It was now almost the third hour and I was on the point of rolling up the volume, when a fellow-student suddenly entered to borrow some writing materials. Thrusting the book in my garment I supplied him with what he needed, and we hastened together to the lecture-room.
We conversed, about trivial subjects, but my mind was not in them. It was with Isaiah. I could not help marvelling that a native of so small and weak a country should take so wide and imperial a view of the movements of the nations. In a Roman, I could have understood it better; or in a Greek of the days of Alexander. But that a Jew—whose people was as it were the shuttlecock between the great empires surrounding it—that a Jewish prophet should think such thoughts filled me with astonishment. Then I wondered what Epictetus would say on the administration of the world if he ever dealt with it fully. “He,” I said, “was a Phrygian and a slave. Is it possible that he, too, like Isaiah, could speak in this imperial fashion?” Arriving somewhat late, we found the room almost filled; but my seat was vacant, and I was glad to find Glaucus next to me, in the place vacated by Arrian’s departure.
Epictetus was just beginning his first sentence. I will give it as Glaucus took it down, exactly: “Be not surprised if other animals, all except ourselves, have ready at hand the things needful for their bodily wants provided for them, not only food and drink but also bedding, and no need of sandals or blankets or clothes—while we have need of all these additional things.” He proceeded to say that the beasts were our servants, and[118] that it would be extremely inconvenient for us if we had “to clothe, shoe, and feed sheep and asses! As if,” said he, “a colonel had to shoe and clothe his regiment before they could do the service required of them! And yet men complain, instead of being thankful!” Any single created thing, he said, would suffice to demonstrate Providence to a grateful mind. Then he instanced the production of milk from grass and of cheese from milk. Thence he passed from the “works” of Nature to “by-works,” such as the beard, distinguishing man from woman. This (I think) was one of his customary digressions against the fashion of smooth-skinned effeminacy: “How much more beautiful than the comb of cocks! How much more noble than the mane of lions! Therefore it was our duty to preserve God’s appointed tokens of manhood: it was our duty not to give them up, not to confuse (so far as lay in us) the classes, male and female, distinguished by Him.”
“Are these,” he continued, “the only works of Providence in our behalf? What praise can be proportionate to our benefits? Had we understanding, we should be ever hymning the graces He has bestowed on us. Whether digging, or ploughing, or eating, ought we not to sing the appropriate hymn to God, saying ‘Great is God, because He hath given us tools wherewith to till the ground,’ ‘Great is God, who hath given us hands, and the power of swallowing, and a stomach, and a faculty of growing in stature painlessly and insensibly, and of breathing even when we sleep’? Hymns and praises such as these we ought to sing on each occasion. But the greatest and most divine hymn of all should be sung in thanks for that power”—he meant the Logos—“which intelligently recognises all these blessings, and which duly and methodically employs them. But you are silent. What then? Since you, like the common herd, are blind to God’s glory, it was but fit that there should be some one herald, though it be but one, to fill the place left empty by your default, and to chant the hymn that goes up to God in behalf of all. What else am I fit to do, a halting old man like me, except to sing the praises of God?”
And so he drew toward the conclusion of the first part of[119] his lecture. Were he a nightingale or a swan, he said, he would do as a nightingale or a swan—that is to say, utter mere sounds, songs without words, songs void of reasonable thoughts, without Logos—“But as it is, I am endowed with Logos. Accordingly I must sing hymns to God. This is my special work. This I do. Never will I abandon this post of duty, as long as it is given to me. And I invite and urge you also to the same task of song.” From this he proceeded to speak of “the things of the Logos,” or “the logical things,” as being “necessary”; and he spoke of the Logos as that which “articulates”—by which he meant, distinguishes the joints and connexions of all other things—and also as being that which accomplishes all other things. He appeared to mean that this Logos was reason; and he assumed that it is “impossible that anything should be better than reason.” But he refused to enter into the question, If the Logos within us goes wrong, what shall set it right? His language at this point was very obscure. The impression left upon me was that Logos, with him, meant two different things and that he did not distinguish them. When he sang hymns to God in accord with the Logos, I thought he must intend to include something more than reason; but when he passed on to say that “the things of the Logos” (or “the logical things”) are necessary, he seemed to mean “reason” alone.
Later on, he returned to his first subject: “When you are in the act of blaming Providence for anything, reflect, and you will recognise that it has happened in accordance with Logos.” Then, taking the case of some man supposed to have been defrauded of a large sum of money, he placed in his mouth the objection that, if the fraud is “in accordance with Logos,” it would seem that injustice is “in accordance with Logos.” For, said the objector, “the unjust man has the advantage.” “In what respect?” asked Epictetus. “In money,” says the objector. To which Epictetus replied, “True, for he is better than you are for this purpose”—he meant, for making money—“because he flatters, he casts away shame, he is always unweariedly working for money. But consider. Does he get the better of you in respect of faithfulness and honour?” Then he[120] rebuked us, would-be philosophers, for being angry with God for bestowing on us His best gifts, namely virtues, and for allowing bad men to take away from us what was not good in itself, namely, our worldly possessions.
This view of Providence and of wealth seemed to differ from the one assumed in Isaiah and often stated by Moses and David. For they had taught me that righteousness, and truth, and obedience to parents, and neighbourly kindness, tend to “length of days” and to peace and prosperity on the earth—for the righteous man himself as well as for the community; and they also distinguished honest wealth, acquired by labour, from dishonest wealth acquired by greediness and injustice. But Epictetus here made no such distinction.
The Jewish poems recognised it as being, at all events on the surface, a strange thing that a righteous man should be subjected to exceptional, crushing, and continuous calamities by the visitations of God. Epictetus appeared to teach us that God had ordained some men to be restless, pushing, shameless, and greedy, that they may take away the wealth acquired honestly by the good and honest and just. God had made these rascals “better” than the virtuous—in rascality! Then he called on us to admire or accept this ordinance or law: “Why fret, then, fellow? You have the better gift. Remember, therefore, all of you always, and have it by heart and on the lips, This is a Law of Nature that the better should have—in the province in which he is better—the advantage of the inferior. Then none of you will fret any more.”
In his general theory, Epictetus was careful to separate himself from those who maintain that the Gods do not interfere with the affairs of men, or never interfere except on great and public occasions, and he approved of the words of Ulysses to the Allseeing, quoted by Socrates, “Thou seest my every motion.” If man, he said, can embrace the world in his thought, and if the air and sun can include all things in their influence, why cannot God? But this seemed to lead to the conclusion that the influence of God is being perpetually and ubiquitously exerted on men in order to produce knaves, slaves, tyrants, and fools: for such our Master appeared to deem the majority of mankind.
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In practice, Epictetus avoided such a blasphemy against God, by drawing no inference as to Providence from any of the laws or institutions of men, for he appeared to regard human institutions as radically bad. At all events he allow............