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“The great insights of the Stoics are spread over a wide range of ancient sources. This book brings them all together for the first time. It systematically presents what the various Stoic philosophers said on every important topic, accompanied by an eloquent commentary that is clear and concise. The result is a set of philosophy lessons for everyone - the most valuable wisdom of ages past made available for our times, and for all time.”—Provided by publisher.

The Practicing Stoic ( Practising Stoic ) - A Philosophical — Ward Farnsworth.pdf (file not included in this release)

Summary

Here’s a summary of the main ideas from The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth, based on the excerpts you provided:

🏛️ Purpose and Approach

The book organizes Stoic thought progressively—starting from foundational principles and moving toward practical applications.
Stoicism is presented not as a rigid doctrine but as a toolkit for psychological hygiene—a practical guide for navigating life with greater clarity, calm, and character.
Farnsworth emphasizes practical wisdom over abstract theory and aims the book at those seeking counsel, not just knowledge.

🧠 Foundational Insights of Stoicism

We react not to events, but to our judgments about them:
- Emotions and reactions are not caused by things themselves, but by what we tell ourselves about them.
- The Stoic practice involves becoming aware of these internal narratives and replacing irrational judgments with wiser ones.
Control vs. No Control:
- Stoicism draws a sharp distinction between what is within our control (thoughts, choices, actions) and what is not (events, opinions of others, death, fortune).
- Peace comes from caring only about the former.
Detachment from Externals:
- “Externals” like wealth, fame, health, and social approval are not inherently good or bad.
- Stoics allow themselves preferences, but not attachments—attachments enslave, while preferences allow freedom.

🔍 Tools for Stoic Practice

Analytical methods: Reasoning through desires, fears, and habits to expose their irrationality.
Intuitive methods: Adopting broader or distant perspectives (e.g., viewing life from above, or as if it happened to someone else) to reduce attachment and emotional reactivity.

🧘 Living with Reason and Virtue

The goal is eudaimonia (well-being) through virtue, defined as living in accordance with reason, honesty, humility, and service to others.
Stoicism encourages moderation, humility, and inner freedom from the tyranny of passions.

⚰️ Death and Mortality

Death is not inherently bad; our fear of death is a mistaken judgment.
Meditation on death helps the Stoic live well—without clinging to life or fearing its end.
Death is always near and should motivate us to live virtuously now, not later.
The Stoic recognizes life’s brevity and repetitiveness, and uses that awareness to cultivate detachment, gratitude, and courage.

🛠️ Key Practices

Notice the “judgment layer” between events and emotional reactions.
Strip away labels and narratives that exaggerate the importance of events.
Treat familiar things with fresh eyes, and unfamiliar things with philosophical skepticism.
Practice gratitude, discipline, and emotional restraint.
Live each day as if it were your last, not in despair, but in purpose.

Would you like me to break this down chapter by chapter or format it into Anki flashcards or Notion highlights?

Highlights

Ancient Greece and Rome. To repeat what was mentioned at the outset – for it cannot be said eno (Page 9)

founder of the school, did his teaching in a public colonnade or porch (“stoa”) overlooking the Agora of Athens. Stoicism was known on this account as the Philosophy of the Porch, as opposed to the Philosophy of the Garden (that of Epicurus), or the Philosophy of the Academy (that of Plato), or the Philosophy of the Lyceum (that of Aristotle), with each name referring to the place where the teachings of the school were imparted. So if “Stoicism” sounds too forbidding because of the word’s popular meaning, you could try telling your family that you are studying the philosophy of the porch. ey might like that. More probably, readers who take an interest in (Page 9)

osophers who lived in the rst two centuries AD: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were Romans; Epictetus was Greek, but he, too, lived and taught for part of his life in Rome. e works they le behind tend to be miscellaneous in charac (Page 10)

e main features. First, it seeks to organize the ideas of the Stoics in a logical manner that might be described as progressive. Foundational principles come rst, then their applications. I’ve tried to put the applications into a sequence that builds naturally, and, where relevant, that follows their growth in complexity. is approach is roughly reected in the order of the chapters, in the order of the headings within each chapter, and in the order of the discussions under each heading. ose who don’t care about the progression can roam around at rando (Page 10)

ntion and credit. It was not as theoretically subtle and original as what the Greeks developed, no doubt, but it has other strengths. e late Stoics were more than popularizers of what the earlier ones (Page 13)

think it makes best sense to treat his teachings, even where they occasionally departed from those of the Greeks, as a version of Stoicism rather than a mix of delity and lapses from it. If the result must be named distinctly, let it be called Reform Stoicism or some such thing. (Page 14)

eans rules about what behavior is right and wrong, particularly in how we treat other people. For philosophical purposes, though, the term also refers to larger questions about how to act and the meaning of the good life. Much of what follows belongs under that heading, though some of what the Stoics thought about ethics, including much of their theoretical apparatus, is not included. e subject of the boo (Page 14)

