truer than he would have liked seriously to confess. He must have often and deeply felt that he was not living in accordance with the light which was in him.
It would indeed be cheap and easy, to attribute the general inferiority and the many shortcomings of Seneca’s life and character to the fact that he was a Pagan, and to suppose that if he had known Christianity he would necessarily have attained to a loftier ideal. But such a style of reasoning and inference, commonly as it is adopted for rhetorical purposes, might surely be refused by any intelligent child. A more intellectual assent to the lessons of Christianity would have probably been but of little avail to inspire in Seneca a nobler life. The fact is, that neither the gift of genius nor the knowledge of Christianity are adequate to the ennoblement of the human heart, nor does the grace of God flow through the channels of surpassing intellect or of orthodox belief. Men there have been in all ages, Pagan no less than Christian, who with scanty mental enlightenment and spiritual knowledge have yet lived holy and noble lives: men there have been in all ages, Christian no less than Pagan, who with consummate gifts and profound erudition have disgraced some of the noblest words which ever were uttered by some of the meanest lives which were ever lived. In the twelfth century was there any mind that shone more brightly, was there any eloquence which flowed more mightily, than that of Peter Abelard? Yet Abelard sank beneath the meanest of his scholastic cotemporaries in the degradation of his career as much as he towered above the highest of them in the grandeur of his genius. In the seventeenth century was there any philosopher more profound, any moralist more elevated, than Francis Bacon? Yet Bacon could flatter a tyrant, and betray a friend, and receive a bribe, and be one of the latest of English judges to adopt the brutal expedient of enforcing confession by the exercise of torture. If Seneca defended the murder of Agrippina, Bacon blackened the character of Essex. “What I would I do not; but the thing that I would not, that I do,” might be the motto for many a confession of the sins of genius; and Seneca need not blush if we compare him with men who were his equals in intellectual power, but whose “means of grace,” whose privileges, whose knowledge of the truth, were infinitely higher than his own. Let the noble constancy of his death shed a light over his memory which may dissipate something of those dark shades which rest on portions of his history. We think of Abelard, humble, silent, patient, God-fearing, tended by the kindly-hearted Peter in the peaceful gardens of Clugny; we think of Bacon, neglected, broken, and despised, dying of the chill caught in a philosophical experiment and leaving his memory to the judgment of posterity; let us think of Seneca, quietly yielding to his destiny without a murmur, cheering the constancy of the mourners round him during the long agonies of his enforced suicide and dictating some of the purest utterances of Pagan wisdom almost with his latest breath. The language of his great contemporary, the Apostle St. Paul, will best help us to understand his position. He was one of those who was _seeking the Lord, if haply he might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being_.
CHAPTER XIV.
SENECA AND ST. PAUL.
In the spring of the year 61, not long after the time when the murder of Agrippina, and Seneca’s justifications of it, had been absorbing the attention of the Roman world, there disembarked at Puteoli a troop of prisoners, whom the Procurator of Judaea had sent to Rome under the charge of a centurion. Walking among them, chained and weary, but affectionately tended by two younger companions,[38] and treated with profound respect by little deputations of friends who met him at Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, was a man of mean presence and weather-beaten aspect, who was handed over like the rest to the charge of Burrus, the Praefect of the Praetorian Guards. Learning from the letters of the Jewish Procurator that the prisoner had been guilty of no serious offence,[39] but had used his privilege of Roman citizenship to appeal to Caesar for protection against the infuriated malice of his co-religionists–possibly also having heard from the centurion Julius some remarkable facts about his behaviour and history–Burrus allowed him, pending the hearing of his appeal, to live in his own hired apartments.[40] This lodging was in all probability in that quarter of the city opposite the island in the Tiber, which corresponds to the modern Trastevere. It was the resort of the very lowest and meanest of the populace–that promiscuous jumble of all nations which makes Tacitus call Rome at this time “the sewer of the universe.” It was here especially that the Jews exercised some of the meanest trades in Rome, selling matches, and old clothes, and broken glass, or begging and fortune-telling on the Cestian or Fabrican bridges.[41] In one of these narrow, dark, and dirty streets, thronged by the dregs of the Roman populace, St. Mark and St. Peter had in all probability lived when they founded the little Christian Church at Rome. It was undoubtedly in the same despised locality that St. Paul,–the prisoner who had been consigned to the care of Burrus,–hired a room, sent for the principle Jews, and for two years taught to Jews and Christians, to any Pagans who would listen to him, the doctrines which were destined to regenerate the world.
[Footnote 38: Luke and Aristarchus.]
[Footnote 39: Acts xxiv. 23, xxvii. 3.]
[Footnote 40: Acts xxviii. 30, [Greek: en idio misthomati].]
[Footnote 41: MART. _Ep_. i. 42: JUV. xiv. 186. In these few paragraphs I follow M. Aubertin, who (as well as many other authors) has collected many of the principal passages in which Roman writers allude to the Jews and Christians.]
Any one entering that mean and dingy room would have seen a Jew with bent body and furrowed countenance, and with every appearance of age, weakness, and disease chained by the arm to a Roman soldier. But it is impossible that, had they deigned to look closer, they should not also have seen the gleam of genius and enthusiasm, the fire of inspiration, the serene light of exalted hope and dauntless courage upon those withered features. And though _he_ was chained, “the Word of God was not chained.” [42] Had they listened to the words which he occasionally dictated, or overlooked the large handwriting which alone his weak eyesight and bodily infirmities, as well as the inconvenience of his chains, permitted, they would have heard or read the immortal utterances which strengthened the faith of the nascent and struggling Churches in Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae, and which have since been treasured among the most inestimable possessions of a Christian world.
[Footnote 42: 2 Tim. ii. 9.]
His efforts were not unsuccessful; his misfortunes were for the furtherance of the Gospel; his chains were manifest “in all the palace, and in all other places;” [43] and many waxing confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the word without fear. Let us not be misled by assuming a wrong explanation of these words, or by adopting the Middle Age traditions which made St. Paul convert some of the immediate favourites of the Emperor, and electrify with his eloquence an admiring Senate. The word here rendered “palace” [44] may indeed have that meaning, for we know that among the early converts were “they of Caesar’s household;” [45] but these were in all probability–if not certainly–Jews of the lowest rank, who were, as we know, to be found among the _hundreds_ of unfortunates of every age and country who composed a Roman _familia_. And it is at least equally probable that the word “praetorium” simply means the barrack of that detachment of Roman soldiers from which Paul’s gaolers were taken in turn. In such labours St. Paul in all probability spent two years (61-63), during which occurred the divorce of Octavia, the marriage with Poppaea, the death of Burrus, the disgrace of Seneca, and the many subsequent infamies of Nero.
[Footnote 43: Phil. i. 12.]
[Footnote 44: [Greek: en olo to praitorio].]
[Footnote 45: Phil. iv. 22.]
It is out of such materials that some early Christian forger thought it edifying to compose the work which is supposed to contain the correspondence of Seneca and St. Paul. The undoubted spuriousness of that work is now universally admitted, and indeed the forgery is too clumsy to be even worth reading. But it is worth while inquiring whether in the circumstances of the time there is even a bare possibility that Seneca should ever have been among the readers or the auditors of Paul.
And the answer is, There is absolutely no such probability. A vivid imagination is naturally attracted by the points of contrast and resemblance offered by two such characters, and we shall see that there is a singular likeness between many of their sentiments and expressions. But this was a period in which, as M. Villemain observes, “from one extremity of the social world to the other truths met each other without recognition.” Stoicism, noble as were many of its precepts, lofty as was the morality it professed, deeply as it was imbued in many respects with a semi-Christian piety, looked upon Christianity with profound contempt. The Christians disliked the Stoics, the Stoics despised and persecuted the Christians. “The world knows nothing of its greatest men.” Seneca would have stood aghast at the very notion of his receiving the lessons, still more of his adopting the religion, of a poor, accused, and wandering Jew. The haughty, wealthy, eloquent, prosperous, powerful philosopher would have smiled at the notion that any future ages would suspect him of having borrowed any of his polished and epigrammatic lessons of philosophic morals or religion from one whom, if he heard of him, he would have regarded as a poor wretch, half fanatic and half barbarian.
We learn from St. Paul himself that the early converts of Christianity were men in the very depths of poverty,[46] and that its preachers were regarded as fools, and weak, and were despised, and naked, and buffeted–persecuted and homeless labourers–a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men, “made as the filth of the earth and the off-scouring of all things.” We know that their preaching was to the Greeks “foolishness,” and that, when they spoke of Jesus and the resurrection, their hearers mocked[47] and jeered. And these indications are more than confirmed by many contemporary passages of ancient writers. We have already seen the violent expressions of hatred which the ardent and high-toned soul of Tacitus thought applicable to the Christians; and such language is echoed by Roman writers of every character and class. The fact is that at this time and for centuries afterwards the Romans regarded the Christians with such lordly indifference that–like Festus, and Felix and Seneca’s brother Gallio–they never took the trouble to distinguish them from the Jews. The distinction was not fully realized by the Pagan world till the cruel and wholesale massacre of the Christians by the pseudo-Messiah Barchochebas in the reign of Adrian opened their eyes to the fact of the irreconcilable differences which existed between the two religions. And pages might be filled with the ignorant and scornful allusions which the heathen applied to the Jews. They confused them with the whole degraded mass of Egyptian and Oriental impostors and brute-worshippers; they disdained them as seditious, turbulent, obstinate, and avaricious; they regarded them as mainly composed of the very meanest slaves out of the gross and abject multitude; their proselytism they considered as the clandestine initiation into some strange and revolting mystery, which involved as its direct teachings contempt of the gods, and the negation of all patriotism and all family affection; they firmly believed that they worshipped the head of an ass; they thought it natural that none but the vilest slaves and the silliest woman should adopt so misanthropic and degraded a superstition; they characterized their customs as “absurd, sordid, foul, and depraved,” and their nation as “prone to superstition, opposed to religion.” [48] And as far as they made _any_ distinction between Jews and Christians, it was for the latter that they reserved their choicest and most concentrated epithets of hatred and abuse. A “new,” “pernicious,” “detestable,” “execrable,” superstition is the only language with which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to notice it. Seneca,–though he must have heard the name of Christian during the reign of Claudius (when both they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, “because of their perpetual turbulence, at the instigation of Chrestus,” as Suetonius ignorantly observed), and during the Neronian persecution–never once alludes to them, and only mentions the Jews to apply a few contemptuous remarks to the idleness of their sabbaths, and to call them “a most abandoned race.”
[Footnote 46: 2 Cor. viii. 2.]
[Footnote 47: [Greek: _Echleuazon_], Acts xvii. 32. The word expresses the most profound and unconcealed contempt.]
[Footnote 48: Tac. _Hist_. i. 13: ib. v. 5: JUV. xiv. 85: Pers. v. 190, &c.]
