himself And in Opposition to this he would have a Man gain his own Approbation for the Judgment a wise Man makes of himself is less subject to Partiality and Prejudice and Vanity and of greater Use in the Encouragement it gives to Virtue than that of the World can possibly be For the being approved and commended by Wise and Good Judges is the most satisfactory and convincing Evidence that a Man is tâ—uly Virtuous Now the Person to whom Epictetus speaks in this Place is supposed to be such a Judge and upon this Presumption I imagine it is that he says in the Close of the Chapter Do but deserve your own good Opinion and that is enough in all Conscience CHAP. XXXI Never perplex your self with anxious Thoughts like these I shall lead a wretched obscure Life without any Name or Notice taken of me For if you suppose as this Complaint evidently does that Obscurity and Disrespect is an Evil consider that it is no more in the power of any but your self to bring any Evil upon you than it is to bring any Baseness or Dishonesty upon you But besides pray consider Was it any part of your proper Business to be chosen into a Place of Command or to be admitted to or caressed at publick Entertainments You must allow it was not Where is the Disrespect then and what just Reflection can it be upon you if you are not Besides why should you say you shall be despised and have no Name or Notice taken of you when your Business lies wholly in Matters at the disposal of your own Will and for which consequently you have it in your own power to make your self as valuable as you please But your Friends will be never the better for you What do you call being never the better You will not furnish them with Money nor have Interest enough to give them the Privileges of Citizens of Rome And why should you trouble your self for this Who told you that this was ever incumbent upon you or one of those Things in your own power which you ought to look upon as a Duty Or how can it be expected you should bestow that upon another which you are not possest of your self But your Friends will answer Pray get it then that you may impart to us Yes I will with all my Heart provided you can direct me how I may attain these Things and at the same time preserve my Integrity and Modesty and true Greatness of Soul inviolate But if you desire me to part with my own real Good that I may procure you some imaginary one only this is the greatest Injustice and the greatest Folly imaginable And which of these do you esteem the more valuable Money or a true vertuous and modest Friend Therefore it would better become you to assist my Virtue than to expect such Things from me as cannot be had but at the Expence of that But it will be objected again That your Country receives no Advantages from you What Advantage do you mean You will not build publick Portico's nor Bagnio's nor Exchanges And what if you do not Does your Country expect to be furnished with Arms from a Shoe-maker or Shoes from a Smith Surely if every one do it Service in his own Way this is all that can in Reason be required And shall you then be thought to have done it none if you make an honest and good Patriot No sure you are very far from being an Vseless Member of the Commonwealth when you do so Well but what Rank then what Place you 'll say shall you have in the Commonwealth Why truly even just such a one as is consistent with your Integrity and Modesty But if once you part with these upon a Pretence of promoting the Publick Good know that you are less capable of serving your Country when you are grown Knavish and Impudent COMMENT WHen Men apply themselves to the Study and Practice of Virtue and are convinced that nothing so well deserves their Care as the Improvement of their Minds many Difficulties offer themselves to shake these Resolutions and as Men differ in their Circumstances so these Objections present themselves differently both to disquiet their own Thoughts and to evacuate the Good Advice of others To the Young Beginners whose Minds have not yet purged off the Dross of the World such mean and sordid Reflections as these are apt to step in If I neglect my Business and Estate I and my Family shall starve and except I take the Trouble of punishing my Servant my Indulgence will be his Ruin But to those who have made any considerable Progress these Objections appear Despicable and Low they are above such trifling Considerations and while they are doing their Duty can trust Providence for a Provision But then at the same time they are concerned for the discharge of all those good Offices that may be expected from them and think that both the intrinsick Goodness of the thing and the Honour that attends it will abundantly justify such a Concern For their Desires are Generous and Noble they aim at nothing else but true Honour they decline Infamy and Obscurity and propose to themselves the Advantage of their Friends and the Service of their Country And from these Topicks they start some Objections which Epictetus here undertakes to examine and refute particularly And First of all he applies himself to that General one of Obscurity or Disgrace that if a Man retire from the Gainful Employments and Business of the World or quit his Practice at the Bar Where Eloquence acquires a just and lasting Fame as Homer observes it must be his hard fate to be buried alive without any Respect paid or notice taken of him Now this Objection Epictetus takes off most effectually by the following Syllogisms Disgrace is an Evil and Evil as well as Good is something within our own power But whatever is so no other but our selves can bring upon us Therefore when any Man is really in Disgrace this is in and by and from himself whether others disrespect him or whether they do not So that the Disgrace from others is what we have no just cause to fear nor indeed ought it to pass for Disgrace in our Opinion if Disgrace be allowed to be Evil for then it must by consequence too be our own Act and Deed. This is the Sum of the Argument and now if you please let us examine the several Propositions whereof it consists First of all Disgrace or Obscurity says he is an Evil Now if Honour be as all Men sure will allow it to be a Good Disgrace and any thing that is Honourable must needs be Evil For if it were Good it would cease to be Dishonorable and be valued and esteemed But besides the consent of all Mankind in this notion of Honour this very thing proves it to be Good that it is what we account most properly to belong to the best Persons and Things For Honour
