The Teaching of Epictetus Part 24

3. Antisthenes, about 400 B. C., founder of the Cynic school, which was established by him in the gymnasium called the Cynosarges (hence the name). As a Cynic, his authority would, of course, be respected by the hearers of Epictetus. This investigation of terms, or names, is, indeed, the beginning of philosophy and the guide to truth in any sphere, but perhaps not every one is competent to undertake it. There must be a real and not merely a formal appreciation of the contents of each term. A primrose is one thing to Peter Bell and another to Wordsworth. The term, let us say, Duty, is one thing to a Herbert Spencer and another to a Kant.

CHAPTER XXII.

1. "My friends, fly all culture," is an injunction reported of Epicurus (_Diog. L._ x. 6). However, neglect of form in literary style was a characteristic of philosophic writers of the h.e.l.lenistic period, which was by no means confined to the Epicureans.

2. This pa.s.sage is corrupt. I follow the reading adopted by Schweighauser (after Wolf); but it may be noted that Schweighauser's translation follows another reading than that which he adopts in his text, viz.-????????? (being moved), instead of te??????? (being strained). The original, in all versions, is ????????, which makes no sense at all.-See Preface, xxiii.

3. The writings enumerated are, of course, works of Epicurus. When dying, he wrote in a letter to a friend (_Diog. L._ x. 22) that he was spending a happy day, and his last.

4. Stoic ?p??e?a was anything but insensibility. Chrysippus held that many things in the Kosmos were created for their beauty alone.-_Zeller_, 171.

5. There is another short chapter on the arts of ratiocination and expression (I. viii. _Schw._), which glances at the subject from a somewhat different point of view from that taken in the chapter which I have given. There Epictetus dwells chiefly on the danger that weak spirits should lose themselves in the fascination of these arts: "For, in general, in every faculty acquired by the uninstructed and feeble there is danger lest they be elated and puffed up through it. For how could one contrive to persuade a young man who excels in such things that he must not be an appendage to them, but make them an appendage to him?"

CHAPTER XXVI.

1. The first of these quotations is from the Stoic Cleanthes, the second from a lost play of Euripides; in the third Epictetus has joined together two sayings of Socrates, one from the _Crito_ and one from the _Apologia_. Anytus and Meletus were the princ.i.p.al accusers of Socrates in the trial which ended in his sentence to death.