Discourses 2.14 ¶3 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 2.14 ¶3

With what then must we begin? If you will enter on the discussion, I will tell you that you must first understand names (words). “So then you say that I do not now understand names.” You do not understand them. “How then do I use them?” Just as the illiterate use written language, as cattle use appearances: for use is one thing, understanding is another. But if you think that you understand them, produce whatever word you please, and let us try whether we understand it. “But it is a disagreeable thing for a man to be confuted who is now old, and, it may be, has now served his three campaigns.” I too know this: for now you are come to me as if you were in want of nothing: and what could you even imagine to be wanting to you? You are rich, you have children and a wife perhaps, and many slaves: Caesar knows you, in Rome you have many friends, you render their dues to all, you know how to requite him who does you a favor, and to repay in the same kind him who does you a wrong. What do you lack? If then I shall show you that you lack the things most necessary and the chief things for happiness, and that hitherto you have looked after everything rather than what you ought, and, to crown all, that you neither know what God is nor what man is, nor what is good nor what is bad; and as to what I have said about your ignorance of other matters, that may perhaps be endured, but if I say that you know nothing about yourself, how is it possible that you should endure me and bear the proof and stay here? It is not possible; but you immediately go off in bad humor. And yet what harm have I done you? unless the mirror also injures the ugly man because it shows him to himself such as he is; unless the physician also is supposed to insult the sick man, when he says to him, “Man, do you think that you ail nothing? But you have a fever: go without food today; drink water.” And no one says, “what an insult!” But if you say to a man, “Your desires are inflamed, your aversions are low, your intentions are inconsistent, your pursuits (movements) are not conformable to nature, your opinions are rash and false,” the man immediately goes away and says, “He has insulted me.”