Book 2
16
This is the case also with ourselves. What do we admire? Externals. About what things are we busy? Externals. And have we any doubt then why we fear or why we are anxious? What then happens when we think the things, which are coming on us, to be evils? It is not in our power not to be afraid, it is not in our power not to be anxious. Then we say, Lord God, how shall I not be anxious? Fool, have you not hands, did not God make them for you? Sit down now and pray that your nose may not run.By the words sit down Epictetus indicates the man’s baseness and indolence, who wishes God to do for him that which he can do himself and ought to do. Schweig. Wipe yourself rather and do not blame him. Well then, has he given to you nothing in the present case? Has he not given to you endurance? has he not given to you magnanimity? has he not given to you manliness? When you have such hands, do you still look for one who shall wipe your nose? But we neither study these things nor care for them. Give me a man who cares how he shall do any thing, not for the obtaining of a thing, but who cares about his own energy. What man, when he is walking about, cares for his own energy? who, when he is deliberating, cares about his own deliberation, and not about obtaining that about which he deliberates? And if he succeeds, he is elated and says, How well we have deliberated; did I not tell you, brother, that it is impossible, when we have thought about any thing, that it should not turn out thus? But if the thing should turn out otherwise, the wretched man is humbled; he knows not even what to say about what has taken place. Who among us for the sake of this matter has consulted a seer? Who among us as to his actions has not slept in indifference?So Schweighaeuser explains this difficult passage. Perhaps he is right. This part of the chapter is obscure. Who? Give (name) tome one that I may see the man whom I have long been looking for, who is truly noble and ingenuous, whether young or old; name him.It is observable, that this most practical of all the philosophers owns his endeavours met with little or no success among his scholars. The Apostles speak a very different language in their epistles to the first converts of Christianity: and the Acts of the Apostles, and all the monuments of the primitive ages bear testimony to the reformation of manners produced by the Gospel. This difference of success might indeed justly be expected from the difference of the two systems. Mrs. Carter.—I have not quoted this note of Mrs. Carter, because I think that it is true. We do not know what was the effect of the teaching of Epictetus, unless this passage informs us, if Mrs. Carter has drawn a right inference from it. The language of Paul to the Corinthians is not very different from that of Epictetus, and he speaks very unfavourably of some of his Corinthian converts. We may allow that a reformation of manners was produced by the Gospel in many of the converts to Christianity, but there is no evidence that this reformation was produced in all; and there is evidence that it was not. The corruptions in the early Christian church and in subsequent ages are a proof that the reforms made by the Gospel were neither universal nor permanent; and this is the result which our knowledge of human nature would lead us to expect.
