XCI.
When Thales was asked what is most universal, he answered, Hope, for hope stays with those who have nothing else.
XCII.
It is more necessary to heal the soul than the body, for to die is better than to live a bad life.
XCIII.
Pyrrho used to say that there is no difference between dying and living: and a man said to him, Why then do you not die? Pyrrho replied, Because there is no difference.
XCIV.[1]
Admirable is nature, and, as Xenophon says, a lover of animated beings. The body then, which is of all things the most unpleasant and the most foul (dirty), we love and take care of; for if we were obliged for five days only to take care of our neighbour's body, we should not be able to endure it. Consider then what a thing it would be to rise in the morning and rub the teeth of another, and after doing some of the necessary offices to wash those parts. In truth it is wonderful that we love a thing to which we perform such services every day. I fill this bag, and then I empty it;[2] what is more troublesome? But I must act as the servant of God. For this reason I remain
- ↑ Compare Xenophon, Memorab. i. 4, 17.
The body is here, and elsewhere in Epictetus, considered as an instrument, which another uses who is not the body; and that which so uses the body must be something which is capable of using the body and a power which possesses what we name intelligence and consciousness. Our bodies, as Bishop Butler says, are what we name matter, and differ from other matter only in being more closely connected with us than other matter. It would be easy to pass from these notions to the notion that this intelligence and power, or to use a common word, the soul, is something which exists independent of the body, though we only know the soul while it acts within and on the body, and by the body. - ↑ This bag is the body, or that part of it which holds the food which is taken into the mouth.
