Seekers after God Part 9

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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bler 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 t.i.the of the good which he achieved for humanity and for Rome. His thoughts deserve our imperishable grat.i.tude: 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 ill.u.s.trious 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, stalact.i.te 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 a.s.sociations produced very little influence on the mind of Epictetus. His parents were people in the very lowest and humblest cla.s.s, and their moral character could hardly have been high, or they would not have consented under any circ.u.mstance 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.signed Epictetus to the house of Epaphroditus we do not know. To a heart refined and n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sage 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 compa.s.sion, and in all probability presented a picture of misery which the world has rarely seen surpa.s.sed, 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 Latera.n.u.s, the brave n.o.bleman 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 surpa.s.s; to which use of the anecdote Origen opposed the awful silence of our Saviour upon the cross, and Gregory of n.a.z.ianzen pointed out that, though it was a n.o.ble thing to endure inevitable evils, it was yet more n.o.ble to undergo them voluntarily with an equal fort.i.tude. 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 circ.u.mstances of the most depressing and miserable character; circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sages in which he speaks about the consideration due to this unhappy cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion, 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 n.o.bility. 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 G.o.ds _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 G.o.ds _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 const.i.tutes 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 G.o.ds."

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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sent 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 G.o.ds. 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 G.o.ds?" And, thanks to such principles, a poor and persecuted slave was able to raise his voice in sincere and eloquent thanksgiving to that G.o.d to whom he owed his "creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life."

Speaking of the mult.i.tude 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 inc.u.mbent 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 G.o.d? 'Great is G.o.d, because He hath given us these implements whereby we may till the soil; great is G.o.d, 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 G.o.d? And what else can _I_ do, who am a lame old man, except sing praises to G.o.d? 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, and it is the utterance of such warm feelings towards Divine Providence that const.i.tutes 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 G.o.d." "Think of G.o.d," says Epictetus, "oftener than you breathe. Let discourse of G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sage less startlingly expresses it, 'Children, how hard is it for them that _trust_ in riches to') enter into the kingdom of G.o.d."

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 circ.u.mstances, 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 n.o.ble 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?"