Kitap 3
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Now, when you have once heard this discourse, go home and say to yourself, It is not Epictetus who has told me all these things,—for how should he?—but some propitious god through him; for it would never have entered the head of Epictetus, who is not used to dispute with any one. Well, let us obey God then, that we may not incur the Divine displeasure. If a crow has signified anything to you by his croaking, it is not the crow that signifies it, but God through him. And if you have anything signified to you through the human voice, doth he not cause that man to tell it to you, that you may know the Divine power which acts thus variously, and signifies the greatest and principal things through the noblest messenger? What else does the poet mean, when he says,— Since we forewarned him, Sending forth Hermes. watchful Argicide, Neither to slay, nor woo another’s wife. Homer, Odyssey, 1.37. Hermes, descending from heaven, was to warn him. and the gods now, likewise, send a Hermes the Argicide as messenger to warn you not to invert the well-appointed order of things, nor be absorbed in fopperies; but suffer a man to be a man, and a woman to be a woman; a beautiful man to be beautiful as a man; a deformed man to be deformed as a man; for your personality lies not in flesh and hair, but in the Will. If you take care to have this beautiful, you will be beautiful. But all this while, I dare not tell you that you are deformed; for I fancy you would rather hear anything than this. But consider what Socrates says to the most beautiful and blooming of all men, Alcibiades. Endeavor to make yourself beautiful. What does he mean to say to him,—Curl your locks, and depilate your legs? Heaven forbid! But rather, Regulate your Will; throw away your wrong principles.
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What is to be done with the poor body, then?
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Leave it to nature. Another hath taken care of such things. Give them up to him.
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What, then; must one be a sloven?
