Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/369

 what a crowd is he does not know, nor what the shouting and the scornful laughter of a crowd are. Nay, he does not even know what this anxiety itself is, whether it is something that we can control, or beyond our powers, whether he can stop it or not. That is why, if he is praised, he goes off the stage all puffed up; but if he is laughed to scorn, that poor windbag of his conceit is pricked and flattens out.

We too experience something of the same kind. What do we admire? Externals. What are we in earnest about? About externals. Are we, then, at a loss to know how it comes about that we are subject to fear and anxiety? Why, what else can possibly happen, when we regard impending events as things evil? We cannot help but be in fear, we cannot help but be in anxiety. And then we say, "O Lord God, how may I escape anxiety?" Fool, have you not hands? Did not God make them for you? Sit down now and pray forsooth that the mucus in your nose may not run! Nay, rather wipe your nose and do not blame God! What then? Has he given you nothing that helps in the present case? Has he not given you endurance, has he not given you magnanimity, has he not given you courage? When you have such serviceable hands as these do you still look for someone to wipe your nose? But these virtues we neither practise nor concern ourselves withal. Why, show me one single man who cares how he does something, who is concerned, not with getting something, but with his own action. Who is there that is concerned with his own action while he is walking around? Who, when he is planning, is concerned with the plan 325