Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/233

 "I will throw you into prison," I say, "He is threatening my whole paltry body"; and if he threatens me with exile, I give the same answer.—Does he, then, threaten you not at all?—If I feel that all this is nothing to me,—not at all; but if I am afraid of any of these threats, it is I whom he threatens. Who is there left, then, for me to fear? The man who is master of what? The things that are under my control? But there is no such man. The man who is master of the things that are not under my control? And what do I care for them?

Do you philosophers, then, teach us to despise our kings?—Far from it. Who among us teaches you to dispute their claim to the things over which they have authority? Take my paltry body, take my property, take my reputation, take those who are about me. If I persuade any to lay claim to these things, let some man truly accuse me. "Yes, but I wish to control your judgements also." And who has given you this authority? How can you have the power to overcome another's judgement? "By bringing fear to bear upon him," he says, "I shall overcome him." You fail to realize that the judgement overcame itself, it was not overcome by something else; and nothing else can overcome moral purpose, but it overcomes itself. For this reason too the law of God is most good and most just: "Let the better always prevail over the worse." "Ten are better than one," you say. For what? For putting in chains, for killing, for dragging away where they will, for taking away a man's property. Ten overcome one, therefore, in the point in which they are better. In what, then, are they worse? If the one has correct 189