410
EPICTETUS.
XXII.
As if you were begotten or born in a ship, you would not be eager to be the master of it (κυβερνήτης), so—.[1] For neither there (in the ship) will the ship naturally be connected with you, nor wealth in the other case; but reason is every where naturally connected with you. As then reason is a thing which naturally belongs to you and is born in you, consider this also as specially your own and take care of it.
XXIII.
If you had been born among the Persians, you would not have wished to live in Hellas (Greece), but to have lived in Persia happy: so if you are born in poverty, why do you seek to grow rich, and why do you not remain in poverty and be happy?[2]
- ↑ The other member of the comparison has been omitted by some accident in the MSS. Wolf in his Latin version supplied by conjecture the omission in this manner: 'ita neque in terris divitiae tibi expetendae sunt.' Schweig.
- ↑ To some persons the comparison will not seem apt. Also the notion that every man should be taught to rise above the condition in which he is born is, in the opinion of some persons, a better teaching. I think that it is not. Few persons have the talents and the character which enable them to rise from a low condition; and the proper lesson for them is to stay in the condition in which they are born and to be content with it. Those who have the power of rising from a low condition will rise whether they are advised to attempt it or not: and generally they will not be able to rise without doing something useful to society. Those who have ability sufficient to raise themselves from a low estate, and at the same time to do it to the damage of society, are perhaps only few, but certainly there are such persons. They rise by ability, by the use of fraud, by bad means almost innumerable. They gain wealth, they fill high places, they disturb society, they are plagues and pests, and the world looks on sometimes with stupid admiration until death removes the dazzling and deceitful image, and honest men breathe freely again
In the Church of England Catechism there are two answers to two questions, one on our duty to God, the other on our duty to our neighbour. Both the answers would be accepted by Epictetus, except such few words as were not applicable to the circumstances of his age. The second answer ends with the words 'to learn and labour to get mine own living and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me.'
