"Discourses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

are equal to the gods? "Wretch that I am to have such a father and
mother." What, then, was it permitted to you to come forth, and to
select, and to say: "Let such a man at this moment unite with such a
woman that I may be produced?" It was not permitted, but it was a
necessity for your parents to exist first, and then for you to be
begotten. Of what kind of parents? Of such as they were. Well then,
since they are such as they are, is there no remedy given to you?
Now if you did not know for what purpose you possess the faculty of
vision, you would be unfortunate and wretched if you closed your
eyes when colors were brought before them; but in that you possess
greatness of soul and nobility of spirit for every event that may
happen, and you know not that you possess them, are you not more
unfortunate and wretched? Things are brought close to you which are
proportionate to the power which you possess, but you turn away this
power most particularly at the very time when you ought to maintain it
open and discerning. Do you not rather thank the gods that they have
allowed you to be above these things which they have not placed in
your power; and have made you accountable only for those which are
in your power? As to your parents, the gods have left you free from
responsibility; and so with respect to your brothers, and your body,
and possessions, and death and life. For what, then, have they made
you responsible? For that which alone is in your power, the proper use
of appearances. Why then do you draw on yourself the things for
which you are not responsible? It is, indeed, a giving of trouble to
yourself.

CHAPTER 13

How everything may he done acceptably to the gods

When some one asked, how may a man eat acceptably to the gods, he
answered: If he can eat justly and contentedly, and with equanimity,
and temperately and orderly, will it not be also acceptably to the
gods? But when you have asked for warm water and the slave has not
heard, or if he did hear has brought only tepid water, or he is not
even found to be in the house, then not to be vexed or to burst with
passion, is not this acceptable to the gods? "How then shall a man
endure such persons as this slave?" Slave yourself, will you not
bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his progenitor, and is
like a son from the same seeds and of the same descent from above? But
if you have been put in any such higher place, will you immediately
make yourself a tyrant? Will you not remember who you are, and whom
you rule? that they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature,
that they are the offspring of Zeus? "But I have purchased them, and
they have not purchased me." Do you see in what direction you are
looking, that it is toward the earth, toward the pit, that it is
toward these wretched laws of dead men? but toward the laws of the
gods you are not looking.

CHAPTER 14