The reader will now judge whether there is the slightest probability that Seneca had any intercourse with St. Paul, or was likely to have stooped from his superfluity of wealth, and pride of power, to take lessons from obscure and despised slaves in the purlieus inhabited by the crowded households of Caesar or Narcissus.
CHAPTER XV.
SENECA’S RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE.
And yet in a very high sense of the word Seneca may be called, as he is called in the title of this book, a Seeker after God; and the resemblances to the sacred writings which may be found in the pages of his works are numerous and striking. A few of these will probably interest our readers, and will put them in a better position for understanding how large a measure of truth and enlightenment had rewarded the honest search of the ancient philosophers. We will place a few such passages side by side with the texts of Scripture which they resemble or recall.
1. _God’s Indwelling Presence_.
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” asks St. Paul (1 Cor. iii. 16).
“_God is near you, is with you, is within you_,” writes Seneca to his friend Lucilius, in the 41st of those _Letters_ which abound in his most valuable moral reflections; “_a sacred Spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good … there is no good man without God_.”
And again (_Ep._ 73): “_Do you wonder that man goes to the gods? God comes to men: nay, what is yet nearer; He comes into men. No good mind is holy without God_.”
2. _The Eye of God_.
“All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Heb. iv. 13.)
“Pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matt. vi. 6.)
Seneca (_On Providence_, 1): “_It is no advantage that conscience is shut within us; we lie open to God_.”
_Letter_ 83: “_What advantage is it that anything is hidden from man? Nothing is closed to God: He is present to our minds, and enters into our central thoughts_.”
_Letter_ 83: “_We must live as if we were living in sight of all men; we must think as though some one could and can gaze into our inmost breast_.”
3. _God is a Spirit_.
St. Paul, “We ought not to think that the God-head is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.” (Acts xvii. 29.)
Seneca (_Letter_ 31): “_Even from a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven: rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God; thou canst not do this, however, with gold and silver: an image like to God cannot be formed out of such materials as these_.”
4. _Imitating God_.
“Be ye therefore followers ([Greek: _mimaetai_], imitators) of God, as dear children.” (Eph. v. 1.)
“He that in these things [righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost] serveth Christ is acceptable to God.” (Rom. xiv. 18.)
Seneca _(Letter_ 95): “_Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be virtuous. To honour them it is enough to imitate them_.”
_Letter_ 124: “_Let man aim at the good which belongs to him. What is this good? A mind reformed and pure, the imitator of God, raising itself above things human, confining all its desires within itself_.”
5. _Hypocrites like whited Sepulchres_.
“Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matt, xxiii. 27.)
Seneca: “_Those whom you regard as happy, if you saw them, not in their externals, but in their hidden aspect, are wretched, sordid, base; like their own walls adorned outwardly. It is no solid and genuine felicity; it is a plaster, and that a thin one; and so, as long as they can stand and be seen at their pleasure, they shine and impose on us: when anything has fallen which disturbs and uncovers them, it is evident how much deep and real foulness an extraneous splendour has concealed_.”
6. _Teaching compared to Seed_.
“But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit; some an hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold.” (Matt xiii. 8.)
Seneca (Letter 38): “_Words must be sown like seed; which, although it be small, when it hath found a suitable ground, unfolds its strength, and from very small size is expanded into the largest increase. Reason does the same…. The things spoken are few; but if the mind have received them well, they gain strength and grow_.”
7. _All Men are Sinners_.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John i. 8.)
Seneca (_On Anger_, i. 14, ii. 27): “_If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade ourselves of this:–that there is not one of us without fault…. No man is found who can acquit himself; and he who calls himself innocent does so with reference to a witness, and not to his conscience_.”
8. _Avarice_.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” (1 Tim. vi. 10.)
Seneca (_On Tranquillity of Soul_, 8): “_Riches … the greatest source of human trouble_.”
“Be content with such things as ye have.” (Heb. xiii. 5.)
“Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.” (1 Tim. vi. 8.)
Seneca (_Letter_ 114): “_We shall be wise if we desire but little; if each man takes count of himself, and at the same time measures his own body, he will know how little it can contain, and for how short a time_.”
_Letter_ 110: “_We have polenta, we have water; let us challenge Jupiter himself to a comparison of bliss!_”
“Godliness with contentment is great gain.” (1 Tim. vi. 6.)
Seneca (_Letter_ 110): “_Why are you struck with wonder and astonishment? It is all display! Those things are shown, not possessed_…. _Turn thyself rather to the true riches, learn to be content with little_.”
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matt. xix. 24.)
Seneca (_Letter_ 20): “_He is a high-souled man who sees riches spread around him, and hears rather than feels that they are his. It is much not to be corrupted by fellowship with riches: great is he who in the midst of wealth is poor, but safer he who has no wealth at all_.”
9. _The Duty of Kindness_.
“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.” (Rom. xii. 10.)
Seneca (_On Anger_, i. 5): “_Man is born for mutual assistance_.”
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Lev. xiv. 18.)
_Letter_ 48: “_You must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself_.”
_On Anger_, iii. 43: “_While we are among men let us cultivate kindness; let us not be to any man a cause either of peril or of fear_.”
10. _Our common Membership_.
“Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” (1 Cor. xii. 27.)
“We being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Rom. xii. 5.)
Seneca (_Letter_ 95): “_Do we teach that he should stretch his hand to the shipwrecked, show his path to the wanderer, divide his bread with the hungry_?… _when I could briefly deliver to him the formula of human duty: all this that you see, in which things divine and human are included, is one: we are members of one great body_.”
11. _Secrecy in doing Good_.
“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” (Matt. vi. 3.)
Seneca (_On Benefits_, ii. 11): “_Let him who hath conferred a favour hold his tongue_…. _In conferring a favour nothing should be more avoided than pride_.”
12. _God’s impartial Goodness_.
“He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matt. v. 45.)
Seneca (_On Benefits_, i. 1): “_How many are unworthy of the light! and yet the day dawns_.”
Id. vii. 31: “_The gods begin to confer benefits on those who recognize them not, they continue them to those who are thankless for them…. They distribute their blessings in impartial tenor through the nations and peoples;… they sprinkle the earth with timely showers, they stir the seas with wind, they mark out the seasons by the revolution of the constellations, they temper the winter and summer by the intervention of a gentler air_.”
It would be a needless task to continue these parallels, because by reading any treatise of Seneca a student might add to them by scores; and they prove incontestably that, as far as moral illumination was concerned, Seneca “was not far from the kingdom of heaven.” They have been collected by several writers; and all of these here adduced, together with many others, may be found in the pages of Fleury, Troplong, Aubertin, and others. Some authors, like M. Fleury, have endeavoured to show that they can only be accounted for by the supposition that Seneca had some acquaintance with the sacred writings. M. Aubertin, on the other hand, has conclusively demonstrated that this could not have been the case. Many words and expressions detached from their context have been forced into a resemblance with the words of Scripture, when the context wholly militates against its spirit; many belong to that great common stock of moral truths which had been elaborated by the conscientious labours of ancient philosophers; and there is hardly one of the thoughts so eloquently enunciated which may not be found even more nobly and more distinctly expressed in the writings of Plato and of Cicero. In a subsequent chapter we shall show that, in spite of them all, the divergences of Seneca from the spirit of Christianity are at least as remarkable as the closest of his resemblances; but it will be more convenient to do this when we have also examined the doctrines of those two other great representatives of spiritual enlightenment in Pagan souls, Epictetus the slave and Marcus Aurelius the emperor.
Meanwhile, it is a matter for rejoicing that writings such as these give us a clear proof that in all ages the Spirit of the Lord has entered into holy men, and made them sons of God and prophets. God “left not Himself without witness” among them. The language of St. Thomas Aquinas, that many a heathen has had an “implicit faith,” is but another way of expressing St. Paul’s statement that “not having the law they were a law unto themselves, and showed the work of the law written in their hearts.” [49] To them the Eternal Power and Godhead were known from the things that do appear, and alike from the voice of conscience and the voice of nature they derived a true, although a partial and inadequate, knowledge. To them “the voice of nature was the voice of God.” Their revelation was the law of nature, which was confirmed, strengthened, and extended, but _not_ suspended, by the written law of God.[50]
[Footnote 49: Rom. i. 2.]
[Footnote 50: Hooker, _Eccl. Pol_. iii. 8.]
The knowledge thus derived, i.e. the sum-total of religious impressions resulting from the combination of reason and experience, has been called “natural religion;” the term is in itself a convenient and unobjectionable one, so long as it is remembered that natural religion is itself a revelation. No _antithesis_ is so unfortunate and pernicious as that of natural with revealed religion. It is “a contrast rather of words than of ideas; it is an opposition of abstractions to which no facts really correspond.” God has revealed Himself, not in one but in many ways, not only by inspiring the hearts of a few, but by vouchsafing His guidance to all who seek it. “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,” and it is not religion but apostasy to deny the reality of any of God’s revelations of truth to man, merely because they have not descended through a single channel. On the contrary, we ought to hail with gratitude, instead of viewing with suspicion, the enunciation by heathen writers of truths which we might at first sight have been disposed to regard as the special heritage of Christianity. In Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato,–in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius–we see the light of heaven struggling its impeded way through clouds of darkness and ignorance; we thankfully recognize that the souls of men in the Pagan world, surrounded as they were by perplexities and dangers, were yet enabled to reflect, as from the dim surface of silver, some image of what was divine and true; we hail, with the great and eloquent Bossuet, “THE CHRISTIANITY OF NATURE.” “The divine image in man,” says St. Bernard, “may be burned, but it cannot be burnt out.”
And this is the pleasantest side on which to consider the life and the writings of Seneca. It is true that his style partakes of the defects of his age, that the brilliancy of his rhetoric does not always compensate for the defectiveness of his reasoning; that he resembles, not a mirror which clearly reflects the truth, but “a glass fantastically cut into a thousand spangles;” that side by side with great moral truths we sometimes find his worst errors, contradictions, and paradoxes; that his eloquent utterances about God often degenerate into a vague Pantheism; and that even on the doctrine of immortality his hold is too slight to save him from waverings and contradictions;[51] yet as a moral teacher he is full of real greatness, and was often far in advance of the general opinion of his age. Few men have written more finely, or with more evident sincerity, about truth and courage, about the essential equality of man,[52] about the duty of kindness and consideration to slaves,[53] about tenderness even in dealing with sinners,[54] about the glory of unselfishness,[55] about the great idea of humanity[56] as something which transcends all the natural and artificial prejudices of country and of caste. Many of his writings are Pagan sermons and moral essays of the best and highest type. The style, as Quintilian says, “abounds in delightful faults,” but the strain of sentiment is never otherwise than high and true.
[Footnote 51: Consol. ad Polyb. 27; Ad Helv. 17; Ad Marc. 24, _seqq_.]
