Discourses 3.22 ¶7 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 3.22 ¶7

In what then is the good, since it is not in these things? Tell us, you who are lord, messenger, and spy. Where you do not think that it is, nor choose to seek it: for if you chose to seek it, you would have found it to be in yourselves; nor would you be wandering out of the way, nor seeking what belongs to others as if it were your own. Turn your thoughts into yourselves: observe the preconceptions which you have. What kind of a thing do you imagine the good to be? “That which flows easily, that which is happy, that which is not impeded.” Come, and do you not naturally imagine it to be great, do you not imagine it to be valuable? do you not imagine it to be free from harm? In what material then ought you to seek for that which flows easily, for that which is not impeded? in that which serves or in that which is free? “In that which is free.” Do you possess the body then free or is it in servile condition? “We do not know.” Do you not know that it is the slave of fever, of gout, ophthalmia, dysentery, of a tyrant, of fire, of iron, of everything which is stronger? “Yes, it is a slave.” How then is it possible that anything which belongs to the body can be free from hindrance? and how is a thing great or valuable which is naturally dead, or earth, or mud? Well then, do you possess nothing which is free? “Perhaps nothing.” And who is able to compel you to assent to that which appears false? “No man.” And who can compel you not to assent to that which appears true? “No man.” By this then you see that there is something in you naturally free. But to desire or to be averse from, or to move towards an object or to move from it, or to prepare yourself, or to propose to do anything, which of you can do this, unless he has received an impression of the appearance of that which is profitable or a duty? “No man.” You have then in these things also something which is not hindered and is free. Wretched men, work out this, take care of this, seek for good here.