degree comparable to this Freedom of the Will For in truth there is no Thing no Priviledge in this lower World so desirable And there is no Body so stupid and lost as to wish that he were a Brute or a Plant rather than a Man And therefore since God displayed the Abundance of his Goodness and Power in giving Perfections inferior to this how inconsistent would it have been with that Bounty of his not to have bestowed this most excellent Priviledge upon Mankind Besides as hath been intimated formerly take away this Undetermined Propension of the Soul by which it inclines it self to Good or Evil and you undermine the very Foundations of all Virtue and in effect destroy the Nature of Man For if you suppose it impossible to be perverted to Vice you have no longer any such thing as Justice or Temperance or any other Virtue left the observing of these things may be the Excellence of an Angel or a God but impeccable and indefectable Goodness can never be the Virtue of a Man From whence it is plain that there was a necessity of leaving the Soul in a capacity of being Corrupted and of committing all that Evil consequent to such Depravation because otherwise a Gap had been left in the Creation there could have been no Medium between the Blessed Spirits above and Brutes below no such thing as Humane Nature nor Humane Vertue in the World So then we allow that this Self-determining Power by which Men are depraved is a thing of God's own Creation and appointment and yet consider withal how necessary this is to the Order and Beauty of the Universe and how many good Effects it hath In other respects we can by no means admit that he should be traduced as the Cause and Author of Evil upon this account When a Surgeon lays on a Drawing Plaister to ripen a Swelling or Cuts or Sears any part of our Bodies or lops off a Limb no Man thinks he takes these Methods to make his Patient worse but better because Reason tells us that Men in such Circumstances are never to be cured by less painful Applications Thus the Divine Justice in his deserved Vengeance suffers the Passions of the Soul to rage and swell so high because he knows the condition of our Distemper and that the smarting sometimes under the wild Suggestions of our own furious Appetites is the only way to bring us to a better Sense of our Extravagance and to recover us of our Phrensy 'T is thus that we suffer little Children to burn their Fingers that we may deter them from playing with Fire And for the same Reasons many wise Educators of Youth do not think themselves oblig'd to be always thwarting the Inclinations of those under their Charge but sometimes connive at their Follies and give them a loose there being no way so effectual for the purging of these Passions as to let them sometimes be indulged that so the Persons may be cloyed and nauseate and grow Sick of them And in these Cases it cannot be said that either those Parents and Governors or the Justice of God is the Cause of Evil but rather of Good because all this is done with a Vertuous Intent For whatever tends to the Reformation of Manners or confirming the Habits of Virtue may be as reasonably called Virtuous as those things that are done in order to the Recovery and Continuance of Health may be called wholsome For Actions do principally take their denomination and quality from the End to which they are directed So that although God were in some measure the Cause of this necessity we are in of deviating from Goodness vet cannot Moral Evil be justly laid at his Door But how far he is really the cause of our Deflection from our Duty I shall now think it becomes me to enquire God does not by any Power or immediate Act of his own cause that Aversion from Good which the Soul is guilty of when it Sins but he only gave her such a power that she might turn her self to Evil that so such a Species of free Agents might fill avoid Space in the Universe and many good effects might follow which without such an Aversion could never have been brought about God indeed is truly and properly the Cause of this Liberty of our Wills but then this is a Happiness and a Priviledge infinitely to be preferred above whatever else the World thinks most valuable and the Operation of it consists in receiving Impressions and determining it self thereupon not from any Constraint but by its own mere Pleasure Now that a Nature thus qualified is Good I cannot suppose there needs any proof we have the Confession of our Adversaries themselves to strengthen us in the Belief of it For even they who set up a Principle of Evil declare they do it because they cannot think God the Author of Evil and these very Men do not only acknowledge the Soul to be of his forming but they talk big and pretend that it is a part of his very Essence and yet notwithstanding all this they own it capable of being vitiated but so as to be vitiated by its self only For this is the manifest consequence of their other Tenets that it depends upon our own Choice whether we will overcome Evil or be overcome by it that the Vanquished in this Combat are very justly punished and the Victors largely and deservedly rewarded Now the truth is when they talk at this rate they do not well consider how directly these Notions contradict that irresistible necessity to Sin which they elsewhere make the Soul to lye under But however whether the Soul be depraved by its own Foolish Choice or whether by some fatal Violence upon it from without still the being naturally capable of such depravation is agreed on all Hands for both sides confess it to be actually depraved which it could never be without a natural Capacity of being so Therefore they tell us the First Original Good is never tainted with Evil because his Nature is above it and inconsistent with any such Defect as are also the other Goodnesses in the next degreee of Perfection to him such as in their Cant are called the Mother of Life the Creator and the Aeones So then these Men acknowledge the depravable Condition of the Soul they profess God to be the Maker of it and to have set it in this Condition and yet it is plain they think the nature of the Soul depravable as it is Good and not Evil because at the same time that they ascribe this Freedom of the Will to God they are yet superstitiously fearful of ascribing any Evil to him And this I think may very well suffice for the Nature and Origin of Evil. Let us now apply our selves to consider the Passage before us and observe how artificially Epictetus hath comprised in a very few Words the substance of those Arguments which we have here drawn out to so great a length
sometimes to qualifie it for suffering gallantly wheâ— any Accident gives us an Occasion And this may be accomplish'd these two Ways By getting a right Notion of them and By being well prepared against them which is to be done partly by accustoming the Body to Hardship which indeed is of general use and hath enabled even Ignorant and Ill Men to slight Blows and other Pains which we commonly think intolerable and partly too by fixing the Mind in a provident Forecast and distanâ— Expectation of them And all these Things we may certainly do if we please Now if neither Death nor any of those Things we dread most have any Thing that is formidable in their own Nature it is plain neither they nor the Persons that inslict them are the Cause of our Trouble but we our Selves and our own Opinions bring this upon our Selves When therefore the Mind feels it self perplexed with Grief or Fear or any other Passion the Blame is our own and nothing but our Opinions are accountable for such Disorders None but ignorant and undisciplin'd People tax others with their Misfortunes The Young Proficient blames himself but the Philosophâ—r indeed blames neither others nor himself The Connection of this with what went before is so close that if a Conjunction were added and we â—â—ad it thus For none but ignorant and undisciplin'd People tax others with their Misfortunes it had given a very good Reason why we should never lay our Troubles or Fears or Disorders or any other Calamity we fancy our Selves in to any Thing or any Bodies Charge but our own Since this Way of proceeding he says comes from want of being taught better And then to this Character of the Ignorant and Undisciplin'd he adds that of One who is a Beginner only in Philosophy and one who hath attained to a Mastery in it The Perfect Philosopher never thinks any Thing that befalls him Evil nor charges any Body with being the Occasion of his Misfortunes