Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/333

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BOOK IV. IV. 24-28

that; one man jostles another; there is a crowd in the baths.^[1] And yet who of us does not take delight in the Olympic festival and leave it with sorrow? ²⁵Do not become peevish or fastidious towards events. "The vinegar is rotten, for it is sour." "The honey is rotten, for it upsets my digestion." "I don't like vegetables." In the same fashion you say, "I don't like leisure, it is a solitude." "I don't like a crowd, it is turmoil." Say not so, but if circumstances bring you to spend your life alone or in the company of a few, call it peace, and utilize the condition for its proper end; converse with yourself, exercise your sense-impressions, develop your preconceptions. If, however, you fall in with a crowd, call it games, a festival, a holiday, try to keep holiday with the people. For what is pleasanter to a man who loves his fellow-men than the sight of large numbers of them?^[2] We are glad to see herds of horses or cattle; when we see many ships we are delighted; is a person annoyed at the sight of many human beings? "Yes, but they deafen me with their shouting." Oh, well, it is your hearing that is interfered with! What, then, is that to you? Your faculty of employing external impressions is not interfered with, is it? And who prevents you from making natural use of desire and aversion, of choice and refusal? What manner of turmoil avails to do that?

↑ Referring clearly, I believe, to the baths at Olympia, where the accommodation seems to have been inadequate. See I. 6, 26.
↑ Cf. "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them" (Matt. ix. 36); and the remark attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "God must have loved the common people; He made so many of them." The characteristic emotions here indicated as arising at the contemplation of large numbers of one's fellow-men, though somewhat ditferent in tone from that in Epictetus, as well as from one another, are still essentially at one with the Stoic ideal of sympathetic fellowship, and are fundamentally opposed to that selfish or snobbish aversion towards mankind, which became so prevalent, even in religious circles, during the great decadence of ancient civilization.

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[1] Referring clearly, I believe, to the baths at Olympia, where the accommodation seems to have been inadequate. See I. 6, 26.

[2] Cf. "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them" (Matt. ix. 36); and the remark attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "God must have loved the common people; He made so many of them." The characteristic emotions here indicated as arising at the contemplation of large numbers of one's fellow-men, though somewhat ditferent in tone from that in Epictetus, as well as from one another, are still essentially at one with the Stoic ideal of sympathetic fellowship, and are fundamentally opposed to that selfish or snobbish aversion towards mankind, which became so prevalent, even in religious circles, during the great decadence of ancient civilization.

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