you abide among them and choose to dwell there, forgetting the things at home, and do you say, These things are fine? Who says that they are not fine? but only as being a way home, as inns are. For what hinders you from being an unfortunate man, even if you speak like Demosthenes? and what prevents you, if you can resolve syllogisms like Chrysippus,[1] from being wretched, from sorrowing, from envying, in a word, from being disturbed, from being unhappy? Nothing. You see then that these were inns, worth nothing; and that the purpose before you was something else. When I speak thus to some persons, they think that I am rejecting care about speaking or care about theorems. But I am not rejecting this care, but I am rejecting the abiding about these things incessantly[2] and putting our hopes in them. If a man by this teaching does harm to those who listen to him, reckon me too among those who do this harm: for I am not able, when I see one thing which is most excellent and supreme, to say that another is so, in order to please you.
CHAPTER XXIV.
to (or against) a person who was one of those who were not valued (esteemed) by him.
A certain person said to him (Epictetus): Frequently I desired to hear you and came to you, and you never gave me any answer: and now, if it is possible, I intreat you to say something to me. Do you think, said Epictetus, that as there is an art in any thing else, so there is also an art in speaking, and that he who has the art, will speak skilfully, and he who has not, will speak unskilfully?—I do think so.—He then who by speaking receives benefit
- ↑ Chrysippus wrote a book on the resolution of Syllogisms. Diogenes Laertius (vii.) says of Chrysippus that he was so famous among Dialecticians that most persons thought, if there was Dialectic among the Gods, it would not be any other than that of Chrysippus.
- ↑ See Schweig.'s note on ἀκαταληκτικῶς.
