The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical, and exhibits a high idealistic type of morality. He is an earnest, sometimes stern and sometimes pathetic, preacher of righteousness, who despises the mere graces of style and the subtleties of an abstruse logic. He has no patience with mere antiquarian study of the Stoical writers. The problem of how life is to be carried out well is the one question which throws all other inquiries into the shade. True education lies in learning to wish things to be as they actually are; it lies in learning to distinguish what is our own from what does not belong to us. But there is only one thing which is fully our own,—that is, our will or purpose. God, acting as a good king and a true father, has given us a will which cannot be restrained, compelled or thwarted. Nothing external, neither death nor exile nor pain nor any such thing, can ever force us to act against our will; if we are conquered, it is because we have willed to be conquered. And thus, although we are not responsible for the ideas that present themselves to our consciousness, we are absolutely and without any modification responsible for the way in which we use them. Nothing is ours besides our will. The divine law which bids us keep fast what is our own forbids us to make any claim to what is not ours; and while enjoining us to make use of whatever is given to us, it bids us not long after what has not been given. “Two maxims,” he says, “we must ever bear in mind—that apart from the will there is nothing either good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or direct events, but merely accept them with intelligence.” We must, in short, resign ourselves to whatever fate and fortune bring to us, believing, as the first article of our creed, that there is a god, whose thought directs the universe, and that not merely in our acts, but even in our thoughts and plans, we cannot escape his eye. In the world the true position of man is that of member of a great system, which comprehends God and men. Each human being is in the first instance a citizen of his own nation or commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy in miniature. All men are the sons of God, and kindred in nature with the divinity. For man, though a member in the system of the world, has also within him a principle which can guide and understand the movement of all the members; he can enter into the method of divine administration, and thus can learn—and it is the acme of his learning—the will of God, which is the will of nature. Man, said the Stoic, is a rational animal; and in virtue of that rationality he is neither less nor worse than the gods, for the magnitude of reason is estimated not by length nor by height but by its judgments. Each man has within him a guardian spirit, a god within him, who never sleeps; so that even in darkness and solitude we are never alone, because God is within, our guardian spirit. The body which accompanies us is not strictly speaking ours; it is a poor dead thing, which belongs to the things outside us. But by reason we are the masters of those ideas and appearances which present themselves from without; we can combine them, and systematize, and can set up in ourselves an order of ideas corresponding with the order of nature.
The natural instinct of animated life, to which man also is originally subject, is self-preservation and self-interest. But men are so ordered and constituted that the individual cannot secure his own interests unless he contribute to the common welfare. We are bound up by the law of nature with the whole fabric of the world. The aim of the philosopher therefore is to reach the position of a mind which embraces the whole world in its view,—to grow into the mind of God and to make the will of nature our own. Such a sage agrees in his thought with God; he no longer blames either God or man; he fails of nothing which he purposes and falls in with no misfortune unprepared; he indulges in neither anger nor envy nor jealousy; he is leaving manhood for godhead, and in his dead body his thoughts are concerned about his fellowship with God.
The historical models to which Epictetus reverts are Diogenes and Socrates. But he frequently describes an ideal character of a missionary sage, the perfect Stoic—or, as he calls him, the Cynic. This missionary has neither country nor home nor land nor slave; his bed is the ground; he is without wife or child; his only mansion is the earth and sky and a shabby cloak. He must suffer stripes, and must love those who beat him as if he were a father or a brother. He must be perfectly unembarrassed in the service of God, not bound by the common ties of life, nor entangled by relationships, which if he transgresses he will lose the character of a man of honour, while if he upholds them he will cease to be the messenger, watchman and herald of the gods. The perfect man thus described will not be angry with the wrong-doer; he will only pity his erring brother; for anger in such a case would only betray that he too thought the wrong-doer gained a substantial blessing by his wrongful act, instead of being, as he is, utterly ruined.
The best editions of the works of Epictetus are by J. Schweighäuser (6 vols., Leipzig, 1799–1800) and H. Schenkl (Leipzig, 1894, 1898). English translations by Elizabeth Carter (London, 1758); G. Long (London, 1848, ed. 1877, 1892, 1897); T. W. Higginson (Boston, 1865, new ed. 1890); of the Encheiridion alone by H. Talbot (London, 1881); T. W. H. Rolleston (London, 1881). See A. Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa (Stuttgart, 1890) and Die Ethik des Stoikers Epiktet (1894): E. M. Schranka, Der Stoiker Epiktet und seine Philosophie (Frankfort, 1885); T. Zahn, Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältnis zum Christentum (2nd ed. Erlangen, 1895). See also Stoics and works quoted. (W. W.; X.)
EPICURUS (342–270 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born in
Samos in the end of 342 or the beginning of 341 B.C., seven years
after the death of Plato. His father Neocles, a native of Gargettos,
a small village of Attica, had settled in Samos, not later
than 352, as one of the cleruchs sent out after the victory of
Timotheus in 366–365. At the age of eighteen he went to Athens,
where the Platonic school was flourishing under the lead of
Xenocrates. A year later, however, Antipater banished some
12,000 of the poorer citizens, and Epicurus joined his father, who
was now living at Colophon. It seems possible that he had
listened to the lectures of Nausiphanes, a Democritean philosopher,
and Pamphilus the Platonist, but he was probably, like his father,
merely an ordinary teacher. Stimulated, however, by the perusal
of some writings of Democritus, he began to formulate a doctrine
of his own; and at Mitylene, Colophon and Lampsacus, he
gradually gathered round him several enthusiastic disciples.
In 307 he returned to Athens, which had just been restored to a
nominal independence by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and there he
lived for the rest of his life. The scene of his teaching was a
garden which he bought for about £300 (80 minae). There he
passed his days as the loved and venerated head of a remarkable,
and up to that time unique, society of men and women. Amongst
the number were Metrodorus (d. 277), his brother Timocrates,
and his wife Leontion (formerly a hetaera), Polyaenus, Hermarchus,
who succeeded Epicurus as chief of the school, Leonteus
and his wife Themista, and Idomeneus, whose wife was a sister
of Metrodorus. It is possible that the relations between the
sexes—in this prototype of Rabelais’s Abbey of Thélème—were
not entirely what is termed Platonic. But there is on the other
hand scarcely a doubt that the tales of licentiousness circulated
by opponents are groundless. The stories of the Stoics, who
sought to refute the views of Epicurus by an appeal to his alleged
antecedents and habits, were no doubt in the main, as Diogenes
Laertius says, the stories of maniacs. The general charges,
which they endeavoured to substantiate by forged letters, need
not count for much, and in many cases they only exaggerated
what, if true, was not so heinous as they suggested. Against
them trustworthy authorities testified to his general and remarkable
considerateness, pointing to the statues which the city had
raised in his honour, and to the numbers of his friends, who were
many enough to fill whole cities.
The mode of life in his community was plain. The general drink was water and the food barley bread; half a pint of wine was held an ample allowance. “Send me,” says Epicurus to a correspondent, “send me some Cythnian cheese, so that, should I choose, I may fare sumptuously.” There was no community of property, which, as Epicurus said, would imply distrust of their own and others’ good resolutions. The company was held in unity by the charms of his personality, and by the free intercourse which he inculcated and exemplified. Though he seems
