EPICTETUS ON SIN
When we reached the lecture-room, a little late, we found it unusually
crowded. My place was taken, and I could not see Arrian in his customary
seat. Epictetus was in one of his discursive moods. He began with the
assertion—by this time familiar to me, but somewhat distasteful now,
fresh as I was from the atmosphere of the Jewish writings—that Gods
and men alike seek nothing but “their own profit.” As in most of his
epigrams, he meant just the opposite of what he seemed to assert. He
hated high-flown language as much as he loved high thought and action.
Even when he mentioned “the beautiful”—on which most Greeks go off into
rhapsodies—he almost always subordinated it to the “logos” or told us
that we must look for it in ourselves. So here again. Man, he declared,
must give up all things—property, reputation, children, wife, country,
if they are incompatible with his true “profit.” Then, of course, he
shewed that man’s “profit” is virtue, so that we need not give up these
blessings unless their possession is incompatible with virtue.
What he said next was new to me. A father, losing a child in death,
must not say “I have lost my child,” but “I have given it back.” When I
say “new,” I mean new in his teaching. But I had recently met something
like it in my books of Hebrew poems, “The Lord hath given, the Lord hath
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Later on, I heard Epictetus
repeat this almost in the same form. This seemed to me not only beautiful
and devout but also consistent with reasonable faith.
But I could not follow him when, in reply to the objection, “He that took
away this thing from me is a villain,” he said, “What does it matter to
you by whom the Giver asked back the gift?” It seemed to me that a recoil
from villainy, as well as delight in virtue, ought to find a place even
in the calmest of mankind. No philosopher, he said, can have an “enemy,”
because no one can do him any harm or touch anything that really belongs
to him. This was true—in a sense. Its reasonableness contrasted with
the passionate poetry of the Jews, which I had found full, too full, of
talk about enemies. And yet, the more I meditated on the contrast, the
more this “What does it matter to you?” seemed to become a cold-blooded,
unnatural, and immoral question. Surely it ought to “matter” to us a
great deal whether we suffered loss from some neighbour’s forgetfulness
or from some enemy’s premeditated and malignant treachery. He went on
in the same chilling style. “Desire,” said he, “about that which is
happening, that it shall happen. Then you will have a stream of constant
peace.” I seemed to see Priam “desiring that which was happening” when
he saw Troy burned and the women ravished! His son, Polites, was being
butchered by Pyrrhus before his eyes, and the old king was standing by,
placidly enjoying “a stream of constant peace”!
Then Epictetus said, “An uneducated man blames others for his own evils.
A beginner blames himself. An educated man blames neither others nor
himself.” After this, he introduced what he called the law laid down
by God. “Right convictions make the will and purpose good. Crooked and
perverse convictions make the will bad. This law,” he said, “God has laid
down, and He says to each of us, ‘If you will have anything that is good,
take it from yourself’.” Then came another mention of the law—“the divine
law” he now called it. It was connected with “right convictions,” as to
which he asked “What are these?” His reply was, “They are such as a man
ought to meditate on all the day long. We must have such a conviction as
will prevent us from attaching our feelings to anything that is other
than our own—whether companion, or place, or bodily exercise, or even
the body itself. We must remember the law and have it always before our
eyes.”
This phrase, “meditate all the day long,” reminded me of some words of
David, which I had been reading the day before, “Oh how I love thy law!
It is my meditation all the day.” Other Hebrew expressions also came into
my mind concerning the sweetness and fragrance of the Lord’s commandment,
how the poet “opened his mouth and drew in his breath” to taste its
delight. These I could understand, when they applied to a law of love,
a law of the emotions, a “feeling.” But I wondered what Epictetus could
produce for us of a nature to kindle such enthusiasm. He continued, “And
what is the divine law? It is this. First, Keep the things that are your
own. Secondly, Do not claim things not your own; use them, if given; do
not desire them, if not given. Thirdly, When anything is being taken from
you, give it up at once in a detached spirit, and with gratitude for the
time during which one has used it.”
“Keep the things that are your own!”—This he placed first, and on this
he laid most emphasis, dwelling on each syllable. I fancied that he
knew he was disappointing us and almost took pleasure in it as though
he were administering to us a wholesome but bitter medicine. “You find
this sour,” he seemed to say: “Sour or not, it is the truth, the only
solid and safe truth. It is not the dream of a poet, or the scheme of a
student. It is the plan of a man of business, practicable for all—for
slaves as well as free men, for individuals in a desert as well as for
communities in a city. ‘Love your neighbour’—that is expecting too much.
‘Do not covet what is your neighbour’s’—that is expecting too little.
‘Keep that which belongs to you!’ There you have a rule that makes you
independent of all neighbours.” I was miserably disappointed; yet I could
not help respecting and admiring our Master’s unflinching frankness, his
determination to force us to face the austere truth, and his contempt for
anything that seemed incapable of being put into practice at all times
and in all circumstances.