[Footnote 52: Ep. 32; De Benef. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 53: De Ira, iii. 29, 32.]
[Footnote 54: Ibid. i. 14; De Vit. beat. 24.]
[Footnote 55: Ep. 55, 9.]
[Footnote 56: Ibid. 28; De Oti Sapientis, 31.]
He is to be regarded rather as a wealthy, eminent, and successful Roman, who devoted most of his leisure to moral philosophy, than as a real philosopher by habit and profession. And in this point of view his very inconsistencies have their charm, as illustrating his ardent, impulsive, imaginative temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, impassible Stoic, but a passionate, warm-hearted man, who could break into a flood of unrestrained tears at the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,[57] and feel a trembling solicitude for the welfare of his wife and little ones. His was no absolute renunciation, no impossible perfection;[58] but few men have painted more persuasively, with deeper emotion, or more entire conviction, the pleasures of virtue, the calm of a well-regulated soul, the strong and severe joys of a lofty self-denial. In his youth, he tells us, he was preparing himself for a righteous life, in his old age for a noble death.[59] And let us not forget, that when the hour of crisis came which tested the real calm and bravery of his soul, he was not found wanting. “With no dread,” he writes to Lucilius, “I am preparing myself for that day on which, laying aside all artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge respecting myself whether I merely _speak_ or really _feel_ as a brave man should; whether all those words of haughty obstinacy which I have hurled against fortune were mere pretence and pantomime…. Disputations and literary talks, and words collected from the precepts of philosophers, and eloquent discourse, do not prove the true strength of the soul. For the mere _speech_ of even the most cowardly is bold; what you have really achieved will then be manifest when your end is near. I accept the terms, I do not shrink from the decision.” [60]
[Footnote 57: Ep. 63.]
[Footnote 58: Martha, _Les Moralistes_, p. 61.]
[Footnote 59: Ep. 61.]
[Footnote 60: Ep. 26.]
“_Accipio conditionem, non reformido judicrum_.” They were courageous and noble words, and they were justified in the hour of trial. When we remember the sins of Seneca’s life, let us recall also the constancy of his death; while we admit the inconsistencies of his systematic philosophy, let us be grateful for the genius, the enthusiasm, the glow of intense conviction, with which he clothes his repeated utterance of truths, which, when based upon a surer basis, were found adequate for the moral regeneration of the world. Nothing is more easy than to sneer at Seneca, or to write clever epigrams on one whose moral attainments fell infinitely short of his own great ideal. But after all he was not more inconsistent than thousands of those who condemn him. With all his faults he yet lived a nobler and a better life, he had loftier aims, he was braver, more self-denying–nay, even more consistent–than the majority of professing Christians. It would be well for us all if those who pour such scorn upon his memory attempted to achieve one tithe of the good which he achieved for humanity and for Rome. His thoughts deserve our imperishable gratitude: let him who is without sin among us be eager to fling stones at his failures and his sins!
EPICTETUS.
CHAPTER I.
THE LIFE OF EPICTETUS, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT.
In the court of Nero, Seneca must have been thrown into more or less communication with the powerful freedmen of that Emperor, and especially with his secretary or librarian, Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus was a constant companion of the Emperor; he was the earliest to draw Nero’s attention to the conspiracy in which Seneca himself perished. There can be no doubt that Seneca knew him, and had visited at his house. Among the slaves who thronged that house, the natural kindliness of the philosopher’s heart may have drawn his attentions to one little lame Phrygian boy, deformed and mean-looking, whose face–if it were any index of the mind within–must even from boyhood have worn a serene and patient look. The great courtier, the great tutor of the Emperor, the great Stoic and favourite writer of his age, would indeed have been astonished if he had been suddenly told that that wretched-looking little slave-lad was destined to attain purer and clearer heights of philosophy than he himself had ever done, and to become quite as illustrious as himself, and far more respected as an exponent of Stoic doctrines. For that lame boy was Epictetus–Epictetus for whom was written the memorable epitaph: “I was Epictetus, a slave, and maimed in body, and a beggar for poverty, _and dear to the immortals_.”
Although we have a clear sketch of his philosophical doctrines, we have no materials whatever for any but the most meagre description of his life. The picture of his mind–an effigy of that which he alone regarded as his true self–may be seen in his works, and to this we can add little except a few general facts and uncertain anecdotes.
Epictetus was probably born in about the fiftieth year of the Christian era; but we do not know the exact date of his birth, nor do we even know his real name. “Epictetus” means “bought” or “acquired,” and is simply a servile designation. He was born at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, a town between the rivers Lycus and Meander, and considered by some to be the capital of the province. The town possessed several natural wonders–sacred springs, stalactite grottoes, and a deep cavern remarkable for its mephitic exhalations. It is more interesting to us to know that it was within a few miles of Colossae and Laodicea, and is mentioned by St. Paul (Col. iv. 13) in connexion with those two cities. It must, therefore, have possessed a Christian Church from the earliest times, and, if Epictetus spent any part of his boyhood there, he might have conversed with men and women of humble rank who had heard read in their obscure place of meeting the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, and the other, now lost, which he addressed to the Church of Laodicea.[61]
[Footnote 61: Col. iv. 16.]
It is probable, however, that Hierapolis and its associations produced very little influence on the mind of Epictetus. His parents were people in the very lowest and humblest class, and their moral character could hardly have been high, or they would not have consented under any circumstance to sell into slavery their sickly child. Certainly it could hardly have been possible for Epictetus to enter into the world under less enviable or less promising auspices. But the whole system of life is full of divine and memorable compensations, and Epictetus experienced them. God kindles the light of genius where He will, and He can inspire the highest and most regal thoughts even into the meanest slave:–
“Such seeds are scattered night and day By the soft wind from Heaven,
And in the poorest human clay
Have taken root and thriven.”
What were the accidents–or rather, what was “the unseen Providence, by man nicknamed chance”–which assigned Epictetus to the house of Epaphroditus we do not know. To a heart refined and noble there could hardly have been a more trying position. The slaves of a Roman _familia_ were crowded together in immense gangs; they were liable to the most violent and capricious punishments; they might be subjected to the most degraded and brutalising influences. Men sink too often to the level to which they are supposed to belong. Treated with infamy for long years, they are apt to deem themselves worthy of infamy–to lose that self-respect which is the invariable concomitant of religious feeling, and which, apart from religious feeling, is the sole preventive of personal degradation. Well may St. Paul say, “Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it: _but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather_.” [62]
[Footnote 62: 1 Cor. vii. 21.]
It is true that even in the heathen world there began at this time to be disseminated among the best and wisest thinkers a sense that slaves were made of the same clay as their masters, that they differed from freeborn men only in the externals and accidents of their position, and that kindness to them and consideration for their difficulties was a common and elementary duty of humanity. “I am glad to learn,” says Seneca, in one of his interesting letters to Lucilius, “that you live on terms of familiarity with your slaves; it becomes your prudence and your erudition. Are they slaves? Nay, they are men. Slaves? Nay, companions. Slaves? Nay, humble friends. Slaves? _Nay, fellow-slaves,_ if you but consider that fortune has power over you both.” He proceeds, in a passage to which we have already alluded, to reprobate the haughty and inconsiderate fashion of keeping them standing for hours, mute and fasting, while their masters gorged themselves at the banquet. He deplores the cruelty which thinks it necessary to punish with terrible severity an accidental cough or sneeze. He quotes the proverb–a proverb which reveals a whole history–“So many slaves, so many foes,” and proves that they are not foes, but that men _made_ them so; whereas, when kindly treated, when considerately addressed, they would be silent, even under torture, rather than speak to their master’s disadvantage. “Are they not sprung,” he asks, “from the same origin, do they not breathe the same air, do they not live and die just as we do?” The blows, the broken limbs, the clanking chains, the stinted food of the _ergastula_ or slave-prisons, excited all Seneca’s compassion, and in all probability presented a picture of misery which the world has rarely seen surpassed, unless it were in that nefarious trade which England to her shame once practised, and, to her eternal glory, resolutely swept away.
But Seneca’s inculcation of tenderness towards slaves was in reality one of the most original of his moral teachings; and, from all that we know of Roman life, it is to be feared that the number of those who acted in accordance with it was small. Certainly Epaphroditus, the master of Epictetus, was not one of them. The historical facts which we know of this man are slight. He was one of the four who accompanied the tragic and despicable flight of Nero from Rome in the year 69, and when, after many waverings of cowardice, Nero at last, under imminent peril of being captured and executed, put the dagger to his breast, it was Epaphroditus who helped the tyrant to drive it home into his heart, for which he was subsequently banished, and finally executed by the Emperor Domitian.
Epictetus was accustomed to tell one or two anecdotes which, although given without comment, show the narrowness and vulgarity of the man. Among his slaves was a certain worthless cobbler named Felicio; as the cobbler was quite useless, Epaphroditus sold him, and by some chance he was bought by some one of Caesar’s household, and made Caesar’s cobbler. Instantly Epaphroditus began to pay him the profoundest respect, and to address him in the most endearing terms, so that if any one asked what Epaphroditus was doing, the answer, as likely as not, would be, “He is holding an important consultation with Felicio.”
On one occasion, some one came to him bewailing, and weeping, and embracing his knees in a paroxysm of grief, because of all his fortune little more than 50,000_l_. was left! “What did Epaphroditus do?” asks Epictetus; “did he laugh at the man as we did? Not at all; on the contrary, he exclaimed, in a tone of commiseration and surprise, ‘Poor fellow! how could you possibly keep silence and endure such a misfortune?'”
How brutally he could behave, and how little respect he inspired, we may see in the following anecdote. When Plautius Lateranus, the brave nobleman whose execution during Piso’s conspiracy we have already related, had received on his neck an ineffectual blow of the tribune’s sword, Epaphroditus, even at that dread moment, could not abstain from pressing him with questions. The only reply which he received from the dying man was the contemptuous remark, “Should I wish to say anything, I will say it (not to a slave like you, but) to _your master_.”
