Seekers after God

by F. W. Farrar

And if we want a due motive for such lofty choice Epictetus will supply it. "Wish," he says, "to win the suffrages of your own inward approval, wish to appear beautiful to God. Desire to be pure with your own pure self, and with God. And when any evil fancy assails you, Plato says, 'Go to the rites of expiation, go as a suppliant to the temples of the gods, the averters of evil.' But it will be enough should you even rise and depart to the society of the noble and the good, to live according to their examples, whether you have any such friend among the living or among the dead. Go to Socrates, and gaze on his utter mastery over temptation and passion; consider how glorious was the conscious victory over himself! What an Olympic triumph! How near does it place him to Hercules himself.' So that, by heaven, one might justly salute him, 'Hail, marvellous conqueror, who hast conquered, not these miserable boxers and athletes, nor these gladiators who resemble them.' And should you thus be accustomed to train yourself, you will see what shoulders you will get, what nerves, what sinews, instead of mere babblements, and nothing more. This is the true athlete, the man who trains himself to deal with such semblances as these. Great is the struggle, divine the deed; it is for kingdom, for freedom, for tranquillity, for peace. Think on God; call upon Him as thine aid and champion, as sailors call on the Great Twin Brethren in the storm. And indeed what storm is greater than that which rises from powerful semblances that dash reason out of its course? What indeed but semblance is a storm itself? Since, come now, remove the fear of death, and bring as many thunders and lightnings as thou wilt, and thou shalt know how great is the tranquillity and calm in that reason which is the ruling faculty of the soul. But should you once be worsted, and say that you will conquer hereafter, and then the same again and again, know that thus your condition will be vile and weak, so that at the last you will not even know that you are doing wrong, but you will even begin to provide excuses for your sin; and then you will confirm the truth of that saying of Hesiod,--

"'The man that procrastinates struggles ever with ruin.'"

Even so! So early did a heathen moralist learn the solemn fact that "only this once" ends in "there is no harm in it." Well does Mr. Coventry Patmore sing:--

"How easy to keep free from sin;
How hard that freedom to recall;
For awful truth it is that men
Forget the heaven from which they fall."

In another place Epictetus warns us, however, not to be too easily discouraged in our attempts after good;--and, above all, never to despair. "In the schools of the wrestling master, when a boy falls he is bidden to get up again, and to go on wrestling day by day till he has acquired strength; and we must do the same, and not be like those poor wretches who after one failure suffer themselves to be swept along as by a torrent. You need but will" he says, "and it is done; but if you relax your efforts, you will be ruined; for ruin and recovery are both from within.--And what will you gain by all this? You will gain modesty for inpudence, purity for vileness, moderation for drunkenness. If you think there are any better ends than these, then by all means go on in sin, for you are beyond the power of any god to save."

But Epictetus is particularly in earnest about warning us that to profess these principles and talk about them is one thing--to act up to them quite another. He draws a humorous picture of an inconsistent and unreal philosopher, who--after eloquently proving that nothing is good but what pertains to virtue, and nothing evil but what pertains to vice, and that all other things are indifferent--goes to sea. A storm comes on, and the masts creak, and the philosopher screams; and an impertinent person stands by and asks in surprise, "Is it then vice to suffer shipwreck? because, if not, it can be no evil;" a question which makes our philosopher so angry that he is inclined to fling a log at his interlocutor's head. But Epictetus sternly tells him that the philosopher never was one at all, except in name; that as he sat in the schools puffed up by homage and adulation, his innate cowardice and conceit were but hidden under borrowed plumes; and that in him the name of Stoic was usurped.

"Why," he asks in another passage, "why do you call yourself a Stoic? Why do you deceive the multitude? Why do you act the Jew when you are a Greek? Don't you see on what terms each person is called a Jew? or a Syrian? or an Egyptian? And when we see some mere trimmer we are in the habit of saying, 'This is no Jew; he is only acting the part of one,' but when a man takes up the entire condition of a proselyte, thoroughly imbued with Jewish doctrines, then he both is in reality and is called a Jew. So we philosophers too, dipped in a false dye, are Jews in name, but in reality are something else.... We call ourselves philosophers when we cannot even play the part of men, as though a man should try to heave the stone of Ajax who cannot lift ten pounds." The passage is interesting not only on its own account, but because of its curious similarity both with the language and with the sentiment of St. Paul--"He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the latter; whose praise is not of men, but of God."

The best way to become a philosopher in deed is not by a mere study of books and knowledge of doctrines, but by a steady diligence of actions and adherence to original principles, to which must be added consistency and self control. "These principles," says Epictetus, "produce friendship in a house, unanimity in a city, peace in nations; they make a man grateful to God, bold under all circumstances, as though dealing with things alien and valueless. Now we are capable of writing these things, and reading them, and praising them when they are read, but we are far enough off following them. Hence comes it that the reproach of the Lacedaemonians, that they are 'lions at home, foxes at Ephesus,' will also apply to us; in the school we are lions, out of it foxes."

These passages include, I think, all the most original, important, and characteristic conceptions which are to be found in the Discourses. They are most prominently illustrated in the long and important chapter on the Cynic philosophy. A genuine Cynic--one who was so, not in brutality of manners or ostentation of rabid eccentricity, but a Cynic in life and in his inmost principles--was evidently in the eyes of Epictetus one of the loftiest of human beings. He drew a sketch of his ideal conception to one of his scholars who inquired of him upon the subject.

He begins by saying that a true Cynic is so lofty a being that he who undertakes the profession without due qualifications kindles against him the anger of heaven. He is like a scurrilous Thersites, claiming the imperial office of an Agamemnon. "If you think," he tells the young student, "that you can be a Cynic merely by wearing an old cloak, and sleeping on a hard bed, and using a wallet and staff, and begging, and rebuking every one whom you see effeminately dressed or wearing purple, you don't know what you are about--get you gone; but if you know what a Cynic really is, and think yourself capable of being one, then consider how great a thing you are undertaking.