Discourses 2.20 ¶5 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 2.20 ¶5

Man what are you doing? are you refuting yourself every day; and will you not give up these frigid attempts? When you eat, where do you carry your hand to? to your mouth or to your eye? when you wash yourself, what do you go into? do you ever call a pot a dish, or a ladle a spit? If I were a slave of any of these men, even if I must be flayed by him daily, I would rack him. If he said, “Boy, throw some olive oil into the bath,” I would take pickle sauce and pour it down on his head. “What is this?” he would say. An appearance was presented to me, I swear by your genius, which could not be distinguished from oil and was exactly like it. “Here give me the barley drink (tisane),” he says. I would fill and carry him a dish of sharp sauce. “Did I not ask for the barley drink?” Yes, mister: “this is the barley drink?” Take it and smell; take it and taste. How do you know then if our senses deceive us?—If I had three or four fellow-slaves of the same opinion, I should force him to hang himself through passion or to change his mind. But now they mock us by using all the things which nature gives, and in words destroying them.