because he lives up to the Dictates of Nature and Reason and is never disappointed in his Pursuits and Desires nor ever overtaken with his Fears He that is but Raw and unfinish'd does indeed sometimes miss of his Desires and falls into the Mischiefs he would flec from because the brutish Inclinations move too strongly in him at such Times And when this happens the first Elements he learn'd which taught him to distinguish Things In and Out of our Power teach him too That he himself and none but he is the true Cause of all his Disappointments and all his Disasters And the Occasion of them all was his mistaking the Things without us and placing a Man 's proper Good and Evil in them But you will say perhaps Since this Young Philosopher knows That our own proper Good and Evil depends upon our own Power and Choice and the accusing himself implies that he knows thus much how comes it to pass that he takes wrong Measures and renders himself liable to this Blame Probably because the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the first step to be made toward Virtue this being the proper Act of Reason But the brutish Appetites do not always presently submit to Reason nor suffer themselves to be easily reduced and tempered by it and especially where it happens as it does very often that Reason is Negligent and Sluggish and the Irrational Part active and perpetually in Motion by which means the Passions gather Strength and usurp an absolute Dominion This was the Case of her in the Play Remorse and Sense of Guilt draw back my Soul But stronger Passion does her Powers controul With Rage transported I push boldly on And see the Precipice I cannot shun So that for some time it is pretty tolerable if Reason can work upon the Passions and either draw them by Force or charm and win them over some soster way For when this is done then the Knowledge of the Intelligent Part is more clear and instructive and proceeds without any Distraction at all No wonder therefore if Men but little trained in Philosophy make some false Steps while their Passions are not yet totally subdued and their Reason does not operate in its full Strength And when they do so they accuse Themselves only as having admitted that Distinction of Things in and out of our own Power though as yet they seem to have but an imperfect Notion of it But they that are Ignorant and absolutely untaught must needs commit a World of Errors both because of that violent Agitation which their Passions are continually in and of the Ignorance of their rational Part which hath not yet learn'd to distinguish real Good and Evil from what is so in appearance only Nor does it take them off from Brutality not so much as in Thought only By Brutality I mean such low and mean Notions as persuade us that our Body is properly our Selves and our Nature or which is yet worse when we think our Riches so as the Covetous do Now while we continue thus ignorant there are several Accounts to be given for our doing amiss We do it because we think all our Good and Evil consists in Things without us and not being at all sensible what is properly the Happiness or Unhappiness of Humane Nature or whence it proceeds we fall foul upon other People and fancy that they who obstruct or deprive us of those External Advantages we so eagerly pursue or that bring upon us any of the Calamities we would avoid are the real Causes of all our Misery Though in truth neither those External Advantages which we call Good nor those Calamities we call Evil are what we take them for but as Circumstances are sometimes ordered may prove the direct contrary For our Folly in this case is just like that of silly Boys that cannot endure their Masters but think them their worst Enemies and the Cause of a World of Misery but value and love those as their Friends indeed that invite them to Play and Pleasure Thus Epictetus hath given a short but exact Character of these three sorts of Persons The Perfect Philosophers are guilty of no Miscarriages for their Understanding is sufficiently accomplished to direct them and the Irrational Part readily submits to those Directions So that here is nothing but Harmony and Compliance and consequently they have no Body to lay any Misery to the Charge of for indeed they cannot labour under any Thing that is truly and properly Misery They cause none to themselves for this were a Contradiction to the Perfection of their Wisdom and Virtue and nothing else causes them any for they do not suppose any External Causes capable of doing it The Ignorant and Untaught err in both these Respects Neither their Reason nor their Passions are rightly disposed And they lay all their Unhappiness to others upon an Erroneous Imagination that it proceeds from Things without us And indeed it is easie and pleasant and fit for ignorant Wretches to shuffle off
immediate Discoveries of Heaven for the benefit and support of Mankind such as Physick and Architecture and the like we have no more than some faint Shadows and imperfect Images remaining How I say is it possible that these and many other Calamities and monstrous Wickednesses which the present Age is perfectly overrun with should be matter of Pleasure or Contentment And who is there that can take Satisfaction I do not say in seeing or bearing a part in them but so much as to endure the very hearing them named except he be first forsaken of all Humanity and all Goodness Such Doubts as these which give sometimes great Perplexity not only to the Weak and Common Man but to the Thinking and more Accomplished Persons will receive satisfaction if either Epictetus be allowed to have any Authority in what he says or the great Governor of all things be granted to order the World in Wisdom and Justice For our Piety and our Advantage will be sure to terminate in the same Object as Epictetus himself will assure us more fully hereafter In answer therefore to the Objection I say That if all these deplorable Accidents which the Objector hath given so Tragical an Account of be really Evil and such as they are generally esteemed to be it is not possible that either any Good Man should without forfeiting that Character be pleased to have them so nor could the Providence of Almighty God be acquitted from the Imputation of being the cause of Evil to us nor could Men ever prevail with themselves to Honour or Love or pay Adoration to such a Deity For let Men pretend what they will no Arguments in the World are able to produce these Affections for the Author of Misery and Mischief It is a Principle rooted in every Creature as Epictetus will shew you to hate and decline and run away from all things that are prejudicial to it themselves or the cause of other things being so to it But whatever is for its Benefit and productive of its Happiness these things it naturally courts and admires Thus much is certain upon supposition that these Accidents are really Evil but now if notwithstanding our dreadful Apprehensions of them they be in truth no such matter but rather Good as conducing very much to some mighty Benefit and directed to excellent Purposes and that if any Evil do indeed attend these Dispensations this is what the Nature of the things is no way concern'd in but is wholly owing to the Desires and strong Impulses of our own Minds In this case it will by no means follow that he who is well enough pleased all things should be just as they are is either a Vicious or a Barbarous Man nor can we with any colour charge the Evil we find in the World upon these Occasions to