Epictetus, the Discourses as reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments/Book 2/Chapter 23

by Epictetus

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CHAPTER XXIII

Of the faculty of expression

Everyone would read with greater pleasure and ease the book that is written in the clearer characters. Therefore everyone would also listen with greater ease to those discourses that are expressed in appropriate and attractive language. We must not, therefore, say that there is no faculty of expression, for this is to speak both as an impious man and as a coward. As an impious man, because one is thereby disparaging the gifts received from God, as though one were denying the usefulness of the faculty of vision, or that of hearing, or that of speech itself. Did God give you eyes to no purpose, did He to no purpose put in them a spirit^[1] so strong and so cunningly devised that it reaches out to a great distance and fashions the forms of whatever is seen? And what messenger is so swift and so attentive as the eye? And did He to no purpose make also the intervening air so active and so intent^[2] that the vision passes through it as through some tense medium? And did He to no purpose create light, without the presence of which all else were useless?

⁵Man, be neither ungrateful for these gifts, nor yet forgetful of the better things, but for sight and hearing, yes and, by Zeus, for life itself and for what is conducive to it, for dry fruits, for wine, for olive oil, give thanks unto God; and at the same time remember that He has given you something better than all these things—the faculty which can make use of them, pass judgement upon them, estimate the value of each. For what is that which, in the case of each of these faculties, shows what it is worth?^[3] Is it each faculty itself? Did you ever hear the faculty of sight say anything about itself? Or the faculty of vision?^{[† 1]} No, but they have been appointed as servants and slaves to minister to the faculty which makes use of external impressions. And if you ask, what each thing is worth, of whom do you ask? Who is to answer you? How, then, can any other faculty be superior to this which both uses the rest as its servants, and itself passes judgement upon each several thing and pronounces upon it? For which one of them knows what it is and what it is worth? Which one of them knows when one ought to use it, and when not? What is the faculty that opens and closes the eyes, and turns them away from the things from which it should turn them, but directs them toward other things? The faculty of sight? No, but the faculty of moral purpose. What is the faculty that closes and opens the ears? ¹⁰What is that faculty by virtue of which men are curious and inquisitive, or again, unmoved by what is said? The faculty of hearing? No, it is none other than the faculty of moral purpose. When, then, this faculty sees that all the other faculties which surround it are blind and deaf, and unable to see anything but the very acts for which they have been appointed to serve and minister unto it, while it alone sees clearly and surveys, not only all the rest, determining what each is worth, but itself also, is it likely to pronounce that anything else is supreme but itself? And what else can the open eye do but see? But whether it ought to see someone's wife and how, what faculty tells it? That of moral purpose. And what faculty tells a man whether he ought to believe what he has been told, or disbelieve, and, if he believes, whether he ought to be provoked by it or not? Is it not that of moral purpose? And this faculty of speech and of the adornment of language, if it really is a separate faculty, what else does it do, when discourse arises about some topic, but ornament and compose the words, as hairdressers do the hair? ¹⁵But whether it is better to speak than to keep silence, and to do so in this way, or in that, and whether this is appropriate or not appropriate, and the proper occasion and utility of each action—what else tells us all this but the faculty of moral purpose? Would you, then, have it come forward and condemn itself?

"What then," says an objector, "if the matter stands like this, and it is possible for that which serves to be superior to what it serves—the horse to the rider, or the dog to the hunter, or his instrument to the harper, or his servants to the king?"^[4] Well, what faculty is it that uses the services of the rest in this way? Moral purpose. What is it that attends to everything? Moral purpose. What is it that destroys the whole man, sometimes by hunger, sometimes by a noose, sometimes by hurling him over a cliff? Moral purpose. Is there, then, anything stronger than this among men? Yet how can the things that are subject to hindrance be stronger than that which is unhindered? What are by their very nature capable of hindering the faculty of vision? Both moral purpose and things that lie outside its sphere. The same hinder vision; and so it is also with speech. But what is by its very nature capable of hindering moral purpose? Nothing that lies outside its sphere, but only itself when perverted. For this reason moral purpose becomes the only vice, or the only virtue.

