Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/491



What do I care, he (Epictetus) says, whether all things are composed of atoms, or of similar parts or of fire and earth? for is it not enough to know the nature of the good and the evil, and the measures of the desires and the aversions, and also the movements towards things and from them; and using these as rules to administer the affairs of life, but not to trouble ourselves about the things above us? For these things are perhaps incomprehensible to the human mind and if any man should even suppose them to be in the highest degree comprehensible, what then is the profit of them, if they are comprehended? And must we not say that those men have needless trouble who assign these things as necessary to the philosopher's discourse? Is then also the precept written at Delphi superfluous, which is Know thyself? It is not so, he says. What then is the meaning of it? If a man gave to a choreutes (member of chorus) the precept to know himself, would he not have observed in the precept that he must direct his attention to himself?

You are a little soul carrying a dead body, as Epictetus said.

He (Epictetus) said that he had discovered an art in giving assent; and in the topic (matter) of the movements he had discovered that we must observe attention, that the movements be subject to exception,, that they be social, that they be according to the worth of each thing; and that we ought to abstain entirely from desire, and to employ aversion to none of the things which are not in our power.