Silanus the Christian

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

I could perceive that Glaucus was ill pleased at this, and especially at the connexion of “pity” with “envy”—though it was not the first time, nor the last, that I heard Epictetus speak of “pity” in this contemptuous way. Perhaps others were in the same mood as Glaucus, and perhaps our Teacher felt it. If he did, he at all events made no effort to smooth away what he had said. Far from it, he seemed to harden himself in order to reproach us for our slackness and for being philosophers only in name. “Observe and test yourselves,” he exclaimed, “and find out what your philosophy really is. You are Epicureans—barring perhaps a few weak-kneed Peripatetics. Stoic reasonings, of course, you have in plenty. But shew me a Stoic man! Shew me only one! By the Gods, I long, I long to see one Stoic man. But perhaps you have one—only not as yet quite completed? Shew him, then, uncompleted! Shew him to me a little way towards completion! I am an old man now. Do me this one last kindness! Do not grudge me this boon—a sight that up to this day my eyes have never enjoyed!”

We were all very quiet at this outburst, so unusual in our Teacher. Two or three youths near my seat seemed stimulated rather than depressed. But to me it seemed a sad confession of failure, amounting, in effect, to this, “I have taught from the days of Vespasian to the second year of Hadrian. My business has been to produce Stoics. Up to this day, a real Stoic is”—these were his words—“a sight that up to this day my eyes have never enjoyed.” What a contrast, thought I, between my Teacher (for “mine” I still called him) and that other, the Jew, Paul, (whom I refused to call “mine”) who numbered his pupils by cities, and whose campaigns from Jerusalem to Rome, through Asia and Greece, had been a succession of victories, leading trains of prisoners captive under the banner of the Crucified!

What followed amazed me, forcing me to the conclusion that Epictetus was profoundly ignorant of human nature, at all events of our nature, and perhaps of his own. For instead of saying, “We have been on the wrong road,” or “You have not the power to walk, and I have not the power to make you walk,” he found fault with himself and us, without attempting to shew what the fault was. At first it seemed our lack of noble ambition. “Not one of you,” he exclaimed, “desires, from being man, to pass into becoming God. Not one of you is planning how he may pass through the dungeon of this paltry body to fellowship with Zeus!” But then he shifted his ground, saying, in effect, “I am your teacher. You are my pupils. My aim is so to perfect your characters that each of you may live unrestrained, uncoerced, unhindered, unshackled, free, prosperous, blessed, looking to God alone in every matter great or small. You, on your side, come here to learn and to practise these things. Why, then, do you fail to do the work in hand, if you on your side have the right aim, object, and purpose, and I on my side—in addition to right aim, object, and purpose—have the right preparation? What is deficient?”

Here was our Master assuming as absolutely certain that he had “the right preparation”! But that was just the point on which I had long felt doubtful, and was now beginning to feel absolutely certain in a negative sense. However, he continued with the same perfect confidence in himself and in the practicability of his theory, “I am the carpenter, you the material. If the work is practicable, and yet is not completed, the fault must rest with you or with me.” Then he concluded with the following personal appeal; these were his exact words, “Is not this matter”—he meant the art of living as a son of Zeus, free, and in perfect peace—“capable of being taught? It is. Is it not in our own hands? Nay, it is the only thing that is in our own hands. Wealth is not in our own hands, health is not, reputation is not. Nothing is—except the right use of our imaginations. This is the only thing that is by nature ours, unpreventable, unhinderable. Why do you not perform it then? Tell me the reason. Your non-performance is either my fault, or your fault, or the natural and inherent fault of our business. Now our business, in itself, is practicable, and is indeed the only business that is always practicable. It remains, then, that the fault rests either with me, or with you, or, which is nearer the truth, with both of us. What is to be done, then? Are you willing that we should begin together, at last though late, to bring this purpose into effect? Let bygones be bygones. Only let us begin. Believe me, and you will see.”

With that, he dismissed us. I was curious to know what Glaucus thought of it, so I waited for him to speak. To my surprise, he said, “It is not often that the Master speaks in this way or suggests that he himself may be in fault. Who knows? He may have something new in store. I felt so angry with him at the beginning of the lecture that I was within an ace of going straight out. But now, as he says, ‘Let bygones be bygones.’ I shall go on with him a little longer. What say you? For the most part he is too cold for me, always talking about the Logos within us, and the God within us, as though I, Glaucus the son of Adeimantus, who need the help of all the Gods that are, were myself all the God that I needed! He chills me with his Logos. But when he appealed to us in that personal way ‘Believe me,’ he gave me quite a new sensation. Did it not stir you? I don’t think I ever heard him say that before.”

“It did stir me,” said I, “and I am sure I never heard him say it before. Plato represents Socrates as always persuading his hearers to ‘follow the Logos,’ not to follow Socrates; and Epictetus, for the most part, uses similar language. For the rest, I am not sure that our Master will do me all the good I had hoped. But I shall do as you do. We shall still sit, I hope, together.” So we parted.

I had not said more than the truth. Epictetus had stirred me, but not in the way in which he had stirred Glaucus. “Let bygones be bygones”—the “bygones” of nearly forty years! Why were they to be “bygones”? Had they no lesson to teach? Did they not suggest that for forty years Epictetus had been on the road to failure and that he had consequently failed? Could I believe that during all that time Epictetus himself had been deficient in “purpose”? Not for a day! Not for a moment!

As I sat down to revise the notes of my lecture, it occurred to me that Glaucus—who was of a much less settled temperament than Arrian—must have heard better news from home, and that this helped him to take a brighter view of things in general and of philosophy in particular. “If my old friend were here,” said I, “would he not regard Glaucus’s change of mood as one more instance of Epictetus’s power to ‘make his hearers feel precisely what he desired them to feel’? But what if I went on to say that this ‘power’ was mere rhetoric, not indeed ‘wisdom of word’ in the sense of hair-splitting logic, but ‘wisdom of speech,’ the knowledge of the language and imagery best fitted to stir the emotions? What would Arrian say to that?”

I mentally constructed a dialogue between us. “There is something more, Silanus.” “But what more?” “That I do not know. Only I know there is something more behind.” Then Scaurus’s explanation recurred to me of that “something more behind.” For Scaurus had asserted that Epictetus had been touched by what he called the Christian superstition, which, although he had shaken it off, had left in his mind a blank, a vacant niche, which he vainly tried to fill with the image of a Hercules or a Diogenes. That brought back to my thoughts Scaurus’s first mention of “Christus”; and then it came upon me as a shock that I had spent half-an-hour in my rooms, musing over Epictetus and Glaucus and Arrian, and there, on the table before me, was Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians containing his only quotation of the words of the Lord, and I had taken no notice of it. So I put my notes aside and unrolled the epistle.