Under a man of this calibre it is hardly likely that a lame Phrygian boy would experience much kindness. An anecdote, indeed, has been handed down to us by several writers, which would show that he was treated with atrocious cruelty. Epaphroditus, it is said, once gratified his cruelty by twisting his slave’s leg in some instrument of torture. “If you go on, you will break it,” said Epictetus. The wretch did go on, and did break it. “I told you that you would break it,” said Epictetus quietly, not giving vent to his anguish by a single word or a single groan. Stories of heroism no less triumphant have been authenticated both in ancient and modern times; but we may hope for the sake of human nature that this story is false, since another authority tells us that Epictetus became lame in consequence of a natural disease. Be that however as it may, some of the early writers against Christianity–such, for instance, as the physician Celsus–were fond of adducing this anecdote in proof of a magnanimity which not even Christianity could surpass; to which use of the anecdote Origen opposed the awful silence of our Saviour upon the cross, and Gregory of Nazianzen pointed out that, though it was a noble thing to endure inevitable evils, it was yet more noble to undergo them voluntarily with an equal fortitude. But even if Epaphroditus were not guilty of breaking the leg of Epictetus, it is clear that the life of the poor youth was surrounded by circumstances of the most depressing and miserable character; circumstances which would have forced an ordinary man to the low and animal level of existence which appears to have contented the great majority of Roman slaves. Some of the passages in which he speaks about the consideration due to this unhappy class show a very tender feeling towards them. “It would be best,” he says, “if, both while making your preparations and while feasting at your banquets, you distribute among the attendants some of the provisions. But if such a plan, at any particular time, be difficult to carry out, remember that you who are not fatigued are being waited upon by those who are fatigued; you who are eating and drinking by those who are not eating and drinking; you who are conversing by those who are mute–you who are at your ease by people under painful constraint. And thus you will neither yourself be kindled into unseemly passion, nor will you in a fit of fury do harm to any one else.” No doubt Epictetus is here describing conduct which he had often seen, and of which he had himself experienced the degradation. But he had early acquired a loftiness of soul and an insight into truth which enabled him to distinguish the substance from the shadow, to separate the realities of life from its accidents, and so to turn his very misfortunes into fresh means of attaining to moral nobility. In proof of this let us see some of his own opinions as to his state of life.
At the very beginning of his _Discourses_ he draws a distinction between the things which the gods _have_ and the things which they _have not_ put in our own power, and he held (being deficient here in that light which Christianity might have furnished to him) that the blessings denied to us are denied not because the gods _would_ not, but because they _could_ not grant them to us. And then he supposes that Jupiter addresses him:–
“O Epictetus, had it been possible, I would have made both your little body and your little property free and unentangled; but now, do not be mistaken, it is not yours at all, but only clay finely kneaded. Since, however, I could not do this, I gave you a portion of ourselves, namely, this power of pursuing and avoiding, of desiring and of declining, and generally the power of _dealing with appearances_: and if you cultivate this power, and regard it as that which constitutes your real possession, you will never be hindered or impeded, nor will you groan or find fault with, or flatter any one. Do these advantages then appear to you to be trifling? Heaven forbid! Be content therefore with these, and thank the gods.”
And again in one of his _Fragments_ (viii. ix.):–
“Freedom and slavery are but names, respectively, of virtue and of vice: and both of them depend upon the will. But neither of them have anything to do with those things in which the will has no share. For no one is a slave whose will is free.”
“Fortune is an evil bond of the body, vice of the soul; for he is a slave whose body is free but whose soul is bound, and, on the contrary, he is free whose body is bound but whose soul is free.”
Who does not catch in these passages the very tone of St, Paul when he says, “He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant?”
Nor is his independence less clearly express when he speaks of his deformity. Being but the deformity of a body which he despised, he spoke of himself as “an ethereal existence staggering under the burden of a corpse.” In his admirable chapter on Contentment, he very forcibly lays down that topic of consolation which is derived from the sense that “the universe is not made for our individual satisfaction.” “_Must my leg be lame_?” he supposes some querulous objector to inquire. “Slave!” he replies, “do you then because of one miserable little leg find fault with the universe? Will you not concede that accident to the existence of general laws? Will you not dismiss the thought of it? Will you not cheerfully assent to it for the sake of him who gave it. And will you be indignant and displeased at the ordinances of Zeus, which he ordained and appointed with the Destinies, who were present and wove the web of your being? Know you not what an atom you are compared with the whole?–that is, as regards your body, since as regards your reason you are no whit inferior to, or less than the gods. For the greatness of reason is not estimated by size or height, but by the doctrines which it embraces. Will you not then lay up your treasure in those matters wherein you are equal to the gods?” And, thanks to such principles, a poor and persecuted slave was able to raise his voice in sincere and eloquent thanksgiving to that God to whom he owed his “creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.”
Speaking of the multitude of our natural gifts, he says, “Are these the only gifts of Providence towards us? Nay, what power of speech suffices adequately to praise, or to set them forth? for, had we but true intelligence, what duty would be more perpetually incumbent on us than both in public and in private to hymn the Divine, and bless His name and praise His benefits? Ought we not, when we dig, and when we plough, and when we eat, to sing this hymn to God? ‘Great is God, because He hath given us these implements whereby we may till the soil; great is God, because He hath given us hands, and the means of nourishment by food, and insensible growth, and breathing sleep;’ these things in each particular we ought to hymn, and to chant the greatest and the divinest hymn, because He hath given us the power to appreciate these blessings, and continuously to use them. What then? Since the most of you are blinded, ought there not to be some one to fulfil this province for you, and on behalf of all to sing his hymn to God? And what else can _I_ do, who am a lame old man, except sing praises to God? Now, had I been a nightingale, I should have sung the songs of a nightingale, or had I been a swan the songs of a swan; but, being a reasonable being, it is my duty to hymn God. This is my task, and I accomplish it; nor, so far as may be granted to me, will I ever abandon this post, and you also do I exhort to this same song.”
There is an almost lyric beauty about these expressions of resignation and faith in God, and it is the utterance of such warm feelings towards Divine Providence that constitutes the chief originality of Epictetus. It is interesting to think that the oppressed heathen philosopher found the same consolation, and enjoyed the same contentment, as the persecuted Christian Apostle. “Whether ye eat or drink,” says St. Paul, “or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” “Think of God,” says Epictetus, “oftener than you breathe. Let discourse of God be renewed daily more surely than your food.”
Here, again, are his views about his poverty (_Fragment_ xix.):–
“Examine yourself whether you wish to be rich or to be happy; and if you wish to be rich, know that it neither is a blessing, nor is it altogether in your own power; but if to be happy, know that it both _is_ a blessing, and is in your own power; since the former is but a temporary loan of fortune, but the gift of happiness depends upon the will.”
“Just as when you see a viper, or an asp, or a scorpion, in a casket of ivory or gold, you do not love or congratulate them on the splendour of their material, but because their nature is pernicious you turn from and loathe them, so likewise when you see vice enshrined in wealth and the pomp of circumstance do not be astounded at the glory of its surroundings, but despise the meanness of its character.”
“Wealth is _not_ among the number of good things; extravagance _is_ among the number of evils, sober-mindedness of good things. Now sober-mindedness invites us to frugality and the acquisition of real advantages; but wealth to extravagance, and it drags us away from sober-mindedness. It is a hard matter, therefore, being rich to be sober-minded, or being sober-minded to be rich.”
The last sentence will forcibly remind the reader of our Lord’s own words, “How hardly shall they that have riches (or as the parallel passage less startlingly expresses it, ‘Children, how hard is it for them that _trust_ in riches to’) enter into the kingdom of God.”
But this is a favourite subject with the ancient philosopher, and Epictetus continues:–
“Had you been born in Persia, you would not have been eager to live in Greece, but to stay where you were, and be happy; and, being born in poverty, why are you eager to be rich, and not rather to abide in poverty, and so be happy?”
“As it is better to be in good health, being hard-pressed on a little truckle-bed, than to roll, and to be ill in some broad couch; so too it is better in a small competence to enjoy the calm of moderate desires, than in the midst of superfluities to be discontented.”
This, too, is a thought which many have expressed. “Gentle sleep,” says Horace, “despises not the humble cottages of rustics, nor the shaded banks, nor valleys whose foliage waves with the western wind;” and every reader will recall the magnificent words of our own great Shakespeare–
“Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull’d with sounds of sweetest melody?”
To the subject of freedom, and to the power which man possesses to make himself entirely independent of all surrounding circumstances, Epictetus incessantly recurs. With the possibility of banishment to an _ergastulum_ perpetually before his eyes, he defines a prison as being any situation in which a man is placed against his will; to Socrates for instance the prison was no prison, for he was there willingly, and no man _need_ be in prison, against his will if he has learnt, as one of his primary duties, a cheerful acquiescence in the inevitable. By the expression of such sentiments Epictetus had anticipated by fifteen hundred years the immortal truth so sweetly expressed by Lovelace:
“_Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage_;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.”
Situated as he was, we can hardly wonder that thoughts like these occupied a large share of the mind of Epictetus, or that he had taught himself to lay hold of them with the firmest possible grasp. When asked, “Who among men is rich?” he replied, “He who suffices for himself;” an expression which contains the germ of the truth so forcibly expressed in the Book of Proverbs, “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good man _shall be satisfied from himself_”. Similarly, when asked, “Who is free?” he replies, “The man who masters his own self,” with much the same tone of expressions as that of Solomon, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” Socrates was one of the great models whom Epictetus constantly seats before him, and this is one of the anecdotes which he relates about him with admiration. When Archelaus sent a message to express the intention of making him rich, Socrates bade the messenger inform him that at Athens four quarts of meal might be bought for three halfpence, and the fountains flow with water. “If then my existing possessions are insufficient for me, at any rate I am sufficient for them, and so they too are sufficient for me. Do you not see that Polus acted the part of Oedipus in his royal state with no less beauty of voice than that of Oedipus in Colonos, a wanderer and beggar? Shall then a noble man appear inferior to Polus, so as not to act well every character imposed upon him by Divine Providence; and shall he not imitate Ulysses, who even in rags was no less conspicuous than in the curled nap of his purple cloak?”
Generally speaking, the view which Epictetus took of life is always simple, and always consistent; it is a view which gave him consolation among life’s troubles, and strength to display some of its noblest virtues, and it may be summed up in the following passages of his famous _Manual_:–
“Remember,” he says, “that you are an actor of just such a part as is assigned you by the Poet of the play; of a short part, if the part be short; of a long part, if it be long. Should He wish you to act the part of a beggar, take care to act it naturally and nobly; and the same if it be the part of a lame man, or a ruler, or a private man; for _this_ is in your power, to act well the part assigned to you; but to _choose_ that part is the function of another.”
“Let not these considerations afflict you: ‘I shall live despised, and the merest nobody;’ for if dishonour be an evil, you cannot be involved in evil any more than you can be involved in baseness through any one else’s means. Is it then at all _your_ business to be a leading man, or to be entertained at a banquet? By no means. How then can it be a dishonor not to be so? And how will you be a mere nobody, since it is your duty to be somebody only in those circumstances which are in your own power, in which you may be a person of the greatest importance?”
“Honour, precedence, confidence,” he argues in another passage, “whether they be good things or evil things, are at any rate things for which their own definite price must be paid. Lettuces are sold for a penny, and if you want your lettuce you must pay your penny; and similarly, if you want to be asked out to a person’s house, you must pay the price which he demands for asking people, whether the coin he requires be praise or attention; but if you do not give these, do not expect the other. Have you then gained nothing in lieu of your supper? Indeed you have; you have escaped praising a person whom you did not want to praise, and you have escaped the necessity of tolerating the upstart impertinence of his menials.”