He spoke next of “sin” or “error.” Some of his language strangely
resembled Paul’s, but with great differences. He made mention of a
“conflict,” but he seemed mostly to mean “a conflicting state of
things,” “logical contradiction,” or inconsistency. It might be called
self-contradiction, taken as including actions, and not words alone. He
also used the very same phrase as Paul’s “that which he willeth he doeth
not,” but not in the same way, as may be seen from the following extract
which I took down exactly: “Every error includes self-contradiction. For
since the person erring does not wish to err but to go straight, it is
clear that what he wills to do he does not do.… Now every soul endowed
with ‘logos’ by nature is disposed to dislike self-contradiction. As long
as a man has not followed up the facts and perceived that he is in a
state of self-contradiction, he is in no way prevented from doing things
that are self-contradictory; but, when he has followed them up, he must
necessarily revolt from the self-contradiction.… Here then comes in the
need of the teacher skilled in ‘logos’ … but the teacher needs also power
to refute what is wrong and to stimulate the pupil to what is right. This
teacher will give the erring man a glimpse into the self-contradiction in
which he errs, and will make it clear to him _that he is not doing that
which he wills to do and that he is doing that which he wills not to do_.
As soon as this is made clear to the person in error, he will, of himself
and of his own accord, depart from his error.”
Then he supposed a case where a man had relapsed from philosophy into a
profligate and shameless life. And first he tried to shew the offender
how much he had lost in losing modesty and decency and true manliness.
“There was a time,” he said, “when you counted this as the only loss
worth mentioning.” Next, he shewed each of us how to regain what we
had lost. “It is you yourself,” he exclaimed, “you yourself, no other
whom you have to blame. Fight against yourself! Tear yourself away to
seemliness, decency, and freedom.”
Lastly, he appealed—as I had never heard him do before—to the feelings
of loyalty and affection that we might entertain for himself. I thought
he must be recalling his old days in Rome, when he, a boy and a slave,
in the house of Epaphroditus, might be exposed to the temptations and
coercions to which such slaves were subject; and he asked his pupils
to imagine their feelings if someone came to them reporting that their
Master, Epictetus, had been forced to succumb.
“If,” said he, very slowly and deliberately, with emphasis on each
syllable, “if someone were to come and tell you that a certain man was
compelling _me_”—here he hurried onward—“to lead the sort of life that
you are now leading, to wear the sort of dress that you wear, to perfume
myself as you perfume yourself, would you not go off straightway and
lay violent hands on the man that was thus abusing me? Rescue yourself,
then, as you would have rescued me. You need not kill anyone, strike
anyone, go anywhere. Talk to yourself! Persuade (who else should do it
better?)—persuade yourself.”
Never, in my experience, had Epictetus more nearly fulfilled the promise
made in his behalf by Arrian—that he would always make his hearers feel,
for the moment, precisely what he wished them to feel. There were two
or three in the class notorious for their profligacy; but the appeal
went home to others as well, conscious of minor derelictions. “Persuade
yourself!” There was no need of it. We were all, to a man, already
persuaded. Infants and babies though we were, we could all stand up and
walk—for the moment. He proceeded in the same spirit-stirring tone, as
though—now that we had all resolved to go on this arduous journey with
him as a guide—he would go first and shew us how to push our way through
the forest.
“First of all,” said he, “give sentence against the present state of
things.” He did not say “_against yourselves_.” That would have been too
discouraging. We were to condemn “_the present state of things_”; that
is, our present self. “In the next place,” he continued, “do not give up
hope of yourself. Do not behave like the poor-spirited creatures who,
because of one defeat, give themselves up altogether and let themselves
be carried downward by the stream. Take a lesson from the wrestling-ring.
That young fellow yonder has had a fall. ‘Get up,’ says the trainer,
‘Wrestle again, and go on till you get your full strength.’ Act you in
the same spirit. For, mark you, there is nothing more pliable than the
human soul. You must _will_. Then the thing is done, and the crooked is
made straight. On the other hand, go to sleep; and then all is ruined.
From your own heart comes either your destruction or your help.”
He concluded with a word of warning. Perhaps some of us might appeal to
his own _dictum_ about seeking our own “profit,” as being the only right
and wise course. He met it as follows: “After this, do you say ‘What
good shall I get by it?’ What greater ‘good’ do you look for than this?
Whereas you once were shameless, you will now have received again the
faculty of an honourable shame. From the orgies of vice you will have
passed into the ranks of virtue. Formerly faithless and licentious, you
will now be faithful and temperate. If you seek any other objects better
than these, go on doing still the things you are doing now. Not even a
God can any longer save you.”