Almighty God but must acquit his Providence and acknowledge it to be infinitely Wise and Good Now the Things in which all these seeming Evils are and from whence they spring must be considered in this Condition of Mortality and undergoing the vicissitudes of Generation and Corruption either as Bodies or Souls And of these Souls again some are Irrational of the same Date and Duration with the Body and having none or but very little peculiar Excellence of their own their Office and Power extends no farther than meerly the animating those Bodies to which they belong and therefore all their Motions depend upon and proceed in Conjunction with the Bodies But other Souls are Rational These have an inward principle of Motion and an Essence and Excellence distinct from their Bodies they move by their own Choice and are absolute in the disposing their own Desires and Inclinations Now the Bodies belonging to these being in their own Nature purely Mechanical and deriving their Essence from External Causes are subject to the Motions of Heavenly Bodies which influence their Generation and Corruption and the various Alterations through which they pass But if we come nearer and descend to the Immediate and Material Causes then they are moved and affected by a mutual Operation upon one another For this is agreeable to all the Reason in the World that Temporary and Corruptible things should depend upon the Eternal for their Subsistence and be obedient to their Influences Mechanical Beings upon such as are endued with a Faculty of Self-Motion and those that are contained within others upon the Ambients that contain them This is the constant Method and Rule of Nature that these should follow the others Superiour to them as having no Principle of Motion in themselves no Faculty of Choosing no Power of Determining their Deâ—ires or Affections of their Nature no Merit or Demerit from Choice or Actions but are only Good or Evil in respect and proportion to their Causes Just as the Shadows of Bodies do not choose their Sides or Shapes as they please but are necessarily determined by their Causes and their Circumstances and are never the worse or the better for those Determinations Now as to Bodies whatever Changes they undergo this Variety can be no Ill to them whether they be Compound or Simple Bodies First of all because it is what the Condition of their Nature hath made them liable to They are bound in Laws irrevocable which they may neither controul nor resist and consequently can receive no Harm by whatever they impose as having no Power to do otherwise For Ignorance would be no Evil nor the most brutish and extravagant Conversation nor would the Rational Soul be one whit the worse for either had not Nature endued her with a Faculty of Discerning and Understanding the Truth and given her a Power over the brutish Appetites by which she is enabled to subdue and over-rule them Secondly Because the Compound Bodies which consist of simple Ingredients that are of contrary Qualities such as are perpetually strugling with and usurping upon one another by Diseases and Excess of Humours are sometimes strengthned by throwing off the corrupt Parts and sometimes by Decay and Death are delivered from all that Trouble and Pain and mutual Strife of contrary Qualities in them And in this Case each of the Simples is restored to its primitive Mass and recovers it self from that Weakness which was occasioned by this Opposition of contrary Humours For as each of the Ingredients in Composition made some Impression upon its Opposite so it likewise continually received some from it and suffered by it But now when the Simples are changed according to the Changes of the contrary Qualities they return again to their own primitive Being Thus Water evaporates into the Air from whence it came and Air is turned into Fire from whence it originally was And I cannot suppose any Evil in Things of this kind though Inundations or Fires or any the most violent Changes in Nature should be the Effect of these Inequalities in the Elements that compose the Universe or though Pestilences and Earthquakes should destroy and dash in pieces the
as to forget both Virtue and our Selves When they are given to us we must not receive them even then voraciously and with too much seeming Transport but decently and gently that so we may keep our selves above them and use them prudently without suffering our Affections to be over-power'd and wholly immerst in them Now the Condition of Men in the World is here represented by People met together at a Common Entertainment where Almighty God makes the Invitation and the Feast and every one of the Guests partakes of the Provision according as his own Appetite stands affected Some behave themselves with a prudent Reserve like well-bred Persons as the Dictates of Reason and Nature direct them and in a manner acceptable to the Master of the Feast so as to seem a Guest worthy of the Gods Others again are insolent and unruly greedy and gluttonous injure themselves and displease the Great Lord that receives them But the especial Excellency is yet behind For if you are a Person of so exalted a Virtue as not only to wait with Patience and accept with Modesty but even to decline and slight these worldly Advantages that the Generality of Mankind dote upon so infinitely and can deny your self what the Master of the Feast offers to you this is the utmost Perfection Mortality is capable of the World is no longer worthy of such a Person he hath transcended Humane Nature it self and is not only fit to be a Guest to the Gods but to be admitted into a share of that Dignity and those Divine Excellencies which he hath wrought himself up to so near a Resemblance of This was the Case of Crates and Diogenes the latter of which exprest so just a Contempt of the World that when Alexander the Great saw him basking in the warm Sun and asked what he should do for him he desired no more than only that he would stand out of his Sun-shine Which Answer gave so true an Idea of the Gallantry of his Soul that this mighty Conqueror thought that Philosopher a Braver and Greater Man than himself in all his Triumphs and said that he could wish if that were possible to be Diogenes but if not then his second Wish should be to continue Alexander Thus then the Good Providence that constitutes this mortal State and mingles Mens Circumstances in it as it sees most suitable and convenient advances those Persons to the Table of the Gods who manage the Incumbrances of the Body and the World according to the Directions they have given us and temper all their Actions with Prudence and Moderation But when Men do not only manage but transcend the World and its Enjoyments when they get quite above these Things and exercise an absolute Mastery over them then the same Providence calls up those Souls that so well imitate the Divine Excellencies into a sort of Partnership and Government and makes them as it were its Assistants in the disposing of Things here below For what can we think less of them while they sit enthroned on high and look down and order all Things with such undisturbed Security and so Imperial a Sway as if themselves were no longer a part of this Universe but like those Beings above were distinct and separate from it and governed their own World For this Reason Epictetus says Heraclitus and Diogenes that had a generous Disdain for these Things were justly esteemed and in reality were Divine Persons And indeed they are truly so that live up to the utmost Perfection