Some parts of this last thought have been so beautifully expressed by the American poet Lowell that I will conclude this chapter in his words:
“Earth hath her price for what earth gives us; The beggar is tax’d for a corner to die in; The priest hath his fee who comes and shrieves us; We bargain for the graves we lie in: At the devil’s mart are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold, For a cap and bells our lives we pay. Bubbles we earn with our whole soul’s tasking, ‘_Tis only God that is given away,
‘Tis only heaven may be had for the asking_.”
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS _(continued)_.
Whether any of these great thoughts would have suggested themselves _spontaneously_ to Epictetus–whether there was an inborn wisdom and nobleness in the mind of this slave which would have enabled him to elaborate such views from his own consciousness, we cannot tell; they do not, however, express _his_ sentiments only, but belong in fact to the moral teaching of the great Stoic school, in the doctrines of which he had received instruction.
It may sound strange to the reader that one situated as Epictetus was should yet have had a regular tutor to train him in Stoic doctrines. That such should have been the case appears at first sight inconsistent with the cruelty with which he was treated, but it is a fact which is capable of easy explanation. In times of universal luxury and display–in times when a sort of surface-refinement is found among all the wealthy–some sort of respect is always paid to intellectual eminence, and intellectual amusements are cultivated as well as those of a coarser character. Hence a rich Roman liked to have people of literary culture among his slaves; he liked to have people at hand who would get him any information which he might desire about books, who could act as his amanuenses, who could even correct and supply information for his original compositions. Such learned slaves formed part of every large establishment, and among them were usually to be found some who bore, if they did not particularly merit, the title of “philosophers.” These men–many of whom are described as having been mere impostors, ostentatious pedants, or ignorant hypocrites–acted somewhat like domestic chaplains in the houses of their patrons. They gratified an amateur taste for wisdom, and helped to while away in comparative innocence the hours which their masters might otherwise have spent in lassitude or sleep. It was no more to the credit of Epaphroditus that he wished to have a philosophic slave, than it is to the credit of an illiterate millionaire in modern times that he likes to have works of high art in his drawing-room, and books of reference in his well-furnished library.
Accordingly, since Epictetus must have been singularly useless for all physical purposes, and since his thoughtfulness and intelligence could not fail to command attention, his master determined to make him useful in the only way possible, and sent him to Caius Musonius Rufus to be trained in the doctrines of the Stoic philosophy.
Musonius was the son of a Roman knight. His learning and eloquence, no less than his keen appreciation of Stoic truths, had so deeply kindled the suspicions of Nero, that he banished him to the rocky little island of Gyaros, on the charge of his having been concerned in Piso’s conspiracy. He returned to Rome after the suicide of Nero, and lived in great distinction and respect, so that he was allowed to remain in the city when the Emperor Vespasian banished all the other philosophers of any eminence.
The works of Musonius have not come down to us, but a few notices of him, which are scattered in the _Discourses_ of his greater pupil, show us what kind of man he was. The following anecdotes will show that he was a philosopher of the strictest school.
Speaking of the value of logic as a means of training the reason, Epictetus anticipates the objection that, after all, a mere error in reasoning is no very serious fault. He points out that it _is_ a fault, and that is sufficient. “I too,” he says, “once made this very remark to Rufus when he rebuked me for not discovering the suppressed premiss in some syllogism. ‘What!’ said I, ‘have I then set the Capitol on fire, that you rebuke me thus?’ ‘Slave!’ he answered, ‘what has the Capitol to do with it? Is there no _other_ fault then short of setting the Capitol on fire? Yes! to use one’s own mere fancies rashly, at random, anyhow; not to follow an argument, or a demonstration, or a sophism; not, in short, to see what makes for oneself or not, in questioning and answering–is none of these things a fault?'”
Sometimes he used to test the Stoical endurance of his pupil by pointing out the indignities and tortures which his master might at any moment inflict upon him; and when Epictetus answered that, after all, such treatment was what man _had_ borne, and therefore _could_ bear, he would reply approvingly that every man’s destiny was in his own hands; that he need lack nothing from any one else; that, since he could derive from himself magnanimity and nobility of soul, he might despise the notion of receiving lands or money or office. “But,” he continued, “when any one is cowardly or mean, one ought obviously in writing letters about such a person to speak of him as a corpse, and to say, ‘Favour us with the corpse and blood of So-and-so,’ For? in fact, such a man _is_ a mere corpse, and nothing more; for if he were anything more, he would have perceived that no man ever suffers any real misfortunes by another’s means.” I do not know whether Mr. Ruskin is a student of Epictetus, but he, among others, has forcibly expressed the same truth. “My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends’ houses; and each of them placed him at his table’s head, and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to you, in plain words, as it _is_ offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honour gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive…. Would you take the offer verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in the fulness of horror.”
The way in which Musonius treated would-be pupils much resembled the plan adopted by Socrates. “It is not easy,” says Epictetus, “to train effeminate youths, any more than it is easy to take up whey with a hook. But those of fine nature, even if you discourage them, desire instruction all the more. For which reason Rufus often discouraged pupils, using this as a criterion of fine and of common natures; for he used to say, that just as a stone, even if you fling it into the air, will fall down to the earth by its own gravitating force, so also a noble nature, in proportion as it is repulsed, in that proportion tends more in its own natural direction.” As Emerson says,–
“Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, ‘THOU MUST,’ The youth replies, ‘I CAN.'”
One more trait of the character of Musonius will show how deeply Epictetus respected him, and how much good he derived from him. In his _Discourse on Ostentation_, Epictetus says that Rufus was in the habit of remarking to his pupils, “If you have leisure to praise me, I can have done you no good.” “He used indeed so to address us that each one of us, sitting there, thought that some one had been privately telling tales against _him_ in particular, so completely did Rufus seize hold of his characteristics, so vividly did he portray our individual faults.”
Such was the man under whose teaching Epictetus grew to maturity, and it was evidently a teaching which was wise and noble, even if it were somewhat chilling and austere. It formed an epoch in the slave’s life; it remoulded his entire character; it was to him the source of blessings so inestimable in their value that it is doubtful whether they were counter-balanced by all the miseries of poverty, slavery, and contempt. He would probably have admitted that it was _better_ for him to have been sold into cruel slavery, than it would have been to grow up in freedom, obscurity, and ignorance in his native Hierapolis. So that Epictetus might have found, and did find, in his own person, an additional argument in favour of Divine Providence: an additional proof that God is kind and merciful to all men; an additional intensity of conviction that, if our lots on earth are not equal, they are at least dominated by a principle of justice and of wisdom, and each man, on the whole, may gain that which is best for him, and that which most honestly and most heartily he desires. Epictetus reminds us again and again that we may have many, if not all, such advantages as the world has to offer, _if we are willing to pay the price by which they are obtained_. But if that price be a mean or a wicked one, and if we should scorn ourselves were we ever tempted to pay it, then we must not even cast one longing look of regret towards things which can only be got by that which we deliberately refuse to give. Every good and just man may gain, if not happiness, then something higher than happiness. Let no one regard this as a mere phrase, for it is capable of a most distinct and definite meaning. There are certain things which all men desire, and which all men would _gladly_, if they could _lawfully_ and _innocently_ obtain. These things are health, wealth, ease, comfort, influence, honour, freedom from opposition and from pain; and yet, if you were to place all these blessings on the one side, and on the other side to place poverty, and disease, and anguish, and trouble, and contempt,–yet, if on _this_ side also you were to place truth and justice, and a sense that, however densely the clouds may gather about our life, the light of God will be visible beyond them, all the noblest men who ever lived would choose, as without hesitation they always have chosen, the _latter_ destiny. It is not that they like failure, but they prefer failure to falsity; it is not that they love persecution, but they prefer persecution to meanness; it is not that they relish opposition, but they welcome opposition rather than guilty acquiescence; it is not that they do not shrink from agony, but they would not escape agony by crime. The selfishness of Dives in his purple is to them less enviable than the innocence of Lazarus in rags; they would be chained with John in prison rather than loll with Herod at the feast; they would fight with beasts with Paul in the arena rather than be steeped in the foul luxury of Nero on the throne. It is not happiness, but it is something higher than happiness; it is stillness, it is assurance, it is satisfaction, it is peace; the world can neither understand it, nor give it, nor take it away,–it is something indescribable–it is the gift of God.
“The fallacy” of being surprised at wickedness in prosperity, and righteousness in misery, “can only lie,” says Mr. Froude, in words which would have delighted Epictetus, and which would express the inmost spirit of his philosophy, “in the supposed _right_ to happiness…. Happiness is not what we are to look for. Our place is to be true to the best we know, to seek that, and do that; and if by ‘virtue is its own reward’ be meant that the good man cares only to continue good, desiring nothing more, then it is a true and a noble saying…. Let us do right, and then whether happiness come, or unhappiness, it is no very mighty matter. If it come, life will be sweet; if it do not come, life will be bitter–bitter, not sweet, and yet to be borne…. The well-being of our souls depends only on what we _are_; and nobleness of character is nothing else but _steady love of good, and steady scorn of evil_…. Only to those who have the heart to say, ‘We can do without selfish enjoyment: it is not what we ask or desire,’ is there no secret. Man will have what he desires, and will find what is really best for him, exactly as he honestly seeks for it. _Happiness may fly away, pleasure pall or cease to be obtainable, wealth decay, friends fail or prove unkind; but the power to serve God never fails, and the love of Him is never rejected_.”
CHAPTER III.
LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS (_continued._)
Of the life of Epictetus, as distinct from his opinions, there is unfortunately little more to be told. The life of
“That halting slave, who in Nicopolis Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son Cleared Rome of what most shamed him,”
is not an eventful life, and the conditions which surrounded it are very circumscribed. Great men, it has been observed, have often the shortest biographies; their real life is in their books.
At some period of his life, but how or when we do not know, Epictetus was manumitted by his master, and was henceforward regarded by the world as free. Probably the change made little or no difference in his life. If it saved him from a certain amount of brutality, if it gave him more uninterrupted leisure, it probably did not in the slightest degree modify the hardships of his existence, and may have caused him some little anxiety as to the means of procuring the necessaries of life. He, of all men, would have attached the least importance to the external conditions under which he lived; he always regarded them as falling under the category of things which lay beyond the sphere of his own influence, and therefore as things with which he had nothing to do. Even in his most oppressed days, he considered himself, by the grace of heaven, to be more free–free in a far truer and higher sense–than thousands of those who owed allegiance to no master’s will. Whether he had saved any small sum of money, or whether his needs were supplied by the many who loved and honoured him, we do not know. He was a man who was content with the barest necessaries of life, and we may be sure that he would have refused to be indebted to any one for more than these.
