I.1. On What Is Ours and What Is Not

If the Enchiridion is Epictetus in shorthand, the Discourses are Epictetus thinking out loud. This first lecture returns to the same ground as Chapter 1 of the Handbook and walks it in detail. The examples are sharper. The people named are real. The stakes are life and death.

None of our powers can judge itself. The power of grammar can tell one expression from another, but not whether we should write at all. The power of music can tell one tune from another, but not whether it is time to play.

What can judge itself and everything else? Reason.

Reason alone, of all the powers we have received, is made to understand its own nature: what it is and what it can do. It is made to understand the other powers as well. What else tells us that gold is a good thing? The gold does not tell us. It is the power that deals with impressions.

The gods, then, have put into our hands the one blessing that is best of all, the one blessing that is master of all: the power to deal rightly with impressions.

Everything else they did not put in our hands. Did they not wish to? I think that if they could have given us the other powers, they would have. They were not able.

We are prisoners on earth, in an earthly body, among earthly companions. How could we have escaped being blocked in those things by these outward chains?

Zeus himself says:

"Epictetus, if it had been possible, I would have made your body, and your property, and those small things you prize, free and unhindered. As things are, do not forget that this body is not yours. It is clay, cleverly mixed. Since I could not make it free, I gave you a portion of our own divinity. I gave you the power of impulse to act and not to act, of will to get and will to avoid, in a word, the power to put impressions to right use. If you give your heart to this and put your affairs into its keeping, you will never be blocked or held back. You will not groan. You will blame no one. You will flatter no one."

Does all this seem a small thing? Heaven forbid. If you are content with it, you are on the right road.

As things are, though we have the power to give our heart to one thing and work for it alone, instead we give it to many. We tie ourselves fast to many things: to body and property, to brother and friend, to child and slave. Tied fast to so many things, we are weighed down by them and dragged along.

The weather turns bad, and we sit and worry, and we keep asking, "What wind is blowing?"

"The north wind."

What does that have to do with you?

"When will the west wind blow?"

When it chooses, friend. When Aeolus chooses. God made Aeolus the master of the winds, not you.

What follows? We must make the best of what is in our power and take the rest as nature gives it. By "nature" I mean God's will.

"So am I to be beheaded now, and only me?"

Why? Would you have had everyone beheaded, to keep you company? Won't you stretch out your neck the way Lateranus did in Rome when Nero ordered his beheading?

He stretched out his neck and took the blow. When the blow was weak, he drew himself up a little and stretched his neck out again.

Earlier, when Nero's freedman Epaphroditus came to him and asked the cause of his offense, he answered, "If I want to say anything, I will say it to your master."

What, then, must a person have ready to help him in such times? Just this: he must ask himself, "What is mine and what is not mine? What can I do and what can I not do?"

I must die. Must I die groaning? I must be imprisoned. Must I whine as well? I must be sent into exile. Can anyone stop me from going with a smile, with courage, with peace inside?

"Tell the secret."

I refuse to tell. That is in my power.

"I will chain you."

What are you saying, friend? Chain me? My leg, yes.

My will, no. Not even Zeus can conquer my will.

"I will lock you up."

My poor body, you mean.

"I will behead you."

Why? When did I ever tell you that mine was the only head in the world that could not be cut off?

These are the thoughts those who love philosophy should turn over. These are the lessons they should write down day by day. These are the exercises they should practice.

Thrasea used to say, "I would rather be killed today than exiled tomorrow."

What did Rufus say to him? "If you are choosing it as the harder thing, what is the meaning of that foolish choice? If as the easier thing, who has given you the easier? Will you not practice being content with what is given?"

It was in this spirit that Agrippinus used to say, "I will not stand in my own way."

Word was brought him, "Your trial is on in the Senate." "Good luck to it. The fifth hour is come." That was the hour when he used to take his exercise and his cold bath. "Let us go and exercise."

When he had exercised, they came and told him, "You are condemned."

"Exile or death?" he asked.

"Exile."

"My property?"

"Not taken."

"Well then," he said, "let us go to Aricia and dine."

This is the result of training done right: the will to get and the will to avoid, so disciplined that nothing can block them or throw them off.

I must die, must I? If now, then I am dying. If soon, I dine now, since it is time for dinner. Afterward, when the time comes, I will die.

How will I die? As one who gives back what is not his own.