of their Nature and divest themselves of all Concerns for the Body and the World They are spiritualized already and have no more to do with any Impressions of Flesh and Sense This is the utmost Perfection of a Humane Mind and whatever is absolutely perfect is Divine because it is of God who is the Source and Sum of all Perfection CHAP. XXII When you see a Neighbour in Tears and hear him lament the Absence of his Son the Hazards of his Voyage into some remote Part of the World or the Loss of his Estate keep upon your Guard for fear lest some false Idea's that may rise upon these Occasions surprise you into a Mistake as if this Man were really miserable upon the Account of these outward Accidents But be sure to distinguish wisely and tell your self immediately that the Thing which really afflicts this Person is not really the Accident it self for other People under his Circumstances are not equally afflicted with it but merely the Opinion which he hath formed to himself concerning this Accident-Notwithstanding all which you may be allowed as far as Expressions and outward Behaviour go to comply with him and if Occasion require to bear a part in his Sighs and Tears too but then you must be sure to take care that this Compliance does not infect your Mind nor betray you to an inward and real Sorrow upon any such Account COMMENT AS this Consideration That the desirable Things of this World are not cannot be our Happiness though we should suppose a Man never so prosperous should restrain our Eagerness and check our too forward Desires after them so that other Reflection that no External Misfortunes can make us truly miserable should be an Argument no less prevailing to buoy up our Spirits and make us entertain them with Courage and Resolution To this purpose our Author urges the following Instance of a Man in great Grief and Lamentation for some Calamity the Death or the Distance of a Darling Child the Loss of an Estate and being reduced to extreme Poverty or the like And the Caution he gives upon such Occasions is that the Spectators would not suffer themselves to be born down by the Torrent of this Man's Tears and carried into an Erroneous Opinion of his being made miserable by any of these Disasters For they are to recollect themselves and consider that no Mans Happiness or Unhappiness does or ever can depend upon his Successes in the World or any of the Good or Bad Events from without But if this be so how comes it then to pass that this Person is so infinitely afflicted as if some real Ill had happened to him The Accident it is plain cannot be Evil in its own Nature for were it so all Persons that lay under the same Misfortune would feel the same Impressions and be carried to an equal Excess of Grief For this is a Rule in Nature that Natural Qualities have always the same Operation and what feels hot to one will feel so to every one that touches it At this rate then every one that buries a Son must mourn and lament and yet Anaxagoras when News was brought him of the Death of his made Answer with all the Bravery and Unconcernedness in the World Well I knew my Child could be no more than mortal But what then iâ— the true Cause of all this Melancholy Nothing else but the Man 's own Notions of this Accident this is the Root of
these things are done not for his sake but our own and the First Fruits which we consecrate to him are designed for no other than decent Acknowledgments of his Liberality and a small return out of what he hath been pleased to give us Thus have I trod in the Steps of this excellent Man and done him what Right I could in the Paraphrase and Explanation of the Chapter before us But now because in the beginning he touches upon three Points concerning the divine Nature and these so fundamentally necessary that all Positive Laws and all Moral Institutions do presuppose the Belief and Acknowledgment of them And since some perverse and refractary Men have nevertheless the Confidence to oppose them we will so far comply with their Obstinacy though must unreasonable as to prove the Truth of these Three Points viz. That there is a divine Nature and Power That the World is governed by it and That the Providence by which it is so governed is Just and Good in all its Dispensations The Importunity of these Men is so much the greater and our trouble of refuting it will be the less because not Mankind only but Brutes and Plants and every Creature in the World do according to their Capacity all declare their Relation to God Men indeed do so the most of any because they are early instructed by their Parents Religion grows up with them from their Cradle and the Ideas common to their whole Species take root in and carry a great Sway with them For the Barbarous as well as the Civilized Countries and that in all Ages of the World too though they have differ'd exceedingly in other Opinions yet have ever agreed universally in this That there is a God I know of no Exception to this Rule except those Acrotheites of whom Theophrastus gives an Account that they owned no Deity but as a punishment of their Atheism the Earth opened and swallowed them up Besides them we meet with no People and but very few single Persons that ever pretended to disown this not above Two or Three from the beginning of the World to this Day But yet so it is that a great many People do not duly attend to these universally received Notions partly because they take them upon Trust without considering or understanding the Arguments upon which they are grounded And partly from some Difficulties in Providence such as the Misfortunes and Afflictions of some very good and the Prosperity of some exceedingly wicked Men which are apt to raise in them the same Scruple with that in the Tragaedian Pardon ye Powers if yet such Powers there be For sure that Doubt is modest when we see Triumphant Vice and injur'd Piety Now such Persons as these would soon be convinced if they did but follow Epictetus his Method and not imagine that either the Happiness or Misery of a Man can depend upon external Accidents or indeed upon any thing else but the Freedom and Use of his own Will For at this rate it will not be possible for any good Man to be wretched or any vicious one happy And now if you please we will consider those Propositions which are barely laid down by Epictetus and try to prove the Truth of them by such Arguments as are proper and occur to my present Thoughts The first step I shall make in this Argument â—â— to consider the Name by which we call this â—eing and what the Word GOD signifies And here we must observe That the Greek Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was applyed to the Stars and other Celestial Bodies which therefore were so called from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to Run and had that Appellation given them for the swiftness of their Motion But this Title was afterwards extended to Incorporeal Causes and Intellectual Beings and more peculiarly to the First Cause and Being of all Things So that by this Name we understand the Original of this Universe the First and Principal and Intellectual Cause of every Thing For whatever hath any existence must either be derived from some Determinate Cause or it must subsist by Chance and Mechanical Necessity But whatever subsists after this manner hath neither any particular efficient Cause nor is it self the Final Cause of its own Production For both these Qualifications are absolutely inconsistent with the nature of Fortuitous Beings and indeed no less so is