It is probable that he never married. This may have been due to that shade of indifference to the female character of which we detect traces here and there in his writings. In one passage he complains that women seemed to think of nothing but admiration and getting married; and, in another, he observes, almost with a sneer, that the Roman ladies were fond of Plato’s _Republic_ because he allowed some very liberal marriage regulations. We can only infer from these passages that he had been very unfortunate in the specimens of women with whom he had been thrown. The Roman ladies of his time were certainly not models of character; he was not likely to fall in with very exalted females among the slaves of Epaphroditus or the ladies of his family, and he had probably never known the love of a sister or a mother’s care. He did not, however, go the length of condemning marriage altogether; on the contrary, he blames the philosophers who did so. But it is equally obvious that he approves of celibacy as a “counsel of perfection,” and indeed his views on the subject have so close and remarkable a resemblance to those of St. Paul that our readers will be interested in seeing them side by side.
In 1 Cor. vii. St. Paul, after speaking of the nobleness of virginity, proceeds, nevertheless, to sanction matrimony as in itself a hallowed and honourable estate. It was not given to all, he says, to abide even as he was, and therefore marriage should be adopted as a sacred and indissoluble bond. Still, without being sure that he has any divine sanction for what he is about to say, he considers celibacy good “for the present distress,” and warns those that marry that they “shall have trouble in the flesh.” For marriage involves a direct multiplication of the cares of the flesh: “He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife…. And this I speak for your own profit, not that I may cast a snare upon you, _but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction_.”
It is clear, then, that St. Paul regarded virginity as a “counsel of perfection,” and Epictetus uses respecting it almost identically the same language. Marriage was perfectly permissible in his view, but it was much better for a Cynic (i.e. for all who carried out most fully their philosophical obligations) to remain single: “Since the condition of things is such as it now is, as though we were on the eve of battle, _ought not the Cynio to be entirely without distraction_” [the Greek word being the very same as that used by St. Paul] “_for the service of God_? ought he not to be able to move about among mankind free from the entanglement of private relationships or domestic duties, which if he neglect he will no longer preserve the character of a wise and good man, and which if he observe he will lose the function of a messenger, and sentinel, and herald of the gods?” Epictetus proceeds to point out that if he is married he can no longer look after the spiritual interests of all with whom he is thrown in contact, and no longer maintain the rigid independence of all luxuries which marked the genuine philosopher. He _must_, for instance, have a bath for his child, provisions for his wife’s ailments, and clothes for his little ones, and money to buy them satchels and pens, and cribs and cups; and hence a general increase of furniture, and all sorts of undignified distractions, which Epictetus enumerates with an almost amusing manifestation of disgust. It is true (he admits) that Crates, a celebrated cynic, was married, but it was to a lady as self-denying as himself, and to one who had given up wealth and friends to share hardship and poverty with him. And, if Epictetus does not venture to say in so many words that Crates in this matter made a mistake, he takes pains to point out that the circumstances were far too exceptional to be accepted as a precedent for the imitation of others.
“But,” inquires the interlocutor, “how then is the world to get on?” The question seems quite to disturb the bachelor equanimity of Epictetus; it makes him use language of the strongest and most energetic contempt: and it is only when he trenches on this subject that he ever seems to lose the nobility and grace, the “sweetness and light,” which are the general characteristic of his utterances. In spite of his complete self-mastery he was evidently a man of strong feelings, and with a natural tendency to express them strongly. “Heaven bless us,” he exclaims in reply, “are _they_ greater benefactors of mankind who bring into the world two or three evilly-squalling brats,[63] or those who, to the best of their power, keep a beneficent eye on the lives, and habits, and tendencies of all mankind? Were the Thebans who had large families more useful to their country than the childless Epaminondas; or was Homer less useful to mankind than Priam with his fifty good-for-nothing sons?… Why, sir, the true cynic is a father to all men; all men are his sons and all women his daughters; he has a bond of union, a lien of affection with them all.” (_Dissert_. iii. 22.)
[Footnote 63: [Greek: kakorrugcha paidia]. Another reading is [Greek: kokorugcha], which M. Martha renders, “_Marmots a vilain petit museau_!” It is evident that Epictetus did not like children, which makes his subsequently mentioned compassion to the poor neglected child still more creditable to him.]
The whole character of Epictetus is sufficient to prove that he would only do what he considered _most_ desirable and most exalted; and passages like these, the extreme asperity of which I have necessarily, softened down, are, I think, decisive in favour of the tradition which pronounces him to have been unmarried.
We are told that he lived in a cottage of the simplest and even meanest description: it neither needed nor possessed a fastening of any kind, for within it there was no furniture except a lamp and the poor straw pallet on which he slept. About his lamp there was current in antiquity a famous story, to which he himself alludes. As a piece of unwonted luxury he had purchased a little iron lamp, which burned in front of the images of his household deities. It was the only possession which he had, and a thief stole it. “He will be finely disappointed when he comes again,” quietly observed Epictetus. “for he will only find an earthenware lamp next time.” At his death the little earthenware lamp was bought by some genuine hero-worshipper for 3,000 drachmas. “The purchaser hoped,” says the satirical Lucian, “that if he read philosophy at night by that lamp, he would at once acquire in dreams the wisdom of the admirable old man who once possessed it.”
But, in spite of his deep poverty, it must not be supposed that there was anything eccentric or ostentatious in the life of Epictetus. On the contrary, his writings abound in directions as to the proper bearing of a philosopher in life. He warns his students that they may have ridicule to endure. Not only did the little boys in the streets, the _gamins_ of Rome, appear to consider a philosopher “fair game,” and think it fine fun to mimic his gestures and pull his beard, but he had to undergo the sneers of much more dignified people. “If,” says Epictetus, “you want to know how the Romans regard philosophers, listen. Maelius, who had the highest philosophic reputation among them, once when I was present, happened to get into a great rage with his people, and as though he had received an intolerable injury, exclaimed, ‘I _cannot_ endure it; you are killing me; why, you’ll make me _like him_! pointing to me,” evidently as if Epictetus were the merest insect in existence. And, again he says in the _Manual_. “If you wish to be a philosopher, prepare yourself to be thoroughly laughed at since many will certainly sneer and jeer at you, and will say, ‘He has come back to us as a philosopher all of a sudden,’ and ‘Where in the world did he get this superciliousness?’ Now do not you be supercilious, but cling to the things which appear best to you in such a manner as though you were conscious of having been appointed by God to this position.” Again in the little discourse _On the Desire of Admiration_, he warns the philosopher “_not to walk as if he had swallowed a poker_” or to care for the applause of those multitudes whom he holds to be immersed in error. For all display, and pretence, and hypocrisy, and Pharisaism, and boasting, and mere fruitless book-learning he seems to have felt a genuine and profound contempt. Recommendations to simplicity of conduct, courtesy of manner, and moderation of language were among his practical precepts. It is refreshing, too, to know that with the strongest and manliest good sense, he entirely repudiated that dog-like brutality of behaviour, and repulsive eccentricity of self-neglect, which characterised not a few of the Cynic leaders. He expressly argues that the Cynic should be a man of ready tact, and attractive presence; and there is something of almost indignant energy in his words when he urges upon a pupil the plain duty of scrupulous cleanliness. In this respect our friends the Hermits would not quite have satisfied him, although he might possibly have pardoned them on the plea that they abode in desert solitudes, since he bids those who neglect the due care of their bodies to live “either in the wilderness or alone.”
Late in life Epictetus increased his establishment by taking in an old woman as a servant. The cause of his doing so shows an almost Christian tenderness of character. According to the hideous custom of infanticide which prevailed in the pagan world, a man with whom Epictetus was acquainted exposed his infant son to perish. Epictetus in pity took the child home to save its life, and the services of a female were necessary to supply its wants. Such kindness and self-denial were all the more admirable because pity, like all other deep emotions, was regarded by the Stoics in the light rather of a vice than of a virtue. In this respect, however, both Seneca and Epictetus, and to a still greater extent Marcus Aurelius, were gloriously false to the rigidity of the school to which they professed to belong. We see with delight that one of the _Discourses_ of Epictetus was _On the Tenderness and Forbearance due to Sinners_; and he abounds in exhortations to forbearance in judging others. In one of his _Fragments_ he tells the following anecdote:–A person who had seen a poor ship-wrecked and almost dying pirate took pity on him, carried him home, gave him clothes, and furnished him with all the necessaries of life. Somebody reproached him for doing good to the wicked–“I have honoured,” he replied, “not the man, but humanity in his person.”
But one fact more is known in the life of Epictetus, Domitian, the younger son of Vespasian, succeeded his far nobler brother the Emperor Titus; and in the course of his reign a decree was passed which banished all the philosophers from Italy. Epictetus was not exempted from this unjust and absurd decree. That he bore it with equanimity may be inferred from the approval with which he tells an anecdote about Agrippinus, who while his cause was being tried in the Senate went on with all his usual avocations, and on being informed on his return from bathing that he had been condemned, quietly asked, “To death or banishment?” “To banishment,” said the messenger. “Is my property confiscated?” “No,” “Very well, then let us go as far as Aricia” (about sixteen miles from Rome), “and dine there.”
There was a certain class of philosophers whose external mark and whose sole claim to distinction rested in the length of their beards; and when the decree of Domitian was passed these gentleman contented themselves with shaving. Epictetus alludes to this in his second _Discourse_, “Come, Epictetus, shave off your beard,” he imagines some one to say to him. “If I am a philosopher I will not,” he replies. “Then I will take off your head.” “By all means, if that will do you any good.”
He went to Nicopolis, a town of Epirus, which had been built by Augustus in commemoration of his victory at Actium. Whether he ever revisited Rome is uncertain, but it is probable that he did so, for we know that he enjoyed the friendship of several eminent philosophers and statesmen, and was esteemed and honoured by the Emperor Hadrian himself. He is said to have lived to a good old age, surrounded by affectionate and eager disciples, and to have died with the same noble simplicity which had marked his life. The date of his death is as little known as that of his birth. It only remains to give a sketch of those thoughts which, poor though he was, and despised, and a slave, yet made him “dear to the immortals.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE “MANUAL” AND “FRAGMENTS” OF EPICTETUS.
It is nearly certain that Epictetus never committed any of his doctrines to writing. Like his great exemplar. Socrates, he contented himself with oral instruction, and the bulk of what has come down to us in his name consists in the _Discourses_ reproduced for us by his pupil Arrian. It was the ambition of Arrian “to be to Epictetus what Xenophon had been to Socrates,” that is, to hand down to posterity a noble and faithful picture of the manner in which his master had lived and taught. With this view, he wrote four books on Epictetus,–a life, which is now unhappily lost; a book of conversation or “table talk,” which is also lost; and two books which have come down to us, viz. the _Discourses_ and the _Manual_. It is from these two invaluable books, and from a good many isolated fragments, that we are enabled to judge what was the practical morality of Stoicism, as expounded by the holy and upright slave.
