# All the Works of Epictetus, Which Are Now Extant/Book 3/Chapter 23

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CHAPTER XXIII.
Concerning such as read and dispute, ostentatiously.
§. 1.First say to yourself, what you would be; and then do, what you have to do. For, in almost every thing else, we see this to be the Practice. Olympic Champions first determine what they would be, and then act accordingly. To a Racer, in a longer Course, there must be one kind of Diet, Walking, Anointing, and Exercise: to one in a shorter, all these must be different; and to a Pentathlete, still more different. You will find the Case the same in the manual Arts. if a Carpenter, you must have such and such Things: if a Smith, such other. For, if we do not refer each of our Actions to some End, we shall act at random: if to an improper one, we shall miss our Aim. Further: there is a general and a particular End. First, to act as a Man. What is comprehended in this? Not to be, though gentle, like a Sheep; nor mischievous, like a wild Beast. But the particular End relates to the Study, and Choice of each Individual. A Harper is to act as a Harper; a Carpenter, as a Carpenter; a Philosopher, as a Philosopher; an Orator, as an Orator. When therefore you say, "Come, and hear me read:" observe first, not to do this at random; and, in the next place, after you have found to what End you refer it, consider whether it be a proper one. Would you be useful, or be praised? You presently hear him say, "What do I value the Praise of the Multitude?" And he says well: for this is nothing to a Musician, or a Geometrician, as such. You would be useful then. In what? Tell us, that we too may run, to make Part of your ​Audience. Now, is it possible for any one to benefit others, who hath received no Benefit himself? No: for neither can he, who is not a Carpenter, or a Shoemaker, benefit any, in respect to those Arts. Would you know then, whether you have received Benefit? Produce your Principles, Philosopher: What is the Aim and Promise of Desire? Not to be disappointed. What of Aversion? Not to be incurred. Come do we fulfil this Promise? Tell me the Truth: but, if you falsify, I will tell it you. The other Day, when your Audience came but coldly together, and did not receive what you said, with Acclamations of Applause, you went away dejected. Again: the other Day, when you were praised, you went about, asking every body, "What did you think of me?"——"Upon my "Life, Sir, it was prodigious."——"But, how did "I express myself upon that Subject?"——"Which?"——"Where I gave a Description of Pan, and the Nymphs?"——"Most excellently."——And do you tell me, after this, that you regulate your Desires and Aversions conformably to Nature? Get you gone. Persuade somebody else. Did not you, the other Day, praise a Man, contrary to your own Opinion? Did not you flatter a certain Senator? Would you wish your own Children to be like him?——"Heaven forbid!"——"Why "then did you praise and cajole him?"——"He is an ingenious young Man, and attentive to Discourses."——"How so?"——"He admires me." Now indeed you have produced your Proof. After all, what do you think? Do not these very People secretly despise you? When therefore a Man, conscious of no good Action, or Intention, finds some Philosopher saying, "You are a great Genius, and of a frank and candid Disposition;" what do you ​think he says, but, "This Man hath some Need of me." Pray tell me, what Action of a great Genius he hath shown. You see, he hath long conversed with you, hath heard your Discourses, hath heard your Lectures. Hath he turned his Attention to himself? Hath he perceived his own Faults? Hath he thrown off his Conceit? Doth he seek an Instructor?——Yes, he doth.——An Instructor how to live? No, Fool; but how to talk: for it is upon this Account that he admires you. Hear what he says. "This Man writes with very great Art, and much more finely than Dion." That is quite another Thing. Doth he say, This is a modest, faithful, calm Person? But, if he said this too, I would ask him, since he is faithful, What is it to be faithful? And, if he could not tell, I would add, First learn the Meaning of what you say, and then speak. While you are in this bad Disposition then, and gaping after Applauders, and counting your Hearers, would you be of Benefit to others? "To-day I had many more Hearers." "Yes, many: we think there were five hundred." You say nothing: make them a Thousand.——"Dion never had so great an Audience." "How should he?"——"And they have a fine Taste for Discourses."——"What is excellent, Sir, will move even a Stone." Here is the Language of a Philosopher! Here is the Disposition of one, who is to be beneficial to Mankind! Here is the Man, attentive to Discourses! Who hath read the Works of the Socratic Philosophers, as such; not as if they were the Writings of Orators, like Lysius and Isocrates. "I have often wondered by what ​Arguments, &c. No: By what Argument: that is the more perfectly accurate Expression." Is this to have read them any otherwise, than as you read little Pieces of Poetry? If you read them as you ought, you would not dwell on such Trifles; but would rather consider such a Passage as this: Anytus and Melitus may kill; but they cannot hurt me. And, I am always so disposed, as to regard none of my Friends, but that Reason, which, after Examination, appears to me to be the best. Hence, who ever heard Socrates say, "I know, or teach, any thing?" But he sent different People to different Instructors: so they came to him, desiring to be recommended to the Philosophers; and he took and recommended them. No: but I warrant you, as he accompanied them, he used to give them such Advice as this: "Hear me discourse To-day at the House of Quadratus."