the following any constant Rule and regular Method in the Production of them Now it is obvious to any considering Person that the Works of Nature and of Choice are a final Cause to the Doer and the existence of them is proposed as that which answers his Design Thus the Husbandman plants and sows his Ground in prospect of the Corn and the Trees that will grow upon it Thus the Coition of all Animals proposes to it self the continuation of the Species And in all the Progress of these Productions there is a constant Order and fix'd Course observed and some Operations which are proper to the Beginning others to the Promoting and others to the Perfecting this Work each perform'd constantly in their proper place The Seeds of Plants are first cast into the Ground then moistned and impregnated there then they take root and sprout they shoot up in Straw or Branches and so on till at last they blossom and bud and bring Fruit to maturity So likewise that of Animals is cherished and enlarged and formed into an Embryo which receiving vital Nourishment and convenient Growth is at a stated time brought to a just Perfection and then comes to the Birth But still in these and in all other Cases of the like nature there is the same Chain of Causes and these generally keep their fix'd Times and Measures So then if all the Productions of Nature and the Effects of Choice have some particular Cause to which they owe their Being if the Existence of these things be the final Cause of their Production and if the same Order and a regular Method be constantly and duly observed in the producing them the natural and necessary Result of this Argument is That all the Works of Nature and of Choice that is all Things in this whole World that have no real Existence are not the Effects of Chance or Mechanism but are owing to some particular positive Causes and since these Causes must needs be antecedent to their Effects if They be such as had a Beginning themselves they must be owing to some others who had a Being antecedent to Theirs and so we may trace them up till at last we come to Causes which had no Beginning at all And these being eternal are most truly and properly said to Exist as having never been nor owing their Subsistence to any External Cause but solely to the Inherent Perfections of their own Nature So that the first and Eternal Causes of Things must needs be Self-existent or something more noble and excellent than Self-existent as the following Discourse will convince
it For this will keep your Mind free and disengaged Let your Behaviour there be easie and sedate not betraying any Transport of the Mind by Shouting or loud Laughter or lond and vehement Emotions So again when the Play is over do not discourse much of what you saw there nor enlarge upon things for which you are never the better For if you do this plainly implies that the Entertainment hath got within you and that you admired and were highly pleased with it COMMENT THE sensual and brutish Appetites are not confined to such Objects only as our Touch and Taste are employed in but extend themselves likewise to those that entertain our Sight and our Hearing And what sort of Behaviour and Disposition will become us with respect to these he tells us here by laying down this Rule That it is by no means necessary or convenient to frequent the Publick Theatres He might have said indeed That it is absolutely necessary and highly expedient not to frequent them for in truth such places leave a strong Infection and make the whole Life of those that use them to become Theatrical all Show and Formality But there may sometimes an occasion fall out in which a Man cannot without injury to himself or his Character refuse appearing there as either upon some Publick Festival which these Entertainments are design'd to Honour and make more solemn or in compliance with the Customs of the World or at the request of Friends for it looks sour and morose to be singular and decline the received Practices of Mankind or we may be envited thither only to make an Experiment upon our own selves as having a mind to be satisfied what Improvements we have made and how differently we are affected with these matters at different times If therefore any of these or any other reasonable Cause bring us to the Theatre we must be sure to call up all our Vigilance to collect our selves and not let our Passions get loose but be sollicitous only for the Peace and Evenness of our own Mind and perfectly indifferent where the Success of the Combat lights For we are to remember that all these are things foreign and without us and consequently such as our Desires and Aversions ought by no means to fasten upon This inward Tranquility is what Epictetus expects our outward Air and Behaviour should shew That our Mien and Countenance be setled and composed yet easie and good-natured too such as may express Gravity without Sullenness and Mirth without Levity Not making our selves troublesome and ridiculous either by loud Acclamations and Applauses at what is well performed or by bursting out into loud and excessive Laughter at any comical Passages that come before us but commending the one sort with Judgment and Moderation and approving the other with a silent Smile When the Sight is over there is a farther care to be taken Not to discourse largely upon any thing we have been entertained with there as considering that these matters contribute not at all to the making a Man wiser or better And since they are in no degree instructive or reforming a Man ought not to think them worthy to be the subject of his Discourse Now indeed Epictetus his Caution here of not discoursing much upon Things for which we are never the better may bear something different Interpretations For he may either intend it of all Things relating to these Publick Entertainments the Successes of the Gladiators and every Event which is there presented to us and that a Man cannot possibly be edified by talking upon such Subjects as these Or else he may only cut off some particular parts of our Discourse upon these Subjects and advise us when we do make them the matter of our Talk that we should say no more upon these occasions than what may some way conduce to the correcting of Manners and making us wiser And such Topicks particularly are those that make Observations upon Men's Behaviour and condemn all such indecent and irregular Gestures as plainly discover that the Mind is not in due temper But to run out and enlarge extravagantly upon what hath passed is a manifest Indication that our Minds were too much affected with it and that it appeared to be great and just matter of admiration to us all which is very unworthy a Philosopher and a Defect peculiar to little and vulgar Souls CHAP. L. Be not fond of going to every body's Rehearsals but when you do be sure to preserve a grave and sedate Temper but do not run into the other Extream neither of rude and unmannerly Moroseness COMMENT THE next thing he gives Direction in is those Publick Rehearsals which the Pretenders to Oratory and Poetry use to make meerly for Ostentation and to proclaim their own Eloquence The Subjects of these Rehearsals were various sometimes a Panegyrick upon some great Prince or General or Statesman sometimes they were Politick Harangues sometimes a fine Description of a City or Country sometimes the discussing a point of Law or the like Now such as these which propose nothing farther to themselves but Vanity and Ostentation and have no concern with Vertue or any thing that