The _Manual_ is a kind of abstract of Epictetus’s ethical principles, which, with many additional illustrations and with more expansion, are also explained in the _Discourses_. Both books were so popular that by their means Arrian first came into conspicuous notice, and ultimately attained the highest eminence and rank. The _Manual_ was to antiquity what the _Imitatio_ of Thomas a Kempis was to later times, and what Woodhead’s _Whole Duty of Man_ or Wilberforce’s _Practical View of Christianity_ have been to large sections of modern Englishmen. It was a clear, succinct, and practical statement of common daily duties, and the principles upon which they rest. Expressed in a manner entirely simple and unornate, its popularity was wholly due to the moral elevation of the thoughts which it expressed. Epictetus did not aim at style; his one aim was to excite his hearers to virtue, and Arrian tells us that in this endeavour he created a deep impression by his manner and voice. It is interesting to know that the _Manual_ was widely accepted among Christians no less than among Pagans, and that, so late as the fifth century, paraphrases were written of it for Christian use. No systematic treatise of morals so simply beautiful was ever composed, and to this day the best Christian may study it, not with interest only, but with real advantage. It is like the voice of the Sybil, which, uttering things simple, and unperfumed, and unadorned, by God’s grace reacheth through innumerable years. We proceed to give a short sketch of its contents.
Epictetus began by laying down the broad comprehensive statement that there are some things which are in our power, and depend upon ourselves; other things which are beyond our power, and wholly independent of us. The things which are in our power are our opinions, our aims, our desires, our aversions–in a word, _our actions_. The things beyond our power are bodily accidents, possessions, fame, rank, and whatever lies _beyond_ the sphere of our actions. To the former of these classes of things our whole attention must be confined. In that region we may be noble, unperturbed, and free; in the other we shall be dependent, frustrated, querulous, miserable. Both classes cannot be successfully attended to; they are antagonistic, antipathetic; we cannot serve God and Mammon.
Now, if we take a right view of all these things which in no way depend on ourselves we shall regard them as mere semblances–as shadows which are to be distinguished from the true substance. We shall not look upon them as fit subjects for aversion or desire. Sin and cruelty, and falsehood we may hate, because we can avoid them if we will; but we must look upon sickness, and poverty, and death as things which are _not_ fit subjects for our avoidance, because they lie wholly beyond our control.
This, then,–endurance of the inevitable, avoidance of the evil–is the keynote of the Epictetean philosophy. It has been summed up in the three words, [Greek: Anechou kai apechou], “_sustine et abstine_,” “Bear and forbear,”–bear whatever God assigns to you, abstain from that which He forbids.
The earlier part of the _Manual_ is devoted to practical advice which may enable men to endure nobly. For instance, “If there be anything,” says Epictetus, “which you highly value or tenderly love, estimate at the same time its true nature. Is it some possession? remember that it may be destroyed. Is it wife or child? remember that they may die.” “Death,” says an epitaph in Chester Cathedral–
“Death, the great monitor, comes oft to prove, ‘Tis dust we dote on, when ’tis man we love.”
“Desire nothing too much. If you are going to the public baths and are annoyed or hindered by the rudeness, the pushing, the abuse, the thievish propensities of others, do not lose your temper: remind yourself that it is more important that you should keep your will in harmony with nature than that you should bathe. And so with all troubles; men suffer far less from the things themselves than from the opinions they have of them.”
“If you cannot frame your circumstances in accordance with your wishes, frame your will into harmony with your circumstances.[64] When you lose the best gifts of life, consider them as not lost but only resigned to Him who gave them. You have a remedy in your own heart against all trials–continence as a bulwark against passion, patience against opposition, fortitude against pain. Begin with trifles: if you are robbed, remind yourself that your peace of mind is of more value and importance than the thing which has been stolen from you. Follow the guidance of nature; that is the great thing; regret nothing, desire nothing, which can disturb that end. Behave as at a banquet–take with gratitude and in moderation what is set before you, and seek for nothing more; a higher and diviner step will be to be ready and able to forego even that which is given you, or which you might easily obtain. Sympathise with others, at least externally, when they are in sorrow and misfortune; but remember in your own heart that to the brave and wise and true there is really no such thing as misfortune; it is but an ugly semblance; the croak of the raven can portend no harm to such a man, he is elevated above its power.”
[Footnote 64: “When what thou willest befalls not, thou then must will what befalleth.”]
“We do not choose our own parts in life, and have nothing to do with those parts; our simple duty is confined to playing them well. The slave may be as free as the consul; and freedom is the chief of blessings; it dwarfs all others; beside it all others are insignificant, with it all others become needless, without it no others are possible. No one can insult you if you will not regard his words or deeds as insults.[65] Keep your eye steadily fixed on the great reality of death, and all other things will shrink to their true proportions. As in a voyage, when a ship has come to anchor, if you have gone out to find water, you may amuse yourself with picking up a little shell or bulb, but you must keep your attention steadily fixed upon the ship, in case the captain should call, and then you must leave all such things lest you should be flung on board, bound like sheep. So in life; if, instead of a little shell or bulb, some wifeling or childling be granted you, well and good; but, if the captain call, run to the ship and leave such possessions behind you, not looking back. But if you be an old man, take care not to go a long distance from the ship at all, lest you should be called and come too late.” The metaphor is a significant one, and perhaps the following lines of Sir Walter Scott, prefixed anonymously to one of the chapters of the Waverley Novels, may help to throw light upon it:
“Death finds us ‘midst our playthings; snatches us, As a cross nurse might do a wayward child, From all our toys and baubles–the rough call Unlooses all our favourite ties on earth: And well if they are such as may be answered In yonder world, where all is judged of truly.”
[Footnote 65: Compare Cowper’s _Conversation_:– “Am I to set my life upon a throw
Because a bear is rude and surly?–No.– A modest, sensible, and well-bred man Will not insult me, and _no other can_.”]
“Preserve your just relations to other men; their misconduct does not affect your duties. Has your father done wrong, or your brother been unjust? Still he _is_ your father, he _is_ your brother; and you must consider your relation to him, not whether he be worthy of it or no.
“Your duty towards the gods is to form just and true opinions respecting them. Believe that they do all things well, and then you need never murmur or complain.”
“As rules of practice,” says Epictetus, “prescribe to yourself an ideal, and then act up to it. Be mostly silent; or, if you converse, do not let it be about vulgar and insignificant topics, such as dogs, horses, racing, or prize-fighting. Avoid foolish and immoderate laughter, vulgar entertainments, impurity, display, spectacles, recitations, and all egotistical remarks. Set before you the examples of the great and good. Do not be dazzled by mere appearances. Do what is right quite irrespective of what people will say or think. Remember that your body is a very small matter and needs but very little; just as all that the foot needs is a shoe, and not a dazzling ornament of gold, purple, or jewelled embroidery. To spend all one’s time on the body, or on bodily exercises, shows a weak intellect. Do not be fond of criticising others, and do not resent their criticisms of you. Everything,” he says, and this is one of his most characteristic precepts, “has two handles! one by which it may be borne, the other by which it cannot. If your brother be unjust, do not take up the matter by that handle–the handle of his injustice–for that handle is the one by which it cannot be taken up; but rather by the handle that he is your brother and brought up with you; and then you will be taking it up as it can be borne.”
All these precepts have a general application, but Epictetus adds others on the right bearing of a philosopher; that is, of one whose professed ideal is higher than the multitude. He bids him above all things not to be censorious, and not to be ostentatious. “Feed on your own principles; do not throw them up to show how much you have eaten. Be self-denying, but do not boast of it. Be independent and moderate, and regard not the opinion or censure of others, but keep a watch upon yourself as your own most dangerous enemy. Do not plume yourself on an _intellectual_ knowledge of philosophy, which is in itself quite valueless, but on a consistent nobleness of action. Never relax your efforts, but aim at perfection. Let everything which seems best be to you a law not to be transgressed; and whenever anything painful, or pleasurable, or glorious, or inglorious, is set before you, remember that now is the struggle, now is the hour of the Olympian contest, and it may not be put off, and that by a single defeat or yielding your advance in virtue may be either secured or lost. It was thus that Socrates attained perfection, by giving his heart to reason, and to reason only. And thou, even if as yet thou art not a Socrates, yet shouldst live as though it were thy wish to be one.” These are noble words, but who that reads them will not be reminded of those sacred and far more deeply-reaching words, “_Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation_.
In this brief sketch we have included all the most important thoughts in the _Manual_. It ends in these words. “On all occasions we may keep in mind these three sentiments:–“
‘Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, Destiny, whithersoever ye have appointed me to go, for I will follow, and that without delay. Should I be unwilling, I shall follow as a coward, but I must follow all the same.’ (Cleanthes.)
‘Whosoever hath nobly yielded to necessity, I hold him wise, and he knoweth the things of God.’ (Euripides.)
And this third one also, ‘O Crito, be it so, if so be the will of heaven. Anytus and Melitus can indeed slay me, but harm me they cannot.’ (Socrates.)
To this last conception of life; quoted from the end of Plato’s _Apology_, Epictetus recurs elsewhere: “What resources have we,” he asks, “in circumstances of great peril? What other than the remembrance of what is or what is not in our own power; what is possible to us and what is not? I must die. Be it so; but need I die groaning? I must be bound; but must I be bound bewailing? I must be driven into exile, well, who prevent me then from going with laughter, and cheerfulness, and calm of mind?
“‘Betray secrets.’
“‘Indeed I will not, for _that_ rests in my own hands.’
“‘Then I will put you in chains.’
“‘My good sir, what are you talking about? Put _me_ in chains? No, no! you may put my leg in chains, but not even Zeus himself can master my will.’
“‘I will throw you into prison.’
“‘My poor little body; yes, no doubt.’
“‘I will cut off your head.’
“‘Well did I ever tell you that my head was the only one which could not be cut off?’
“Such are the things of which philosophers should think, and write them daily, and exercise themselves therein.”
There are many other passages in which Epictetus shows that the free-will of man is his noblest privilege, and that we should not “sell it for a trifle;” or, as Scripture still more sternly expresses it, should not “sell ourselves for nought.” He relates, for instance, the complete failure of the Emperor Vespasian to induce Helvidius Priscus not to go to the Senate. “While I am a Senator,” said Helvidius, “I _must_ go.” “Well, then, at least be silent there.” “Ask me no questions, and I will be silent.” “But I _must_ ask your opinion.” “And _I_ must say what is right.” “But I will put you to death.” “Did I ever tell you I was immortal? Do _your_ part, and _I_ will do _mine_. It is yours to kill me, mine to die untrembling; yours to banish me, mine to go into banishment without grief.”
