Kitap 2
1
We are then in the condition of deer;It was the fashion of hunters to frighten deer by displaying fathers of various colours on ropes or strings and thus frightening them towards the nets. Virgil, Georg. iii. 372— Puniceaeve agitant pavidos formidine pennae, when they flee from the huntsmen’s feathers in fright, whither do they turn and in what do they seek refuge as safe? They turn to the nets, and thus they perish by confounding things which are objects of fear with things that they ought not to fear. Thus we also act: in what cases do we fear? In things which are independent of the will. In what cases on the contrary do we behave with confidence, as if there were no danger? In things dependent on the will. To be deceived then, or to act rashly, or shamelessly or with base desire to seek something, does not concern us at all, if we only hit the mark in things which are independent of our will. But where there is death, or exile or pain or infamy, there we attempt to run away, there we are struck with terror. Therefore as we may expect it to happen with those who err in the greatest matters, we convert natural confidence (that is, according to nature) into audacity, desperation, rashness, shamelessness; and we convert natural caution and modesty into cowardice and meanness, which are full of fear and confusion. For if a man should transfer caution to those things in which the will may be exercised and the acts of the will, he will immediately by willing to be cautious have also the power of avoiding what he chooses: but if he transfer it to the things which are not in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear, he will be unstable, he will be disturbed. For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death. For this reason we commend the poetEuripides, fragments. who said Not death is evil, but a shameful death. Confidence (courage) then ought to be employed against death, and caution against the fear of death. But now we do the contrary, and employ against death the attempt to escape; and to our opinion about it we employ carelessness, rashness and indifference. These things SocratesIn the Phaedon, c. 24, or p. 78. properly used to call tragic masks; for as to children masks appear terrible and fearful from inexperience, we also are affected in like manner by events (the things which happen in life) for no other reason than children are by masks. For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of knowledge. For when a child knows these things, he is in no way inferior to us. What is death? A tragic mask. Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separatedIt was the opinion of some philosophers that the soul was a portion of the divinity sent down into human bodies. from the spirit either now or later as it was separated from it before. Why then are you troubled, if it be separated now? for if it is not separated now, it will he separated afterwards. Why? That the period of the universe may be completed,This was a doctrine of Heraclitus and of Zeno. Zeno (Diog. Laert. vii. 137) speaks of God as in certain periods or revolutions of time exhausting into himself the universal substance (οὐσία) and again generating it out of himself. Antoninus (xi. 1) speaks of the periodical renovation of all things. For man, whose existence is so short, the doctrine of all existing things perishing in the course of time and then being renewed, is of no practical value. The present is enough for most men. But for the few who are able to embrace in thought the past, the present and the future, the contemplation of the perishable nature, of all existing things may have a certain value by elevating their minds above the paltry things which others prize above their worth. for it has need of the present, and of the future, and of the past. What is pain? A mask. Turn it and examine it. The poor flesh is moved roughly, then on the contrary smoothly. If this does not satisfy (please) you, the door is open:Sec. i. 9, note 7. Schweighaeuser says that he does not quite see what is the meaning of ought to be open; and he suggests that Epictetus intended to say we ought to consider that the door is open for all occasions; but the occasions, he says, ought to be when things are such that a man can in no way bear them or cannot honourably endure them, and such occasions the wise man considers to be the voice of God giving to him the sign to retire. if it does, bear (with things). For the door ought to be open for all occasions; and so we have no trouble.
