Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/209

 of the senators and sun yourself. For in general remember this—that we crowd ourselves, we make close quarters for ourselves, that is to say, the decisions of our will crowd us and make us close quarters. Why, what is this matter of being reviled? Take your stand by a stone and revile it; and what effect will you produce? If, then, a man listens like a stone, what profit is there to the reviler? But if the reviler has the weakness of the reviled as a point of vantage, then he does accomplish something. "Strip him." Why do you say him? Take his cloak and strip that off. "I have outraged you." Much good may it do you! This is what Socrates practised, and that is why he always wore the same expression on his face. But we prefer to practise and rehearse anything rather than how to be untrammelled and free. "The philosophers talk paradoxes," you say. But are there not paradoxes in the other arts? And what is more paradoxical than to lance a man in the eye in order that he may see? If anyone said this to a man who was inexperienced in the art of surgery, would he not laugh at the speaker? What is there to be surprised at, then, if in philosophy also many things which are true appear paradoxical to the inexperienced? 



some one was reading the hypothetical arguments, Epictetus said, This also is a law governing hypotheses—that we must accept what the hypothesis or premiss demands. But much more important is 165