Page:Encheiridion of Epictetus - Rolleston 1881.pdf/21

PREFACE. let me devote a few pages towards offering a mere suggestion of its basis and drift, as they appear to me.

In the first place it must be understood that Epictetus is not a philosopher in the sense in which that word is generally used now. About the origins and destinies of things he is strictly silent, no shadow of an explanation of any metaphysical problem is to be found in him. The end of his teaching is simply to take the sting from human misery by showing that man is not, as was believed, the plaything of Fortune—that there is a way in which he can set his well-being beyond the reach of all forces which he cannot control. Stoicism, as represented by Epictetus, makes no attempt. to transcend the limits of what can be actually felt, now and here. It rests upon a profound appreciation of the distinction between what we may call a man's real and permanent, and his transitory or phantasmal self. The first man who was ever consciously a Stoic (there have