——Why should I hear you? Have you a Mind to show me how finely you put Words together, Sir? And what Good doth that do you? "But praise me."——What do you mean by praising you?——Say, incomparable! prodigious!——Well: I do say it. But, if Praise be that which the Philosophers call by the Appellation of Good, what have I to praise you for? If it be a Good to speak well, teach me, and I will praise you.——"What then, ought these Things to be heard without Pleasure?"——By no means. I do not hear even a Harper, without Pleasure; but am I therefore to stand playing upon the Harp? Hear what Socrates says to his Judges. "It would not be decent for me to appear before you, at this Age, com​posing Speeches, like a Boy." Like a Boy, says he. For it is, without doubt, a pretty Knack, to chuse out Words, and place them together and then to read or speak them gracefully in public; and, in the midst of the Discourse, to observe, that "he vows by all that is good, there are but Few capable of these Things." But doth a Philosopher apply to People to hear him? Doth not he attract those who are fitted to receive Benefit from him, in the same manner as the Sun, or their necessary Food doth? What Physician applies to any body to be cured by him? (Though now indeed I hear, that the Physicians at Rome apply for Patients; but in my Time they were applied to) "I apply to you, to come and hear that you are in a bad Way; and that you take care of every thing, but what you ought: that you know not what is good or evil; and are unfortunate, and unhappy." A fine Application! And yet, unless the Discourse of a Philosopher hath this Effect, both that, and the Speaker, are void of Life. Rufus used to say, If you are at leisure to praise me, I speak to no Purpose. And indeed he used to speak in such a manner, that each of us, who heard him, supposed, that some Person had accused us to him; he so hit upon what was done by us, and placed the Faults of every one, before his Eyes.
§. 2. The School of a Philosopher is a Surgery. You are not to go out of it with Pleasure, but with Pain; for you come there, not in Health: but one of you hath a dislocated Shoulder; another, an Abscess; a third, a Fistula; a fourth, the Headach. And am I then, to sit uttering pretty trifling Thoughts, and little Exclamations, that, when you have praised me, you may each of you go away with the same dislocated Shoulder, the same aching ​Head, the same Fistula, and the same Abscess, that you brought? And is it for this that young Men are to travel? And do they leave their Parents, their Friends, their Relations, and their Estates, that they may praise you, while you are uttering little Exclamations? Was this the Practice of Socrates? Of Zeno? Of Cleanthes? "What then! is there not in speaking, a Style and Manner of Exhortation?"——Who denies it? Just as there is a Manner of Confutation, and of Instruction. But who ever therefore, added that of Ostentation, for a fourth? For in what doth the exhortatory Manner consist? In being able to show one and all, the Contradictions in which they are involved; and that they care for every thing rather than what they mean to care for: for they mean the Things conducive to Happiness; but they seek them where they are not to be found. To effect this, must a thousand Seats be placed, and an Audience invited; and you, in a fine Robe, or Cloke, ascend the Rostrum, and describe the Death of Achilles? Forbear, for Heaven's sake, to bring, as far as you are able, good Words and Practices into Disgrace. Nothing, to be sure, gives more Force to Exhortation, than when the Speaker shows, that he hath need of the Hearers! But tell me, who, when he hears you reading, or speaking is solicitous about himself? Or turns his Attention upon himself? Or says, when he is gone away, "The Philosopher hit me well." Instead of this, even though you are in high Vogue, is not all that one Man says; "He spoke finely about Xerxes."——"No, says another; but on the Battle of Thermopylæ." Is this the Audience of a Philosopher?
* ↑ See Note a. p. 196.
* ↑ Mr. Upton observes, that these florid Descriptions were the principal Study of the Sophists.
* ↑ Dion was a Greek Writer of those Times; called, for his Eloquence, Chrysostom, or Golden-mouthed; as one of the Fathers of the Church was afterwards.
* ↑ The Sense seems absolutely to require, that the latter ουτος should be either expunged or changed into τουτο.
* ↑ These Words are the Beginning of Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates; and it was a Debate among the minute Critics, whether Argument or Arguments was the proper Reading. Upton.
* ↑ It might be usual for Persons of Fashion to lend their Houses, for Sophists and Orators to declaim in. Upton.
* ↑ St. James uses the same Word, when he faith, Faith without Works is dead.