psychology, and is weighted toward the latter. It is so weighted because the Stoics, from where we now sit, are at times more enduring psychologists than philosophers. Some of the philosophical claims they regarded as most important – about what it means to live according to nature, for example, and why it matters – have not aged well. eir observations of how our thinking betrays us have more oen stood the test of time. ere admittedly can be a loss as well as a gain from this choice of emphasis. Some Stoic teachings might appear incomplete or unsatisfying unless they are joined to rst principles of ethics or metaphysics of a kind largely avoided here. But I expect that readers will bring along their own rst principles regardless, and will nd the counsels of the Stoics compatible with a wide range of them. Stoicism originally included much besides ethics and (Page 15)

sdom of the Stoics when dealing with life and thinking about thinking – one attracted to Stoicism not as a creed or theology but as valuable counsel and as a form of psychological hygiene. is book, in other words, is for those more interested in the practic (Page 16)

AD. He was born in Spain; his father, who had the same name (and so is remembered as Seneca the Elder), was a teacher of rhetoric. e son – our Seneca – was taken to Rome when he was young. Aer a period spent in Egypt, an early career as a lawyer and politician, and a banishment to Corsica, he became a tutor and advisor to Nero, an emperor of odious reputation. Seneca also became very wealthy. Seneca was accused in 65 of joining the Pisonian co ch had unsuccessfully plotted the murder of Nero. He was ordered by the emperor to commit suicide, which he did; he cut open his veins and sat in a hot bath, though they say it was the steam that nally did him in. e episode is the subject of a ne allusion in e Godfather Part II. (Page 18)

gion we now know as Turkey, and spent most of the rst half of his life in Rome. (On that account I sometimes refer to him as one of the Roman Stoics.) When philosophers were banished by the emperor Domitian, Epictetus moved to Greece and established a school there. Epictetus le behind no writings. e words attributed to him notes of Arrian, a famous student in his school. From Arrian we have works known as the Discourses of Epictetus, as well as the Enchiridion (or handbook; Arrian wrote in Greek). We also have some fragments of less certain authenticity preserved by Stobæus (c. 500 AD). When you read Epictetus, it is best to imagine that you are seeing a rough transcript of what he said in class. Epictetus led a life very diﬀerent fr ers. He had a crippled leg. He was born a slave, and his later liberation gave him a curious connection to Seneca. As noted a moment ago, Seneca was accused of joining a conspiracy to murder Nero. e conspiracy was revealed in part by Epaphroditos, a secretary to the emperor. Epaphroditos was the owner of Epictetus and may have been responsible for freeing him, though this and much else in the life of Epictetus involves some conjecture. (Epaphroditos was later put to death for failing to prevent Nero’s own suicide. It was an age of hardball.) Epict le behind no writings of his own (but later we will see a couple of fragments from him, too). Musonius Rufus is probably best known now for teaching that women are as suitable for philosophical training as men. (Page 19)

1–180 AD). In 138, the emperor Hadrian selected his own successor, (Page 19)

to adopt Marcus Aurelius, who was then a teenager. Antoninus Pius ascended to the throne soon thereaer and was emperor for more than twenty years. Upon his death in 160, Marcus Aurelius became emperor and reigned for nearly twenty years more – for the rst eight years in partnership with his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, and during the last few years in partnership with his son, Commodus, of whom the less said the better. For a stretch of time in the middle, Marcus Aurelius was emperor by himself, an improbable moment in which the most powerful person in the world may have been the wisest. Mostly while on military campaigns during the la Marcus Aurelius wrote philosophical notes to himself in Greek that we call his Meditations. He never described himself as a Stoic in his writings, but he was a devoted student of the philosophy and has long been treated as one of its dening authors. As is apparent from these notes lapping lives, but just barely. e rst died when the second was young, and the second died when the third was young. So far as we know, none of them had any contact with each other. Marcus Aurelius does thank one of his Stoic teachers, Junius Rusticus, for giving him a copy of the Discourses of Epictetus, and he occasionally quotes from that work. (Page 20)

hereas the Stoics thought that (Page 20)

help others, from which happiness follows assuredly but incidentally. Despite these diﬀerences, however, the Epicurean and the Stoic agree on some important points in their analysis of judgment, desire, and other subjects. Like man (Page 21)

the world. at appearance is an illusion. We react to our judgments and opinions – to our thoughts about things, not to things themselves. We usually aren’t aware of this. Events come to us through lenses of judgment that are so familiar we forget we have them on. Stoics seek to become conscious of those judgments, to nd the irrationality in them, and to choose them more carefully. is idea is foundational to St by noticing that when we react to an event, we really are reacting to what we’ve said to ourselves about it. (Perhaps we can say something diﬀerent.) But in other cases it’s harder to see the role of judgments in producing a reaction because they are so ingrained that we take them for granted. e Stoics investigate those reactions – the ones that feel inevitable – by comparing them to the very diﬀerent reactions that others have to the same things when their conditioning is diﬀerent (or to the diﬀerent reactions that we have when our circumstances are diﬀerent). e Stoics infer from all this that our way of reacting to anything depends, indeed, on thoughts we think and beliefs we hold, however deeply buried they might be. Since those beliefs and thoughts belong to us, they should be possible to change, and so ought to be subject to more rational scrutiny than they usually get. Our experience of the world is our own doing, not the world’s doing, and the Stoic means to take responsibility for it. (Chapter 1.) (Page 26)