is properly ours he advises us not to be forward in frequenting nor indeed ever to attend them at all without some good Reason that may justifie our coming to them For it may very often happen that this will be expected from you either as a Testimony of your Friendship to the Composer or a Mark of Respect due to the Great Man who is his Theme or upon some other account which Civility and Good-Breeding may make necessary And indeed these Compliances are sometimes of great Use and have good Effect to take off the edge of that Envy and Spight with which all People are naturally persecuted who recede from the common way of living and do not do as the World does Since then you must in all likelihood be there sometimes the next point to be gained is a due and decent management of your self upon these occasions And this will best be done by a grave and composed Temper yet not so severe as to be rude and troublesome Your Gravity must shew it self in commending Things as they deserve so as neither to be unseasonable nor immoderate and lavish in your Praise Your composed Temper will keep you orderly and quiet it will prevent all irregular Motion and loud Applause and impertinent Interruptions and continue the same modest decent Air without those sudden and vehement alterations both in Body and Mind and Mien which are but too frequent in such cases Your Easiness must he preserved too all this while that you may avoid the Indecency of being over-thoughtful and seeming not to attend By this also you will be kept from a sullen and affected Silence and when Things are well said will not grudge them their due Commendation it will prevent all peevish Censures and malicious Criticisms and that unbred roughness which calls out
far dispose of her self as to fix upon either the one or the other of these sorts which yet is done with this Difference that by pursuing the worse her Faculties are enfeebled and debased and by following the better they are exalted and confirmed for the Choice of these is indeed truly and properly Choice And hence we see it often happens that when the Body finds it self low and empty and requires Meat or some other Sustenance the Mind steps in and countermands this Desire with another over-ruling one of Fasting or Abstemiousness and this too taken up possibly upon some Religious Account or in Obedience to some Law or possibly merely in point of Prudence as thinking it better upon its own Account or more conducing to the Health of the Body Now I think no body can say but the Mind in such a Case might if it had so pleased have complied with those first Desires as indeed we sind the Generality of People do upon these Occasions but you see it exerted another opposite Desire and prosecuted that as the greater Good and so more eligible of the two So that Epictetus looking upon the Soul as endued with Reason might upon this Account very justly say that she had it in her Power to qualifie her Desires and to place them upon such or such Objects as she saw Cause The next Objection that tells us The Object of Desire necessarily excites the Soul to a Desire of it must be acknowledg'd to have a great deal of Truth in it but yet not so much as the Persons who urge it imagine For the Object does not move the Soul to Desire forcibly and mechanically but by proposing it self as something fit to be embraced and thus calling forth those Powers of the Soul into Action which Nature hath qualified to meet and to receive it Just as the sensible Object does not infuse the Faculty of Sensation into the Person who receives its Impressions nor draws him by violence to it self but only presents it self to the Eye in such Proportions as are proper for uniting with that Organ of Sense which was ordained by Nature and fitted for that Union And so the Object of Desire presents its Convenience and Fitness to the Soul and this invites such Motions as Nature hath provided proper for this Purpose Thus it must needs be because we see that when desirable Objects offer themselves some People are and others are not affected with them whereas if the Object were enduced with such Efficacy and Power as perfectly to constrain the Person desiring and the Motion of the Mind were necessarily impressed by it it must needs follow that upon such Occasions every one must be affected with it though perhaps not every one in the same Degree And in truth such an Operation upon the Mind would not be Desire but a violent Impulse or forcible Attraction such as we see when one Body is thrust forward or dragged along by another For Desire is a kind of Expansion in the Mind a moving forwards toward the Thing desired without any local Motion in the Person desiring such as we may resemble to a Man's stretching out his Hands to meet or embrace one while the rest of his Body is in no Motion So that Desire is a Motion begun originally and proceeding from within as are also our Opinions and the other Things mentioned here by Epictetus This Motion indeed is sometimes what it ought to be and is duely proportioned to the Nature of the Thing which we desire or conceive of And sometimes it is mistaken and very different from it when we are inclined to something which to us appears very desirable but is really what should rather provoke our Aversion When it shews us a gaudy Out-side to invite our Desire and hath a great deal of hidden Evil within which all the while lies concealed under some Advantage which the Idea of this Object flatters us with Thus the Thief is carried away with an Idea of Gain and Riches as a desirable Thing and this keeps him from considering or having any dread at all of that horrible Evil which lies sheltered under this Gain that defiles his Soul and taints it with Injustice And then as for any Apprehensions of Discovery and Imprisonment and Punishment which are the only Calamities so wicked a Wretch fears the excessive Eagerness of his Desire utterly overlooks and stifles all these for he presently represents to himself what a World of Men do such Things and yet are never found out Now thus much is plainly in our Power to examine this Object of our Desire more nicely and to inform our selves well whether it be a real Good and worth our pursuing or whether it only cheat us with a fair Out-side and counterfeit Appearance of Good as particularly in the Instance of Gain just now mentioned Nay we may go something farther yet for we may correct and regulate our Desires may bring them to fix upon such Objects only as are truly desirable and teach them not to be imposed upon with false Appearances We are told again That our Desires and our Opinions are carried to their proper Object with as invincible a Necessity as a Stone or Clod of Earth is carried downwards and consequently that Nature hath left us nothing in our own Power Nor have we any more reason to conclude that we are free to think or to desire after this or that manner when we see our Assent and Appetite always moved by the Credibility or the Desirableness of their Objects than we have to suppose that a Stone can ascend when we never see it do so Now to this it may be replied that there is a twofold Necessity the one absolutely destructive of Free-Will the other very consistent with it That kind of Necessity which proceeds from any Things without us does indeed take away all Liberty and Choice for no Man can be said to act freely when he is compelled by any other external Cause to do a Thing or to leave it undone But then there is another sort of Necessity from within our Selves which keeps every thing within its due Bounds and obliges each Faculty and Part to act agreeably to its own Nature and original Constitution And this is so far from destroying Free-Will that it rather preserves and supports it For by this means it comes to pass that a Free-Agent can be wrought upon by no other ways but such as are consistent with the Nature of a Free-Agent which is from a Principle of Motion within its self And this Necessity is by no means a Mechanical Necessity because it is not imposed by any Thing from without us but is what the Nature of such an Agent admits and requires what is necessary for its Preservation and for exerting the Operations proper to a Creature endued with such a Faculty as Self-Motion Besides if the Soul can bring it self to such Habits and Dispositions as are Vertuous or Vicious can grow better by