²⁰Therefore, since it is so great a faculty and has been set over everything else, let it come before us and say that the flesh is of all things the most excellent. Nay, even if the flesh itself called itself most excellent, one would not have tolerated such a statement. But now what is it, Epicurus, that makes such a declaration? that composed the treatise On the End, or The Physics, or On the Standard?^[5] that caused you to let your beard grow long?^[6] that wrote as it was dying: "We are spending what is our last and at the same time a happy day?"^[7] Was it the flesh or the moral purpose? Come, do you confess that you have something superior to the flesh, and you are not insane, either? Are you, in all truth, so blind and deaf?

Well, what then? Does a man despise his other faculties? Far from it! Does a man say there is no use or advancement save in the faculty of moral purpose? Far from it! That is unintelligent, impious, ungrateful towards God. Nay, he is but assigning its true value to each thing. For there is some use in an ass, but not as much as there is in an ox; there is use also in a dog, but not as much as there is in a slave; there is use also in a slave, but not as much as there is in your fellow-citizens; there is use also in these, but not as much as there is in the magistrates. ²⁵Yet because some things are superior we ought not to despise the use which the others give. There is a certain value also in the faculty of eloquence, but it is not as great as that of the faculty of moral purpose. When, therefore, I say this, let no one suppose that I am bidding you neglect speech, any more than I bid you neglect eyes, or ears, or hands, or feet, or dress, or shoes. But if you ask me, "What, then, is the highest of all things?" what shall I say? The faculty of eloquence? I cannot; but rather that of moral purpose, when it becomes a right moral purpose. For it is this which uses not only that faculty of eloquence but also all the other faculties both small and great; when this has been set right a man becomes good, when it has failed a man becomes bad; it is through this that we are unfortunate, and are fortunate, blame one another, and are pleased with one another; in a word, it is this which, when ignored, produces wretchedness, but when attended to produces happiness.

³⁰But to do away with the faculty of eloquence and to say that in all truth it is nothing is the act not merely of a man ungrateful to those who have given it, but also cowardly. For such a person seems to me to be afraid that, if there really is a faculty of this kind, we may not be able to despise it. Such also are those who assert that there is no difference between beauty and ugliness. What! could a man be affected in the same way by the sight of Thersites and that of Achilles? Or by the sight of Helen and that of some ordinary woman? But these are the notions of foolish and boorish persons who do not know the nature of each several thing, but are afraid that if a man notices the superiority of the faculty in question he will immediately be carried away by it and come off worsted. Nay, the great thing is this: to leave each in the possession of his own proper faculty, and, so leaving him, to observe the value of the faculty, and to learn what is the highest of all things, and in everything to pursue after this, to be zealous about this, treating all other things as of secondary value in comparison with it, though without neglecting these, as far as this is possible. ³⁵For we must take care of our eyes too, yet not as the highest thing, but we must take care of them for the sake of the highest; because this latter will not have its natural perfection unless it uses the eyes with reason and chooses one thing instead of another.

What, then, generally takes place? Men act like a traveller on the way to his own country who stops at an excellent inn, and, since the inn pleases him, stays there. Man, you have forgotten your purpose; you were not travelling to this but through it.^[8] "But this is a fine inn." And how many other inns are fine, and how many meadows—yet simply for passing through. But your purpose is the other thing, to return to your country, to relieve the fear of your kinsmen, to do the duties of a citizen yourself, to marry, bring up children, hold the customary offices. For you did not come into the world to select unusually fine places, I ween, but to live and go about your business in the place where you were born and were enrolled as a citizen. ⁴⁰Something like this takes place also in the matter which we are considering. Since a man must advance to perfection through the spoken word and such instruction as you receive here, and must purify his own moral purpose and correct the faculty which makes use of external impressions, and since the instruction must necessarily be given by means of certain principles, and in a particular style, and with a certain variety and impressiveness in the form of these principles, some persons are captivated by all these things and stay where they are; one is captivated by style, another by syllogisms, another by arguments with equivocal premisses, another by some other "inn" of that sort, and staying there they moulder away as though they were among the Sirens.

