Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 79came after him, is Epictetus. A slave of Epaphro-ditus, a freedman of Nero, weak in body and lame, hebecame. while still a slave a disciple of Musonius.He must, later in life, have obtained his freedom.Under Domitian he had to quit Rome with the otherphilosophers. He was probably born about 50, andlived to about 120. His view of philosophy is thatit consists pretty much in what is to be desired andwhat is to be avoided. Its foundation is the consciousnessof one's own weakness and helplessness." Hast thou the wish to be good ? believe that thouart bad." " The philosopher's school is a physician'shouse. You ought to leave it not in pleasure, butin pain. For you come as patients, one with hisshoulder put out, another with his head aching, athird with an ulcer, and so on. And am I to takemy seat and address you with fine sentences andstriking thoughts for you to break out into praise ofme, and then for you to go away each of you with hisshoulder or his head or his ulcer just as he broughtthem ? Is it for this that young men take longjourneys, leave parents, friends, relations, and theirproperty too, that they may cry * Bravo!' at my witticisms? Did Socrates, or Zeno, or Cleanthes, so ?"The really important thing is to speak to their consciences,to bring them to the feeling of their miseryand ignorance, to call forth in them the earnestresolution to improve, to make them philosophers, notin their opinion but in their conduct. " Show me,"says Epictetus, " a Stoic, if not one formed, yet onein process of forming. Show me, one of you, thespirit of a man purposing to be of one mind withGod, never hereafter to blame God r or man, * to bedisappointed in nothing, to be hurt by nothing, not