BOOK IV. I. 109-115
vouchsafed them, and to their own powers which they had received for the very opposite use—high-mindedness, nobility of character, courage, and the very freedom for which we are now seeking.—110For what purpose, then, did I receive these gifts?—To use them.—How long?—For as long as He who lent them to you wills.—But what if they are necessary to me?—Do not set your heart upon them, and they will not be necessary to you. Do not say to yourself that they are necessary, and they will not be.
This is what you ought to practise from morning till evening. Begin with the most trifling things, the ones most exposed to injury, like a pot, or a cup, and then advance to a tunic, a paltry dog, a mere horse, a bit of land; thence to yourself, your body, and its members, your children, wife, brothers. Look about on every side and cast these things away from you. Purify your judgements, for fear lest something of what is not your own may be fastened to them, or grown together with them, and may give you pain when it is torn loose. And every day while you are training yourself, as you do in the gymnasium, do not say that you are "pursuing philosophy" (indeed an arrogant phrase!), but that you are a slave presenting your emancipator in court;[1] for this is the true freedom. This is the way in which Diogenes was set free by Antisthenes,[2] and afterwards said that he could never be enslaved again by any man. 115How, in consequence, did he behave when he was captured![3] How he treated the pirates!
- ↑ It is tempting to conjecture καρπιστείαν, "making provision for your emancipation," since every man must win his own freedom for himself. But Epictetus probably is thinking here of a man being won to freedom by following some great philosopher, who is his emancipator, as in the famous illustration in the next sentence. It is interesting to observe how, with all its insistence upon individual responsibility, even Stoicism at this time was becoming a religion of books, examples, and saviours.
- ↑ See III. 24, 67.
- ↑ A very famous incident in the life of the philosopher. See especially, Musonius frag. 9 (p. 49, 8ff., Hense): Gellius, II, 18, 9-10; Lucian, Vit. Auct. 7; Diogenes Laertius, 6, 30; 36; 74; Ps.-Crates, Epist. 34; and above, III. 24, 66.
