"Discourses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

knowledge were adapted to every man's whim. Is it, then, in this
alone, in this which is the greatest and the chief thing, I mean
freedom, that I am permitted to will inconsiderately? By no means; but
to be instructed is this, to learn to wish that everything may
happen as it does. And how do things happen? As the disposer has
disposed them? And he has appointed summer and winter, and abundance
and scarcity, and virtue and vice, and all such opposites for the
harmony of the whole; and to each of us he has given a body, and parts
of the body, and possessions, and companions.

Remembering, then, this disposition of things we ought to go to be
instructed, not that we may change the constitution of things- for
we have not the power to do it, nor is it better that we should have
the power-but in order that, as the things around us are what they are
and by nature exist, we may maintain our minds in harmony with them
things which happen. For can we escape from men? and how is it
possible? And if we associate with them, can we chance them? Who gives
us the power? What then remains, or what method is discovered of
holding commerce with them? Is there such a method by which they shall
do what seems fit to them, and we not the less shall be in a mood
which is conformable to nature? But you are unwilling to endure and
are discontented: and if you are alone, you call it solitude; and of
you are with men, you call them knaves and robbers; and you find fault
with your own parents and children, and brothers and neighbours. But
you ought when you are alone to call this condition by the name of
tranquillity and freedom, and to think yourself like to the gods;
and when you are with many, you ought not to call it crowd, nor
trouble, nor uneasiness, but festival and assembly, and so accept
all contentedly.

What, then, is the punishment of those who do not accept? It is to
be what they are. Is any person dissatisfied with being alone, let him
be alone. Is a man dissatisfied with his parents? let him be a bad
son, and lament. Is he dissatisfied with his children? let him be a
bad father. "Cast him into prison." What prison? Where he is
already, for he is there against his will; and where a man is
against his will, there he is in prison. So Socrates was not in
prison, for he was there willingly. "Must my leg then be lamed?"
Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg find fault with the
world? Will you not willingly surrender it for the whole? Will you not
withdraw from it? Will you not gladly part with it to him who gave it?
And will you be vexed and discontented with the things established
by Zeus, which he with the Moirae who were present and spinning the
thread of your generation, defined and put in order? Know you not
how small a part you are compared with the whole. I mean with
respect to the body, for as to intelligence you are not inferior to
the gods nor less; for the magnitude of intelligence is not measured
by length nor yet by height, but by thoughts.

Will you not, then, choose to place your good in that in which you