Enchiridion & The Discourses of Epictetus: Including the Fragments

by Epictetus

Men find all their difficulties in externals, their perplexities in externals. "What shall I do? How is it to take place? How is it to turn out? I am afraid that this will befall me, or that." All these are the expressions of men who concern themselves with the things that lie outside the sphere of the moral purpose. For who says, "How am I to avoid giving assent to the false? How am I to refuse to swerve aside from the true?"? If a man is so gifted by nature as to be in great anxiety about these things, I shall remind him, "Why are you in great anxiety? It is under your own control; rest secure. Do not be in a hurry to give your assent before applying the rule of nature." Again, if a man is in great anxiety about desire, for fear lest it become incomplete and miss its mark, 5or about aversion, for fear lest it fall into what it would avoid, I shall first give him a kiss of congratulation, because he has got rid of what the rest of mankind are excited about, and their fears, and has turned his serious thought to his own true business in the realm where he himself is. And after that I shall say to him, "If you do not wish to desire without failing to get, or to avoid without falling into the object of your aversion, desire none of those things which are not your own, and avoid none of those things which are not under your control. If not, you are of necessity bound to fail in achieving your desires, and to fall into what you would avoid." Where is there any difficulty in th...