All the Works of Epictetus, Which Are Now Extant/Book 1/Chapter 4

by Epictetus

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CHAPTER IV.

Of Improvement.

§. 1.HE who is entering on a State of Improvement, having learnt from the Philosophers, that the Object of Desire is Good, of Aversion, Evil, and having learnt too, that Prosperity and Ease are no otherwise attainable by Man, than in not being disappointed of his Desire, nor incurring his Aversion: such an one removes totally from himself and postpones Desire^[1], and applies Aversion only to things dependent on Choice. For if he should be averse to Things independent on Choice; he knows, that he must sometimes incur his Aversion, and be unhappy. Now if Virtue promises Happiness, Prosperity, and Ease; then, an Improvement in Virtue is certainly an Improvement in each of these. For to whatever Point the Perfection of any thing absolutely brings us, Improvement is always an Approach towards it.

§. 2. How happens it then, that when we confess Virtue to be such, yet we seek, and make an ostentatious Show of Improvement in other Things? What is the Business of Virtue?

A prosperous Life.

Who is in a State of Improvement then? He who hath read the many Treatises of Chrysippus^[2]? Why, doth Virtue consist in having read Chrysippus through? If it doth, Improvement is confessedly nothing else than understanding a great deal of Chrysippus: otherwise we confess Virtue to produce one Thing; and declare Improvement, which is an Approach to it, to be quite another Thing.

§. 3. This Person, says one [of you], is already able to read Chrysippus, by himself.——"Certainly, Sir, you have made a vast Improvement!" What Improvement? Why do you ridicule him? Why do you withdraw him from a Sense of his Misfortunes? Why do not you show him the Business of Virtue, that he may know where to seek Improvement?——Seek it there, Wretch, where your Business lies. And where doth your Business lie? In Desire and Aversion; that you may neither be disappointed of the one, nor incur the other; in exerting the Powers of Pursuit and Avoidance, that you may not be liable to fail; in Assent and Suspense, that you may not be liable to be deceived. The first and most necessary is the first Topic^[3]. But if you seek to avoid incurring your Aversion, trembling and lamenting all the while, at this rate how do you improve?

§. 4. Show me then your Improvement in this Point. As if I should say to a Wrestler, Show me your Shoulders; and he should answer me, "See my Poisers."——Do you and your Poisers look to that: I desire to see the Effect of them.

"Take the Treatise on the Subject of the active Powers, and see how thoroughly I have perused it."

I do not enquire into this, Wretch: but how you exert those Powers; how you manage your Desires and Aversions, how your Intentions and Purposes; how you are prepared for Events, whether conformably or contrary to Nature. If conformably, give me Evidence of that, and I will say you improve: if contrary, go your way, and not only comment on these Treatises, but write such yourself; and what Service will it do you? Do not you know that the whole Volume is sold for Half a Crown? Doth he who comments upon it, then, value himself at more than Half a Crown? Never look for your Business in one Thing, and for Improvement in another.

Where is Improvement, then?

If any of you, withdrawing himself from Externals, turns to his own Faculty of Choice, to exercise, and finish, and render it conformable to Nature; elevated, free, unrestrained, unhindered, faithful, decent: if he hath learnt too, that whoever desires, or is averse to, Things out of his own Power, can neither be faithful nor free, but must necessarily be changed and tossed up and down with them; must necessarily too be subject to others, to such as can procure or prevent what he desires or is averse to: if, rising in the Morning, he observes and keeps to these Rules; bathes and eats as a Man of Fidelity and Honour; and thus, on every Subject of Action, exercises himself in his principal Duty; as a Racer, in the Business of Racing; as a public Speaker, in the Business of exercising his Voice: this is he, who truly improves this is he, who hath not travelled in vain. But if he is wholly intent on reading Books, and hath laboured that Point only, and travelled^[4] for that: I bid him go home immediately, and not neglect his domestic Affairs; for what he travelled for, is nothing. The only real Thing is, studying how to rid his Life of Lamentation, and Complaint, and Alas! and I am undone, and Misfortune, and Disappointment; and to learn what Death, what Exile, what Prison, what Poison is: That he may be able to say in a Prison, like Socrates, "My dear Crito; if it thus pleases the Gods, thus let it be;" and not——"Wretched old Man, have I kept my grey Hairs for this!" Who speaks thus? Do you suppose I will name some mean and despicable Person? Is it not Priam who says it? Is it not Oedipus? Nay, how many Kings say it? For what else is Tragedy, but the Sufferings of Men, struck by an Admiration of Externals, represented in that Kind of Poetry? If one was to be taught by Fictions, that Externals independent upon Choice are nothing to us; I, for my Part, should wish for such a Fiction, as that, by which I might live prosperously and undisturbed. What you wish for, it is your Business to consider.

§. 5. Of what Service, then, is Chrysippus to us?

^[5]To teach you, that those Things are not false, on which Prosperity and Ease depend. "Take my Books, and you will see, how true and conformable to Nature those Things are, which render me easy." How great a Happiness! And how great the Benefactor, who shows the Way! To Triptolemus all Men have raised Temples and Altars, because he gave us a milder Kind of Food: but to him who hath discovered, and brought to Light, and communicated, the Truth to all^[6]; the Means, not of living, but of living well; who among you ever raised an Altar or a Temple, or dedicated a Statue, or who worships God on that Account? We offer Sacrifices on the Account of those [Benefactors] who have given us Corn and the Vine; and shall we not give Thanks to God, for those who have produced that Fruit in the human Understanding, by which they proceed to discover to us the true Doctrine of Happiness?

Footnotes

1. See Enchiridion, c. ii. Note (b).
2. Chrysippus is called, by Cicero, the most subtile Interpreter of the Stoic Dreams, and the Support of the Portico. He composed 705 Volumes; which is not very wonderful, as he was so fond of Quotations, that in one of his Pieces he transcribed almost an entire Play of Euripides. His chief Study was Logic, which he carried to a trifling Degree of Subtility There is nothing now remaining of his Works but some of their Titles. He died about 200 Years before the Christian Æra, and was honoured by the Athenians with a Statue in the Ceranicus. His Death is said to have been occasioned by an immoderate Fit of Laughing, at seeing an Ass eat Figs. Chrysippus desired the Ass might have a Glass of Wine to wath them down; and was so diverted with his own Conceit, that it cost him his Life. He is said to have been a very copious and laborious Writer, but obscure and immoral; though one would be inclined to think, from the Respect with which he is mentioned by Epictetus, that this latter Accusation was groundless.
3. See Introduction, §. 4, 5, 6.
4. An Allusion to the antient Custom among Philosophers, of travelling into foreign Countries, for Improvement.
5. What ought to be our Dispositions towards Good and Evil, may be learned from Philosophy: but what that certainly-attainable Good, and that Evil which, without our own Faults, we need never incur, are, Christianity alone can teach. That alone can enable us to unite the Wisdom, Courage, Dignity, and Composure of the Stoics, with the Humility that belongs to our frail Nature, and the various Affections that are inseparable from Humanity.
6. Epictetus speaks with great Thankfulness to Heaven on the Account of Chrysippus, a subtile and perplexed Writer, from whose Instructions, only a few studious abstracted Persons could derive any Benefit. How much stronger ought to be the Gratitude of those, who are blessed with the Knowledge of Him, who hath brought Life and Immortality to Light (the Word is the same in Epictetus and St. Paul); who hath rendered the Way to Virtue and to Happiness not only intelligible, but accessible, to all Mankind; and who is Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.