All the Works of Epictetus, Which Are Now Extant/Book 3/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
[1]Concerning those who pretend Sickness, as an Excuse to return home.
§. 1.I Am sick here, said one of the Scholars. I will return home. Were you never sick at home then? Consider, whether you are doing any thing here, conducive to the Regulation of your Choice: for, if you make no Improvement, it was to no Purpose that you came. Go home. Take care of your domestic Affairs. For, if your ruling Faculty cannot be brought to a Conformity to Nature, your Land may. You may increase your Money, support the old Age of your Father, mix in the public Assemblies, and make a bad Governor, as you are a bad Man, and do other Things of that sort. But, if you are conscious to yourself, that you are casting off some of your wrong Principles, and taking up different ones in their room, and that you have transferred your Scheme of Life from Things not dependent on Choice, to those which are; and that, if you do sometimes cry alas, it is not upon the Account of your Father, or your Brother, but yourself; why do you any longer plead Sickness[2]? Do not you know, that both Sickness and Death must overtake us? At what Employment? The Husbandman, at his Plow; the Sailor, on his Voyage. At what Employment would you be taken? For, indeed, at what Employment ought you to be taken? If there is any better Employment, at which you can be taken, follow that. For my own Part, I would be taken engaged in nothing, but in the Care of my own Faculty of Choice, how to render it undisturbed, unrestrained, uncompelled, free. I would be found studying this, that I may be able to say to God, "Have I transgressed thy Commands? Have I perverted the Powers, the Senses, the Preconceptions, which thou hast given me? Have I ever accused Thee, or censured Thy Dispensations? I have been sick, because it was Thy Pleasure; and so have others; but I willingly. I have been poor, it being thy Will; but with Joy. I have not been in Power; because it was not thy Will; and Power I have never desired. Hast thou ever seen me out of Humour, upon this Account? Have I not always approached Thee, with a chearful Countenance; prepared to execute Thy Commands, and the Significations of thy Will? Is it Thy Pleasure, that I should depart from this Assembly? I depart. I give Thee all Thanks, that Thou hast thought me worthy to have a Share in it, with Thee; to behold Thy Works, and to join with Thee, in comprehending Thy Administration." Let Death overtake me while I am thinking, while I am writing, while I am reading, such Things as these.
§. 2. But I shall not have my Mother, to hold my Head, when I am sick.
Get home then to your Mother; for you are fit to have your Head held, when you are sick.
But I used at home, to lie on a fine Couch.
Get to this Couch of yours; for you are fit to lie upon such a one, even in Health: so do not lose the doing what you are qualified for. But what says Socrates? "As one Man rejoices in the Improvement of his Estate, another of his Horse, so do I daily rejoice in apprehending myself to grow better."
In what? In pretty Speeches?
Good Words, I intreat you.
In trifling Theorems? In what doth he employ himself? For indeed I do not see, that the Philosophers are employed, in anything else.
Do you think it nothing, never to accuse or censure any one, either God or Man? Always to carry abroad, and bring home, the same Countenance? These were the Things which Socrates knew; and yet he never professed to know, or to teach any thing; but if any one wanted pretty Speeches, or little Theorems, he brought him to Protagoras, to Hippias: just as if any one had come for Pot-herbs, he would have taken him to a Gardener. Who of you then hath such an [earnest] Intention as this? If you had, you would bear Sickness, and Hunger, and Death, with Cheerfulness. If any of you hath been in Love, he knows that I speak Truth.