"Discourses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

choice? But if, as the lighter, who has given you the choice? Will you
not study to be content with that which has been given to you?"

What, then, did Agrippinus say? He said, "I am not a hindrance to
myself." When it was reported to him that his trial was going on in
the Senate, he said, "I hope it may turn out well; but it is the fifth
hour of the day"- this was the time when he was used to exercise
himself and then take the cold bath- "let us go and take our
exercise." After he had taken his exercise, one comes and tells him,
"You have been condemned." "To banishment," he replies, "or to death?"
"To banishment." "What about my property?" "It is not taken from you."
"Let us go to Aricia then," he said, "and dine."

This it is to have studied what a man ought to study; to have made
desire, aversion, free from hindrance, and free from all that a man
would avoid. I must die. If now, I am ready to die. If, after a
short time, I now dine because it is the dinner-hour; after this I
will then die. How? Like a man who gives up what belongs to another.

CHAPTER 2

How a Man on every occasion can maintain his Proper Character

To the rational animal only is the irrational intolerable; but
that which is rational is tolerable. Blows are not naturally
intolerable. "How is that?" See how the Lacedaemonians endure whipping
when they have learned that whipping is consistent with reason. "To
hang yourself is not intolerable." When, then, you have the opinion
that it is rational, you go and hang yourself. In short, if we
observe, we shall find that the animal man is pained by nothing so
much as by that which is irrational; and, on the contrary, attracted
to nothing so much as to that which is rational.

But the rational and the irrational appear such in a different way
to different persons, just as the good and the bad, the profitable and
the unprofitable. For this reason, particularly, we need discipline,
in order to learn how to adapt the preconception of the rational and
the irrational to the several things conformably to nature. But in
order to determine the rational and the irrational, we use not only
the of external things, but we consider also what is appropriate to
each person. For to one man it is consistent with reason to hold a
chamber pot for another, and to look to this only, that if he does not
hold it, he will receive stripes, and he will not receive his food:
but if he shall hold the pot, he will not suffer anything hard or
disagreeable. But to another man not only does the holding of a
chamber pot appear intolerable for himself, but intolerable also for
him to allow another to do this office for him. If, then, you ask me
whether you should hold the chamber pot or not, I shall say to you
that the receiving of food is worth more than the not receiving of it,
and the being scourged is a greater indignity than not being scourged;