EPICTETUS ON DEATH
Returning to my rooms, I sat down to think out my problems alone.
Presently, on taking up the lecture-notes Arrian had given me, I found
that the title of the first was, “What is meant by being in desolation
or deserted? And who can call himself deserted?” The subject suited my
mood, and I began to read it, as follows: “Desolation is the condition of
a man unhelped. To be alone is not necessarily to be deserted. To be in
the midst of a multitude is not always to be undeserted. A man may be in
the centre of a crowd of his own slaves. But still, if he has just lost a
brother, he may be deserted. We may travel alone, yet never feel deserted
till we fall into the midst of a band of robbers. It is not the face of
a man that delivers us from desolation; it is the presence of someone
faithful and trustworthy, thoughtful and kind, good and helpful.”
I liked this. But afterwards the lecture strayed into what seemed to me
controversial theology or metaphysics, “If being alone suffices to make
you deserted, then say that Zeus Himself is deserted when the final fire
comes round in its cycle, consuming the universe. Say that He bewails His
loneliness exclaiming ‘Alas, me miserable! I have no Hera now! No Athene!
No Apollo! Not a single brother, son, or relation!’ Some people actually
do assert that Zeus behaves like this in the final fire!” I gathered
that he was attacking some philosophic tenet. But it did not interest
me any more than his subsequent assertion—or rather assumption—that
“Zeus associates with Himself, reposes on Himself, and contemplates the
nature of His own administration.” I have never felt drawn towards the
conception of a self-admiring, or a solitary God.
Arrian’s next note bore on the peace of the universe, a peace proclaimed
by the Logos, a peace resembling, but far surpassing, the peace
proclaimed by the Emperor, such a peace that every man can say, even
when he is alone, “Henceforth no evil can befall me. For me, robbers
and earthquakes have no existence. All things are full of peace, full
of tranquillity. Whether I am travelling on the high road, or living
in the city, whether in public assemblies or among private friends and
neighbours, nothing can harm me. There is Another, not myself, who makes
it His care to supply me with food. He it is that clothes me. He, not
myself, gave me the perceptions of my body. He, not myself, bestowed on
me the conceptions of my mind.”
Then followed a passage about death, which Arrian, during our last
conversation, had marked for my special attention: “_But if at any moment
He ceases to supply you with the things needful for your existence, then
take heed! In that moment He is sounding the bugle for you to cease the
conflict. He is saying to you, ‘Come!’ And whither? Into no land of
terrors. Simply into that same region from which you entered into being.
Into the company of such existences as are friendly and akin to you. Into
the elements. Such part as was fire in you will depart into fire; such
part of earth as was in you, into earth; such part of air or wind as was
in you, into air or wind; of water, into water. No Hades! No Acheron! No
Cocytus! No Pyriphlegethon! All things are full of Gods and dæmons!_” By
this I think he meant “good Gods and guardian angels.” He concluded thus,
“_Having such thoughts as these in his heart, looking up to the sun, the
moon, and the stars, and enjoying the earth and the sea, man has no more
right to call himself deserted than to call himself unhelped._”
It was not clear to me how I could continue to call myself “helped”
when I was on the point of being dissolved into the four elements.
If I were a criminal, successful in escaping punishment on earth, I
might deem it “help” (after a fashion) to know that I should be equally
successful after quitting the earth, because I need not fear Hades and
its three rivers as enemies. But where were the “friends”? The four
elements promised but cold friendship! Arrian’s comment rose to my mind,
and a second time I assented to it, “I cannot say that this satisfies
me.” Epictetus was so averse from anything like cant or insincerity of
expression that I was amazed—as I still am—that he could use, in such a
context, the words “friendly and akin.” Surely Sappho’s cry was truer,
when she wandered alone through the woods where she had once been loved
by Phaon—
“This place is now dead dust. He was its life.”
What would it profit that my “fiery part” should return to fire? It might
as well go astray into water, or earth, or into extinction, as far as
I cared. To be still loved would have been to be still in some kind of
home. But who would love my four elements? I should be “not I,” but only
four severed portions of what had once been “I,” fragments incapable even
of mourning, wandering among “dead dust,” no better than “dead dust”
themselves! How infinitely should I have preferred that Epictetus—if he
could not honestly accept the confident hope of Socrates concerning a
life after death,—should have said simply this, “As to what Zeus does
with our souls after death, others think they know much. I know nothing,
except that He does what is best.”
Reviewing passages in which Epictetus had mentioned the “soul,” I was
more perplexed than ever. For in those he distinctly recognised the
“_soul_” as “_better than the flesh_,” or “_better than the body_,” and
as using the body as its instrument. When, therefore, he spoke of God as
saying to man, “Come!” he ought to have supposed God to be addressing
_the whole man, soul as well as body, or perhaps the soul alone_, (using
the body, or the flesh, as its instrument). But if God said to the human
soul “Come!” how could He go on to say “Such part as was fire in you”
and so on, just as though we knew, without proof, that the _soul_ was
composed of nothing but fire, earth, air and water? We knew no such
thing. On the contrary, Epictetus continually assumed that we have within
ourselves “mind” and “logos.” He also said that “The being of God” is
“mind, knowledge, right logos.” Now he could hardly suppose that “mind”
and “logos” were composed of fire, earth, air, and water. For my part, I
did not feel that I knew anything certain about the distinctions between
“mind,” “soul,” “logos” and “I.” But those who made distinctions appeared
to me under an obligation to say what they meant by them.
It appeared to me that our Master had been inconsistent. As a rule, he
dealt with each of us as having a soul that was our real self, and a
body that was the tool of the soul. “Tyrants,” he would say, “can hurt
your _body_ but they cannot hurt _you_.” Might not a pupil of his go
on consistently to say, “Death can kill your _body_ but it cannot kill
_you_”? This, at all events, was what Socrates meant, when he said,
“As for me, Meletus could not hurt me.… He might kill, or banish, or
degrade,” for he certainly meant “kill” the _body_, not “kill” the _soul_.
Subsequently, when I came to read the Christian gospels, I found two of
them making this distinction in the words, “Be not afraid of them that
kill the body.” One of them added, “but cannot kill the soul,” the other
added “but cannot do anything more.” Then I understood more clearly why
Epictetus said nothing about what became of the soul after death. For
these two Christian writers spoke of a possibility that the soul might
be “destroyed in hell” or “cast into hell.” Now this was just what
Epictetus did not himself believe, and wished to make others disbelieve.
He preferred to give up the belief of Socrates that the good “go to the
islands of the blessed” after death, rather than believe also that the
bad go to a place of the accursed. Hence he dropped all thought of the
essential part, or parts, of man, namely, the soul, mind, and logos, as
soon as he came to speak of man’s death.
The consequence was that Epictetus confused us by an ambiguous use of
“_you_.” As long as we were alive he said to us, “_You_ must regard your
body as a mere tool,” where by “you” he meant the incorporeal part of
man. As soon as we were on the point of death, he said to us, “Do not
be alarmed. _You_ are going into the four elements,” where by “you” he
apparently meant our corporeal part. I felt sure then (as I do now) that
he did not intend to confuse us. He seemed to me to have been confused by
his own intense desire to persuade himself that men must do good without
hope of any reward at all except the consciousness of doing good in this
present life. I had not at that time read the Christian gospels; but
several passages in Paul’s epistles occurred to me as contrary to this
doctrine of Epictetus, and I thought that our Master might have been
biassed in part by Paul (as Scaurus had suggested)—only not, in this
instance, imitating Paul, but contradicting him. So I took up the epistle
to the Romans intending to read what Paul said there about Christ’s death
and resurrection.