Book 4
10
Now is not that which will happen independent of the will? Yes. And the nature of good and of evil is it not in the things which are within the power of the will? Yes. Is it in your power then to treat according to nature every thing which happens? Can any person hinder you? No man. No longer then say to me, How will it be? For however it may be, you will dispose of it well,See a passage in Plutarch on Tranquillity from Euripides, the great storehouse of noble thoughts, from which ancient writers drew much good matter: and perhaps it was one of the reasons why so many of his plays and fragments have been preserved. We must not quarrel with the things that are, For they care not for us but he who feels them If he disposes well of things, fares well. and the result to you will be a fortunate one. What would Hercules have been if he said, How shall a great lion not appear to me, or a great boar, or savage men? And what do you care for that? If a great boar appear, you will fight a greater fight: if bad men appear, you will relieve the earth of the bad. Suppose then that I lose my life in this way. You will die a good man, doing a noble act. For since we must certainly die, of necessity a man must be found doing something, either following the employment of a husbandman, or digging, or trading, or serving in a consulship or suffering from indigestion or from diarrhoea. What then do you wish to be doing when you are found by death? I for my part would wish to be found doing something which belongs to a man, beneficent, suitable to the general interest, noble. But if I cannot be found doing things so great, I would be found doing at least that which I cannot be hindered from doing, that which is permitted me to do, correcting myself, cultivating the faculty which makes use of appearances, labouring at freedom from the affects (labouring at tranquillity of mind), rendering to the relations of life their due; if I succeed so far, also (I would be found) touching on (advancing to) the third topic (or head) safety in the forming judgments about things.See iii. c. 2. If death surprises me when I am busy about these things, it is enough for me if I can stretch out my hands to God and say: The means which I have received from thee for seeing thy administration (of the world) and following it, I have not neglected: I have not dishonoured thee by my acts: see how I have used my perceptions, see how I have used my preconceptions: have I ever blamed thee? have I been discontented with any thing that happens, or wished it to be otherwise? have I wished to transgress the (established) relations (of things)? That thou hast given me life, I thank thee for what thou hast given: so long as I have used the things which are thine I am content; take them back and place them wherever thou mayest choose; for thine were all things, thou gayest them to meThine they were, and thou gavest them to me. John xvii. 6. Mrs. Carter.—Is it not enough to depart in this state of mind, and what life is better and more becoming than that of a man who is in this state of mind? and what end is more happy?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. Unmixed as it is with any acknowledgment 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. Mrs. Carter. I am inclined to think that Epictetus does refer to the ideal perfect character; but others may not understand him in this way. When Mrs. Carter says but it is in a general . . . dying speech, she can hardly suppose, as her words seem to mean, that Epictetus proposed such a dying speech for every man or even for many men, for he knew and has told us how bad many men are, and how few are good according to his measure and rule: in fact his meaning is plainly expressed. The dying speech may even be stronger in the sense in which Mrs. Carter understands it, in my translation, where I have rendered one passage in the text by the words I have not dishonoured thee by my acts, which she translates, as far as in me lay, I have not dishonoured thee. which apparently means, as far as I could, I have not dishonoured thee. The Latin translation quantum in me fuit, seems rather ambiguous to me. There is a general confession of sins in the prayer book of the Church of England, part of which Epictetus would not have rejected, I think. Of course the words which form the peculiar Christian character of the confession would have been unintelligible to him. It is a confession which all persons of all conditions are supposed to make. If all persons made the confession with sincerity, it ought to produce a corresponding behaviour and make men more ready to be kind to one another, for all who use it confess that they fail in their duty, and it ought to lower pride and banish arrogance from the behaviour of those who in wealth and condition are elevated above the multitude. But I have seen it somewhere said, I cannot remember where, but said in no friendly spirit to Christian prayer, that some men both priests and laymen prostrate themselves in humility before God and indemnify themselves by arrogance to man.
