All this is simply carrying out the principle that we need not concern ourselves about purely external things, for those things pure and simple can never get into our minds, or affect us one way or the other. The only things that enter into us are things as we think about them, facts as we feel about them, forces as we react upon them, and these thoughts, feelings, and reactions are our own affairs; and if we do not think serenely, feel tranquilly, and act freely with reference to them, it is not the fault of external things, but of ourselves.
In his discourse on tranquillity Epictetus gives us the same counsel. "Consider, you who are about to undergo trial, what you wish to preserve, and in what to succeed. For if you wish to preserve a mind in harmony with nature, you are entirely safe; everything goes well; you have no trouble on your hands. While you wish to preserve that freedom which belongs to you, and are contented with that, for what have you longer to be anxious? For who is the master of things like these? Who can take them away? If you wish to be a man of modesty and fidelity, who shall prevent you? If you wish not to be restrained or compelled, who shall compel you to desires contrary to your principles? to aversions contrary to your opinion? The judge, perhaps, will pass a sentence against you which he thinks formidable; but can he likewise make you receive it with shrinking? Since, then, desire and aversion are in your power, for what have you to be anxious?"
Epictetus bids us meet difficulties in the same way. "Difficulties are things that show what men are. For the future, in case of any difficulty, remember that God, like a gymnastic trainer, has pitted you against a rough antagonist. For what end? That you may be an Olympic conqueror; and this cannot be without toil. No man, in my opinion, has a more profitable difficulty on his hands than you have, provided you but use it as an athletic champion uses his antagonist."
Epictetus does not shrink from the logic of his teaching in its application to the sorrows of others, though here it is tempered by a concession to the weakness of ordinary mortals. "When you see a person weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead, or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things. But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care that you do not lament internally also." At this point, if not before, we feel that Stoicism is doing violence to the nobler feelings of our nature, and are prepared to break with it. Stoicism is too hard and cold and individualistic to teach us our duty, or even to leave us free to act out our best inclinations, toward our neighbour. We may be as Stoical as we please in our own troubles and afflictions; but let us beware how we carry over its icy distinctions into our interpretation of our neighbour's suffering.
I have drawn most of my illustrations from Epictetus, because this resignation comes with rather better grace from a poor, lame man, who has been a slave, and who lives on the barest necessities of life, than from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the wealthy courtier Seneca. Yet the most distinctive utterances of these men teach the same lesson. Seneca attributes it to his pilot in the famous prayer, "Oh, Neptune, you may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but whatever happens, I shall keep my rudder true." Marcus Aurelius says: "Let the part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or pain; and let it not unite itself with them, but let it circumscribe itself, and limit those effects to their parts." "Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty, and whether dying or doing something else. For it is one of the acts of life,—this act by which we die; it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in hand." "External things touch not the soul, not in the least degree." "Remember on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this principle: that this is not a misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good fortune."
The most recent prophet of Stoicism is Maurice Maeterlinck. In "Wisdom and Destiny," he says:—
"The event itself is pure water that flows from the pitcher of fate, and seldom has it either savour or perfume or colour. But even as the soul may be wherein it seeks shelter, so will the event become joyous or sad, become tender or hateful, become deadly or quick with life. To those round about us there happen incessant and countless adventures, whereof every one, it would seem, contains a germ of heroism; but the adventure passes away, and heroic deed there is none. But when Jesus Christ met the Samaritan, met a few children, an adulterous woman, then did humanity rise three times in succession to the level of God."
"It might almost be said that there happens to men only that they desire. It is true that on certain external events our influence is of the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events shall become in ourselves—in other words, on their spiritual part. The life of most men will be saddened or lightened by the thing that may chance to befall them,—in the men whom I speak of, whatever may happen is lit up by their inward life. If you have been deceived, it is not the deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it gave birth in your soul, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this forgiveness,—by these shall your eyes see more clearly than if all men had ever been faithful. But if, by this act of deceit, there have come not more simpleness, loftier faith, wider range to your love, then have you been deceived in vain, and may truly say nothing has happened."
"Let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts; and deeds of heroism are but offered to those who, for many long years, have been heroes in obscurity and silence. And whether you climb up the mountain or go down the hill to the valley, whether you journey to the end of the world or merely walk round your house, none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate. If Judas go forth to-night, it is toward Judas his steps will tend, nor will chance for betrayal be lacking; but let Socrates open his door,—he shall find Socrates asleep on the threshold before him, and there will be occasion for wisdom. We become that which we discover in the sorrows and joys that befall us; and the least expected caprices of fate soon mould themselves to our thought. It is in our past that Destiny finds all her weapons, her vestments, her jewels. A sorrow your soul has changed into sweetness, to indulgence or patient smiles, is a sorrow that shall never return without spiritual ornament; and a fault or defect you have looked in the face can harm you no more. All that has thus been transformed can belong no more to the hostile powers. Real fatality exists only in certain external disasters—as disease, accident, the sudden death of those we love; but inner fatality there is none. Wisdom has will power sufficient to rectify all that does not deal death to the body; it will even at times invade the narrow domain of external fatality. Even when the deed has been done, the misfortune has happened, it still rests with ourselves to deny her the least influence on that which shall come to pass in our soul. She may strike at the heart that is eager for good, but still is she helpless to keep back the light that shall stream to this heart from the error acknowledged, the pain undergone. It is not in her power to prevent the soul from transforming each single affliction into thoughts, into feelings, and treasure she dare not profane. Be her empire never so great over all things external, she always must halt when she finds on the threshold a silent guardian of the inner life. For even as triumph of dictators and consuls could be celebrated only in Rome, so can the true triumph of Fate take place nowhere save in our soul."
It would be easy to cite passage after passage in which the great masters of Stoicism ring the changes on this idea, that the external thing, whether it be good or evil, cannot get into the fortified citadel of my mind, and therefore cannot touch me. Before it can touch me it must first be incorporated into my mind. In the very act of incorporation it undergoes a transformation, which in the perverse man may change the best external things into poison and bitterness; and in the sage is able to convert the worst of external facts into virtue, glory, and honour. Out of indifferent external matter, thinking makes the world in which we live; and if it is not a good world, the fault is, not with the indifferent external matters,—such as, to take Epictetus's enumeration of them, "wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain, which lie between the virtues and the vices,"—but in our weak and erroneous thinking.