Man, your purpose was to make yourself competent to use conformably with nature the external impressions that came to you, in desire not to fail in what you would attain, and in avoidance not to fall into what you would avoid, never suffering misfortune, never ill fortune, free, unhindered, unconstrained, conforming to the governance of Zeus, obeying this, well satisfied with this, blaming no one, charging no one, able to say with your whole heart the verses, beginning:

"Lead thou me on, O Zeus, and Destiny."^[9]

And then, although you have this purpose, because some petty trick of style, or certain principles, catch your fancy, are you going to stay just where you are and choose to dwell there, forgetful of the things at home and saying "This is fine"? Well, who says that it is not fine? But only like a passageway, like an "inn." For what is to prevent a man having the eloquence of Demosthenes and yet being unhappy, and what is to prevent him from analyzing syllogisms like Chrysippus, and yet being wretched, from sorrowing, envying, in a word, from being disturbed and miserable? Absolutely nothing. ⁴⁵You see, then, that these were "inns" of no value, while your purpose was something else. When I speak thus to some people they think that I am disparaging the study of rhetoric or that of general principles. Yet I am not disparaging this, but only the habit of dwelling unceasingly on these matters and setting one's hopes in them. If a man does his hearers harm by presenting this view, set me down too as one of those who work harm. But when I see that one thing is highest and supreme, I cannot say the same of something else, in order to gratify you, my hearers.

Footnotes

1. In Stoic physiology the spirit of vision connected the central mind with the pupil of the eye, and sight was produced by the action of this spirit upon external objects, not by the passive reception of rays. See L. Stein, Psychologie der Stoa (1886), 127-9; Erkenntnistheorie der Stoa (1888), 135 f.; A. Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa (1890), 123; and for the origins of this general theory, J. I. Beare, Greek Theories of elementary Cognition (1906), 11 ff.
2. That is, firm, taut, elastic, so as to be sensitive to the action of the spirit of vision, and not dull and yielding like mud or putty.
3. For the general theme, see I. 1.
4. This passage is very obscure in the original and it may well be that something is missing before § 16 which would make the objector's question more plausible, or else after the first part of the question, so that the remainder would belong to the answer by Epictetus. It is not impossible that the whole paragraph, §§ 16—19, is derived from a separate context and fitted in here rather badly by Arrian himself or by some ancient reader or editor, because essentially it does no more than repeat the preceding paragraph.
5. Famous works by Epicurus, of which the first treated ethics and the third epistomology, the "standard" being a standard of judgement or criterion.
6. That is, assume the role of a philosopher, compare I. 2, 29, and note.
7. A slight variation from the standard form of the famous saying of Epicurus on his death-bed. See Usener, Epicurea, p. 143, 16 ff., and especially Diog. Laert. X. 10, 22: "And when he was at the point of death, he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus: 'We have written this letter to you on a happy day to us, which is also the last day of our life. For strangury has attacked me, and also a dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which arises from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplations, counter-balances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the youth to me, and to philosophy.'" (Yonge's translation.)
8. Compare the saying ascribed to Jesus by the Great Mogul Akbar as inscribed on a gateway of the ruined city Futtey-pore-Sikri in India. "Jesus had said: 'The world is but a bridge, over which you must pass, but must not linger to build your dwelling.'" See Resch, Agrapha (1906), no. 95, p. 292.
9. In Encheiridion 53 the other three verses are quoted:
   "To that goal long ago to me assigned.
   I'll follow and not falter; if my will
   Prove weak and craven, still I'll follow on."
   They are derived from a poem of Cleanthes (Von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, I. frag. 527). For a somewhat indifferent translation of them into Latin, see Seneca, Epist., 107. 11, who adds as a fifth verse in the pointed style characteristic of him: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. "The willing are led by fate, the reluctant dragged." It is not impossible that the sentiment here expressed may be one of the remote and probably unconscious inspirations of Cardinal Newman's celebrated hymn,
   "Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
   Lead Thou me on!"
   For his mind being haunted by "some texts of this kind," i.e., that "God meets those who go in His way," etc., see Ward's Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, I. 55.

Select critical notes

1. The words μή τι πυρῶν; μή τι κριθῶν; μή τι ἵππον; μή τι κυνός; "Or wheat, or barley, or a horse, or a dog?" which follow at this point in S, were deleted by Schenkl (after Schweighäuser) as being out of keeping with the context.