Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-11-26

Dear Sir: Thank you for your fine
articles on Epictetus. This is the man
who has nodded my life more than
any other through reading. Many find
this philosopher hard to understand,
think the ideas involved, but they suit
me. Yours with appreciation. M. P. L. y
What makes any reading difficult to
understand?
In a surprisingly large number Of
cases 1t is not so much the thought
content as the way the whole is put up.
Closely packed paragraphs, small type,
failure to utilize natural divisions of
thought for equally natural blocks of
reading matter-these are few of the
mechanical difficulties.
Failure of a reader to really read
what is before him plays very large
part. There are an amazingly large
number of people who do what might
be called half read"
Instead of reading every word, they
skim over everything, so that in the
end they have no real idea of the
thought before them.
Somewhere they have gotten the idea
that swift reading is. the only sort, that
modern ideas of high speed may be APP
piled to type as well as to automobiles,
to book pages as well as to open roads.
X X X
Now IL there Is one book in the world
which cannot be read In haphaZard
fashion, it is the "Discourses" of the
old Stole philosopher EpictetuS.
The form of them precluded that.
They are just what the word says, dis
courses, or talks, taken down by one of
his pupils, Arrian, for his own use.
The way they are ordinarily printed
makes the perusal of them rather diff
flcult, fault which could be remedied
easily enough by the application of COM
mon sense to their placing on the
printed page.
AS far as we know, no publisher has
yet found the sale of Epictetus suff1-
GENTLY large to warrant a big new
edition, with the questions and answers
of the old man and his students set out
plainly as such.
The difficulty is enhanced by the fact
that often it Is difficult to determine
whether it is Epictetus himself who
answers his own questions, or the man
to whom the question is addressed.
Hence our idea of q new edition of
EpictetuS would be one in story form, in
which one who loves this work, peculiar
even among ancient manuscripts, yet
surprisingly modern, will bring to its
Interpretation large understanding of
Roman and Greek manners.
X X 4
In such an edition there would be
nothing hard to understand and no
involvement of ideas other than those
inherent in the words themselves.
Today's editions of Epictetus. one
must admit. make hard reading to all
except those who find in this philoso-
pher their souls desire.
Such readers as our correspondent
need no introduction, no urge. They
discover in the crisp sentences of Epic
tetus something which Is lacking in
other ancient savants.
His mood is so based on what We
moderns call common sense that the
reading Of him is almost like the daily
scanning of the favorite newspaper.
Epictetus is no more difficult to I'M
derstand than a good newspaper &C
count of an up-to-the-minute. bit of
news, If one will read him in the came
spirit.
This Is true, as we see it, because
what he wrote about are the problems
of everyday life and the personal &C
ceptance of life, little matter in which
every one of us is no less involved today
than he and his friends were 1000 years
ago.
+ n 4
"The Everlasting Yea, stripped bare
of rhetoric and Illusion"