundles of Rods; to sit three or four times on the Tribunal; to give the Circensian Games, and Suppers in Baskets to all the World: or let any one show me what there is in it more than this. Will you then be at no Expence, no Pains to acquire Apathy, Tranquillity, to sleep sound while you do sleep, to be thoroughly awake while you are awake, to fear nothing, to be anxious for nothing? But, if any thing belonging to you be lost, or idly wasted, while you are thus engaged, or another gets what you ought to have had, will you immediately begin fretting at what hath happened? Will you not compare the Exchange you have made? How much for how much? But you would have such great Things for nothing, I suppose. And how can you? One Business doth not suit with another: you cannot bestow your Care both upon Externals and your own ruling Faculty. But. If you would have the former, let the latter alone; or you will succeed in neither, while you are drawn ​different Ways, towards both. On the other hand, if you would have the latter, let the former alone.——"The Oil will be spilled, the Furniture will be spoiled:" but still I shall be free from Passion.——"There will be a Fire when I am not in the Way, and the Books will be destroyed:"——but still I shall treat the Appearances of Things conformably to Nature.——"But I shall have nothing to eat."——If I am so unlucky, dying is a safe Harbour. That is the Harbour for all, Death: that is the Refuge; and, for that Reason, there is nothing difficult in Life. You may go out of Doors when you please, and be troubled with Smoke no longer.
§. 4. Why then are you anxious? Why do you keep yourself waking? Why do not you calculate where your Good and Evil lies: and say, they are both in my own Power; neither can any deprive me of the one, or involve me, against my Will, in the other. Why then do not I lay myself down and snore? What is my own, is safe. Let what belongs to others look to itself, who carries it off, how it is given away by Him, that hath the Disposal of it. Who am I, to will, that it should be so and so? For is the Option given to me? Hath any one made Me the Dispenser of it? What I have in my own Disposal is enough for me. I must make the best I can of this. Other Things must be as the Master of them pleases.
§. 5. Doth any one, who hath these Things before his Eyes, lie awake [like Achilles,] and shift from Side to Side? What would he have, or what doth he want? Patroclus, or Antilochus, or Menelaus? Why, did he ever think any one of his Friends immortal? Why, when had not he it before his Eyes, that the Morrow, or the next ​Day, himself, or that Friend, might die?——"Ay, very true, says he: but I reckoned, that he would survive me, and bring up my Son."——Because you were a Fool, and reckoned upon Uncertainties. Why then do you blame yourself; but sit crying, like a Girl?——"But he used to set my Dinner before me."——Because he was alive, Fool; but now he cannot. But Automedon will set it before you; and, if he should die, you will find somebody else. What if the Pipkin, in which your Meat used to be cooked, should happen to be broken; must you die with Hunger, because you have not your old Pipkin? Do not you send and buy a new one?
What greater Evil (says he) could afflict my Breast?
Is this your Evil then? And, instead of removing it, do you accuse your Mother, that she did not foretell it to you, that you might have spent your whole Life in grieving from that Time forward?
§. 6. Do not you think now, that Homer composed all this on Purpose to show us, that the noblest, the strongest, the richest, the handsomest of Men, may, nevertheless, be the most unfortunate and wretched, if they have not the Principles they ought to have?
* ↑ I read the Text, in this Place, as Wolfius appears by his Translation to have done.
* ↑ Thine they were, and Thou gaves them me. John xvii. 6.
* ↑ I wish it were possible to palliate the Ostentation of this Passage, by applying it to the ideal perfect Character: but it is in a general Way, that Epictetus hath proposed such a dying Speech, as cannot, without shocking Arrogance, be uttered by any one born to die. Unmixt as it is with any Acknowledgement of Faults or Imperfections at present, or with any Sense of Guilt on Account of the past, it must give every sober Reader a very disadvantageous Opinion of some Principles of the Philosophy, on which it is founded, as contradictory to the Voice of Conscience, and formed on absolute Ignorance, or Neglect, of the Condition and Circumstances of such a Creature as Man.
* ↑ See Enchiridion, c. xiii.
* ↑ The Ensigns of the Consular Office.
* ↑ These were distributed by the great Men in Rome to their Clients, as a Reward for their Attendance.
* ↑ Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Matth vi. 24.
* ↑ Antilochus and Menelaus are not mentioned, or referred to, in the Passage of Homer, to which Epictetus alludes.
* ↑ Αδηλα ωου, perhaps, should be Αδηλα δηλα ωου.
* ↑ I hop'd Patroclus might survive, to rear My tender Orphan, with a Parent's Care.Pope.
* ↑ Thou too, Patroclus, (thus his Heart he vents) Hast spread th' inviting Banquet in our Tents.Pope.
* ↑ This is a wretched Idea of Friendship; but a necessary Consequence of the Stoic System. What a fine Contrast to this gloomy Consolation are the noble Sentiments of an Apostle! Value your deceased Friend, says Epictetus, as a broken Pipkin; forget him, as a Thing worthless, lost, and destroyed. St. Paul, on the contrary, comforts the mourning Survivors; bidding them, not sorrow, as those who have no Hope: but remember, that the Death of good Persons is only a Sleep; from which they shall soon arise to a happy Immortality.