Wisdom and Sobriety and worse by Perverseness and a Dissolute Behaviour and can confirm it self in each of these Courses by the frequent Repetition of Acts suitable to them then the Soul is the true Cause of all this Though in truth it must not be admitted for a general Rule neither That the Liberty and Power of the Will is to be judged of by Mens being able to do Things contrary to one another For those Souls that are immediately united to the Original Good prefer that constantly and yet the Freedom of their Choice is still the same for that Preference is no more constrained and necessary than if they took Evil instead of it But it is their Excellence and Perfection that they continue stedfast in their own Good and never suffer themselves to be drawn off to the contrary But as for our Souls which are more remotely descended from that great Original their Desires are according to their Tempers and Dispositions those of them that are well disposed have good Desires and those that are ill have evil ones But still these Souls of ours are capable of great Alterations they frequently recover themselves from Vice to Virtue by Reformation and better Care they decline too and sink down from Virtue to Vice by Supineness and a foolish Neglect and both these Changes are wrought in them by their own voluntary Choice and not by any Force or Necessity that compels them to it So that there can be no manner of Pretence for charging any part of our Wickedness upon God He created the Soul after such a manner indeed as to leave it capable of being corrupted because its Essence is not of the first and best sort of Natures but hath a Mixture of the middle and the lowest and this Mixture was fit that so all might remain in its Perfection and the first and best continue still such without degenerating into Barrenness and Imperfection and Matter God therefore who is infinitely good himself made the Soul in a Condition that might be perverted and it is an Argument of his Mercy and the exceeding Riches of his Goodness that he did so For he hath set it above the reach of all external Violence and Necessity and made it impossible for it to be corrupted without its own Consent There is one Argument more still behind which pretends That a fatal Revolution of the Heavens hath so strong and absolute a Power upon us as not only to influence our Actions but even to determine our Choice and all our Inclinationss and leave us no Liberty at all to dispose of our selves but only the empty Name of such a Liberty Now to these we may answer That if the Rational Soul be Eternal and Immortal which I shall not go about to prove that being foreign to this Subject but desire at present to take for granted though it must be confest not in all Points agreeable to the Doctrin of the Stoicks in this particular but If the Soul I say be Eternal and Immortal it cannot be allowed to receive its Being or to have its Dependance upon Matter and Motion It s Instrument indeed that is the Animal taken in the gross by which I mean the Body animated by the Soul may owe its Nature and its Changes to such Causes For material Causes produce material Effects and these may differ according as those Causes are differently disposed with regard to Things here below And the Instrument is formed so as to be proper and serviceable to the Soul whose Business it is to make use of it now as the difference of Tools teaches us to distinguish the several Professions that use them so as to say These belong to the Carpenter's those to the Mason's and others to the Smith's Trade and not only to distinguish the Trades themselves but the Skill and Capacity of the Artificers themselves to judge of their Designs and Intentions and the Perfection of the Work it self for those who are Masters of their Trade have better Tools and use them with greater Dexterity than others In like manner they who have attained to the Knowledge of Astrology find out the Nature and Temper of the Instrument the Body from the different Constitution of Material Causes and from hence make their Conjectures of the Disposition of the Soul and this is the Reason why they often guess aright For indeed the Generality of Souls when falling under ill Management and the Conversation of naughty Men a sort of Degradation inflicted upon them by way of Punishment for the loss of their primitive Purity addict themselves too much to the Body and are govern'd and subdu'd by it so as to use it no longer as their Instrument of Action but to look upon it as a part and piece of their own Essence and conform their Desires to its brutish Appetites and Inclinations Besides this Position and fatal Revolution of the Heavens carries some sort of Agreement to the Production of the Souls united to Bodies under it yet not so as to impose any absolute Necessity upon their Appetites and Inclinations but only to infer a Resemblance of their Temper For as in Cities there are some particular solemn Seasons and Places that give us good Grounds to distinguish the Persons assembled in them as the Days and Places of Publick Worship commonly call those that are wise and religious and well-disposed together and those that are set apart for Pomp and publick Sports gather the Rabble and the Idle and the Dissolute so that the observing these Solemnities gives us a clear Knowledge of the People that attend upon them By the same Reason the particular Seasons and Places the Houses and Conjunctions of the Planets may be able to give us some Light into the Temper of the Souls united to Bodies under them as carrying some Affinity to the Conjunctions under which Men are born For when God in his Justice hath ordained such a particular Position and all the Fatalities consequent to it then those Souls which have deserved his Vengeance are brought under that Position For Likeness and Affinity of Tempers hath a strange Power of bringing all that agree in it together This fatal Revolution then does by no means constrain or bind up the Soul nor take away its native Freedom but the Soul only bears some Resemblance to the Temper of this Revolution and is framed agreeably to such a Body as it self hath deserved to be given it for its Use and by this means gives Men an Opportunity of learning its particular Desires and Inclinations from the considering of the Consteilations that People are born under Again the Souls chuse their particular Ways of living according to their former Dignity and Disposition but still the behaving themselves well or ill in each of these Ways is left in their own Power And upon this Account we see many who have chosen a Way of Trade and Business and great Temptation yet continue very honest and good Men in it and