We see from these remarkable extracts that the wisest of the heathen had, by God’s grace, attained to the sense that life was subject to a divine guidance. Yet how dim was their vision of this truth, how insecure their hold upon it, in comparison with that which the meanest Christian may attain! They never definitely grasped the doctrine of immortality. They never quite got rid of a haunting dread that perhaps, after all, they might be nothing better than insignificant and unheeded atoms, swept hither and thither in the mighty eddies of an unseen, impersonal, mysterious agency, and destined hereafter “to be sealed amid the iron hills,” or
“To be imprisoned in the viewless winds. And blown with reckless violence about The pendent world.”
Their belief in a personal deity was confused with their belief in nature, which, in the language of a modern sceptic, “acts with fearful uniformity: stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death; too vast to praise, too inexorable to propitiate, it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save.” How different the soothing and tender certainty of the Christian’s hope, for whom Christ has brought life and immortality to light! For “chance” is not only “the daughter of forethought,” as the old Greek lyric poet calls her, but the daughter also of love. How different the prayer of David, even in the hours of his worst agony and shame, “_Let Thy loving Spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness_.” Guidance, and guidance by the hand of love, was–as even in that dark season he recognised–the very law of his life; and his soul, purged by affliction, had but a single wish–the wish to be led, not into prosperity, not into a recovery of his lost glory, not even into the restoration of his lost innocence; but only,–through paths however hard–only into the land of righteousness. And because he knew that God would lead him thitherward, he had no wish, no care for anything beyond. We will end this chapter by translating a few of the isolated fragments of Epictetus which have been preserved for us by other writers. The wisdom and beauty of these fragments will interest the reader, for Epictetus was one of the few “in the very dust of whose thoughts was gold.”
* * * * *
“A life entangled with accident is like a wintry torrent, for it is turbulent, and foul with mud, and impassable, and tyrannous, and loud, and brief.”
“A soul that dwells with virtue is like a perennial spring; for it is pure, and limpid, and refreshful, and inviting, and serviceable, and rich, and innocent, and uninjurious.”
* * * * *
“If you wish to be good? first believe that you are bad.”
Compare Matt. ix. 12, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick;” John ix. 41, “Now ye say, We see, therefore your sin remaineth;” and 1 John i. 8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
* * * * *
“It is base for one who sweetens that which he drinks with the gifts of bees, to embitter by vice his reason, which is the gift of God.”
* * * * *
“Nothing is meaner than the love of pleasure, the love of gain, and insolence: nothing nobler than high-mindedness, and gentleness, and philanthropy, and doing good.”
* * * * *
“The vine bears three clusters: the first of pleasure; the second of drunkenness; the third of insult.”
“He is a drunkard who drinks more than three cups; even if he be not drunken, he has exceeded moderation.”
Our own George Herbert has laid down the same limit:–
“Be not a beast in courtesy, but stay, _Stay at the third cup, or forego the place_, Wine above all things doth God’s stamp deface.”
* * * * *
“Like the beacon-lights in harbours, which, kindling a great blaze by means of a few fagots, afford sufficient aid to vessels that wander over the sea, so, also, a man of bright character in a storm-tossed city, himself content with little, effects great blessings for his fellow-citizens.”
The thought is not unlike that of Shakespeare:
“How far yon little candle throws its beams, So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
But the metaphor which Epictetus more commonly adopts is one no less beautiful. “What good,” asked some one, “did Helvidius Priscus do in resisting Vespasian, being but a single person?” “What good,” answers Epictetus, “does the purple do on the garment? Why, _it is splendid in itself, and splendid also in the example which it affords_.”
* * * * *
“As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations that he may rise, but shines at once, and is greeted by all; so neither wait thou for applause, and shouts, and eulogies, that thou mayst do well;–but be a spontaneous benefactor, and thou shalt be beloved like the sun.”
* * * * *
“Thales, when asked what was the commonest of all possessions, answered, ‘Hope; for even those who have nothing else have hope.'”
“Lead, lead me on, my hopes,” says Mr. Macdonald; “I know that ye are true and not vain. Vanish from my eyes day after day, but arise in new forms. I will follow your holy deception; follow till ye have brought me to the feet of my Father in heaven, where I shall find you all, with folded wings, spangling the sapphire dusk whereon stands His throne which is our home.
“What ought not to be done do not even think of doing.”
Compare
“_Guard well your thoughts for thoughts are heard in heaven_.'”
* * * * *
Epictetus, when asked how a man could grieve his enemy, replied, “By preparing himself to act in the noblest way.”
Compare Rom. xii. 20, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: _for in so doing thou shall heap coals of fire on his head_”
* * * * *
“If you always remember that in all you do in soul or body God stands by as a witness, in all your prayers and your actions you will not err; and you shall have God dwelling with you.”
Compare Rev. iii. 30, “Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, _I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me.”_
In the discourse written to prove that God keeps watch upon human actions, Epictetus touches again on the same topic, saying that God has placed beside each one of us his own guardian spirit–a spirit that sleeps not and cannot be beguiled–and has handed us each over to that spirit to protect us. “And to what better or more careful guardian could He have entrusted us? So that when you have closed your doors and made darkness within, _remember never to say that you are alone_. For you are not alone. God, too, is present there, and your guardian spirit; and what need have _they_ of light to see what you are doing.”
There is in this passage an almost startling coincidence of thought with those eloquent words in the Book of Ecclesiasticus: “A man that breaketh wedlock, saying thus in his heart, Who seeth me? _I am compassed about with darkness, the walls cover me, and nobody seeth me_: what need I to fear? the Most Highest will not remember my sins: _such a man only feareth the eyes of man_, and knoweth not that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, beholding all the ways of men, and considering the most secret parts. He knew all things ere ever they were created: so also after they were perfected He looked upon all. This man shall be punished in the streets of the city, and where he expecteth not he shall be taken.” (Ecclus. xxiii. 11-21.)
“When we were children, our parents entrusted us to a tutor who kept a continual watch that we might not suffer harm; but, when we grow to manhood, God hands us over to an inborn conscience to guard us. We must, therefore, by no means despise this guardianship, since in that case we shall both be displeasing to God and enemies to our own conscience.”
Beautiful and remarkable as these fragments are we have no space for more, and must conclude by comparing the last with the celebrated lines of George Herbert:–
“Lord! with what care hast Thou begirt us round; _Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws. They send us bound To rules of reason_. Holy messengers; Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin; Afflictions sorted; anguish of all sizes; Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in! Bibles laid open; millions of surprises; Blessings beforehand; ties of gratefulness; The sound of glory ringing in our ears; Without one shame; _within our consciences_; Angels and grace; eternal hopes and fears! Yet all these fences and their whole array, One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.”
CHAPTER V.
THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS.
The _Discourses_ of Epictetus, as originally published by Arrian, contained eight books, of which only four have come down to us. They are in many respects the most valuable expression of his views. There is something slightly repellent in the stern concision, the “imperious brevity,” of the _Manual_. In the _Manual_, says M. Martha,[66] “the reason of the Stoic proclaims its laws with an impassibility which is little human; it imposes silence on all the passions, even the most respectable; it glories in waging against them an internecine war, and seems even to wish to repress the most legitimate impulses of generous sensibility. In reading these rigorous maxims one might be tempted to believe that this legislator of morality is a man without a heart, and, if we were not touched by the original sincerity of the language, one would only see in this lapidary style the conventional precepts of a chimerical system or the aspirations of an impossible perfection.” The _Discourses_ are more illustrative, more argumentative, more diffuse, more human. In reading them one feels oneself face to face with a human being, not with the marble statue of the ideal wise man. The style, indeed, is simple, but its “athletic nudity” is well suited to this militant morality; its picturesque and incisive character, its vigorous metaphors, its vulgar expressions, its absence of all conventional elegance, display a certain “plebeian originality” which gives them an almost autobiographic charm. With trenchant logic and intrepid conviction “he wrestles with the passions, questions them, makes them answer, and confounds them in a few words which are often sublime. This Socrates without grace does not amuse us by making his adversary fall into the long entanglement of a captious dialogue, but he rudely seizes and often finishes him with two blows. It is like the eloquence of Phocion, which Demosthenes compares to an axe which is lifted and falls.”
[Footnote 66: Moralistes sous l’Empire, p. 200.]
Epictetus, like Seneca, is a preacher; a preacher with less wealth of genius, less eloquence of expression, less width of culture, but with far more bravery, clearness, consistency, and grasp of his subject. His doctrine and his life were singularly homogeneous, and his views admit of brief expression, for they are not weakened by any fluctuations, or chequered with any lights and shades. The _Discourses_ differ from the _Manual_ only in their manner, their frequent anecdotes, their pointed illustrations, and their vivid interlocutory form. The remark of Pascal, that Epictetus knew the grandeur of the human heart, but did not know its weakness, applies to the _Manual_ but can hardly be maintained when we judge him by some of the answers which he gave to those who came to seek for his consolation or advice.
The _Discourses_ are not systematic in their character, and, even if they were, the loss of the last four books would prevent us from working out their system with any completeness. Our sketch of the _Manual_ will already have put the reader in possession of the main principles and ideas of Epictetus; with the mental and physical philosophy of the schools he did not in any way concern himself; it was his aim to be a moral preacher, to ennoble the lives of men and touch their hearts. He neither plagiarised nor invented, but he gave to Stoicism a practical reality. All that remains for us to do is to choose from the _Discourses_ some of his most characteristic views, and the modes by which he brought them home to his hearers.
It was one of the most essential peculiarities of Stoicism to aim at absolute independence, or _self_-independence. Now, as the weaknesses and servilities of men arise most frequently from their desire for superfluities, the true man must absolutely get rid of any such desire. He must increase his wealth by moderating his wishes; he must despise _all_ the luxuries for which men long, and he must greatly diminish the number of supposed necessaries. We have already seen some of the arguments which point in this direction, and we may add another from the third book of _Discourses_.
A certain magnificent orator, who was going to Rome on a lawsuit, had called on Epictetus. The philosopher threw cold water on his visit, because he did not believe in his sincerity. “You will get no more from me,” he said, “than you would get from any cobbler or greengrocer, for you have only come because it happened to be convenient, and you will only criticise my style, not really wishing to learn _principles_” “Well, but,” answered the orator, “if I attend to that sort of thing, I shall be a mere pauper like you, with no plate, or equipage, or land.” “I don’t _want_ such things,” replied Epictetus; “and, besides, you are poorer than I am, after all.” “Why, how so?” “You have no constancy, no unanimity with nature, no freedom from perturbations. Patron or no patron, what care I? You _do_ care. I am richer than you. _I_ don’t care what Caesar thinks of me. _I_ flatter no one. This is what I have instead of your silver and gold plate. You have _silver_ vessels, but _earthenware_ reasons, principles, appetites. My mind to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me abundant and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you, mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied.” The comparison with which he ends the discussion is very remarkable. I once had the privilege of hearing Sir William Hooker explain to the late Queen Adelaide the contents of the Kew Museum. Among them was a cocoa-nut with a hole in it, and Sir William explained to the Queen that