Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

38 EPICTETUS.
the power of the will it is not an evil. . . . Caesar has condemned a
;
person. It is a thing beyond the power of the will, not an evil. The
man is afflicted at this. Affliction is a thing that depends on the will ;
it is an evil. He has borne the condemnation bravely. That is a
thing within the power of the will ;
it is a good. If we train ourselves
in this manner we shall make progress.
. . . Your son is dead. What
has happened ? Your son is dead. Nothing more ? Nothing. Your
ship is lost. What has happened Your ? ship is lost. A man has
been led to prison. What has happened? He has been led to prison.
. . . But Zeus, you say, does not do right in these matters. Why?
because he has made you capable of endurance ? because he has made
you magnanimous ? because he has taken from that which befalls you
the power of being evils ? because it is in your power to be happy
while you are suffering what you suffer ;
because he has opened the
door to you, when things do not please you? Man, go out and do
not complain.
l
This was a very high doctrine indeed it is a hard saying,
who can hear it/ the disciple of Epictetus might well exclaim,
aye, did exclaim for the teaching had to be considerably
toned down to become a working theory
of the conduct of
life for the Roman world. Epictetus, far more than any
Roman Stoic, returned to the ancient Cynic views. He was
a Stoic Puritan of the strictest type, and he lived in his life
what he taught with his lip ; every
sacredly
word with him was
real. This doctrine had to be somewhat modified
in actual practice.
The Roman School accordingly discovered that among
things which are not good or evil, there are differences of
an important kind. There are some which meet a natural
want, or conduce to a higher good, or keep the body in
health, or leave the mind free for thought, and these things
they called things to be preferred, while their contraries
were things to be avoided ;
meanwhile the old term
a$ia<popa
(indifferent) which in the ancient doctrine of the school
included them all, was reserved for a much narrower class
of things of neutral tint and accidental value. This gave a
much larger human interest to the doctrine, and conciliated
1
Bk. III. ch. 8.