attachment to what we cannot. We generally can’t control events, or the opinions or behavior of others, or whatever else is outside ourselves. e Stoic thus considers money, fame, misfortunes and the like to be “externals” and regards them with detachment. A Stoic still has preferences about those things, and so would prefer to avoid adversity and would rather have wealth than not have it. But attachment to those desires or fears is considered a guarantee of anxiety, and a form of enslavement to whoever controls the objects of them. In sum, it is against Stoic policy to worry about things that you can’t control. What we can control, and should care about, are our own judgments and actions. (Chapter 2.) To put these r ond our control, and this brings us misery; we are oblivious to features of our thinking that we can control and that, if managed better, would bring us peace. Stoicism tries to make us conscious of this pattern and reverse it. (Page 27)

the Stoics set out to change them. ey use two kinds of strategies for the purpose, which we might describe as analytical and intuitive. e analytical side consists of rational arguments – using reason and evidence to show the futility of material desires, the needlessness of various fears, and so on. e intuitive approach consists of looking at life from perspectives that are meant to have eﬀects similar to those produced by the arguments, but without the arguments. One just sees things from a new angle and has a diﬀerent reaction to them. Equivalently, we might say the Stoics seek to persuade with words and with pictures. To begin nary and automatic point of view. We peer out from inside ourselves and see the world accordingly. is angle of observation makes us captive to a long list of deceptions. e Stoic seeks freedom from them by looking at events from a standpoint less obvious – comparing things or events to the scale of the world, or of time, or seeing them as they would look from far away, or seeing your own (Page 27)

yourself as you would if it happened to someone else. Stoics gain skill at viewing life from perspectives that encourage humility and virtue and that dissolve the misjudgments we live by. (Chapter 3 and elsewhere.) e Stoic also works not only to overcome the fear of death but (Page 28)

of our inner lives – desires, fears, emotions, vanities, and the rest. ose states are shown to be products of how we think and to mostly amount to mistakes; the judgments that lie behind them are found on inspection to be false or idiotic. e Stoic remedies broadly amount to applications of the rst two points above. We react not to things but to our judgments about them, and those judgments typically consist of scripts that follow convention or are otherwise foolish or ctitious. e Stoics try to dismantle the scripts and give us better ways to talk to ourselves about the subjects of them. e more specic Stoic analys (Page 28)

seek out pain or hardship, but they seek a mindset that isn’t thrown into disarray by those things and that is able to turn them to good. It is an unavoidable and important part of life to meet with what we don’t want; and unwanted developments produce great achievements, strong characters, and other things we do want. Stoicism therefore means applying one’s imagination to developments that seem unwelcome and using them as a kind of building material. e Stoic takes whatever happens and puts it to use. (Chapter 10.) (Page 29)

character. It amounts to the reasoned annihilation of false beliefs that serve us badly. As a Stoic sees it, though, none of this should lead to despair. Quite the contrary: we can nd more durable and satisfying pleasures in wisdom, and less anguish, than we ever did in our illusions. e Stoics propose an escape to reality, so to speak, not away from it. Seeing the world clearly, understanding life rightly, and being free from the ctions that drive most people crazy – this they regard as the good life. (Chapters 6 and 11.) Stoics also advocate enjoym osed to the ones we invent to keep ourselves going on the hamster wheel. e usual Stoic goal is to enjoy or react or do most else in the world with moderation and a sense of detachment. (Chapter 6.) e detachment doesn’t mean a lack of attention or interest. It is better (Page 29)

relationships to external things. Stoics avoid getting elated or crushed or otherwise worked up about them. A large share of Stoicism might be viewed, in eﬀect, as interpretation of two famous inscriptions above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: know thyself; nothing in excess. e Stoics turn those maxims into a detailed philosophical practice. (Page 30)

pursuit of virtue. Living virtuously means living by reason, and the Stoics regard reason as calling for honesty, kindness, humility, and devotion to the greater good. It also calls for involvement in public aﬀairs – that is, in the work of helping others in whatever ways are available. Instead of living to satisfy desires, Stoics regard themselves as meant to function as parts of a whole. ere is great joy to be had in this, though it is not the variety that comes from the acquisition of things or approval from others. e happiness the Stoic seeks is eudaimonia – the good life, or well-being. Virtues bring about that type of happiness as a byproduct, and Stoics regard this as the only reliable path by which happiness can be secured. (Chapter 11.) (Page 30)

hard work, because many of our judgments, and the fears and desires that follow from them, are habitual and hard to change or set aside, and they are constantly reinforced by our surroundings and conventions. Taming the mind through reason takes the same kind of commitment that we associate with martial arts or other demanding physical disciplines. In return, Stoicism oﬀers happiness, equanimity, and sanity. (Chapter 12.) (Page 30)

compassion, for asking the impossible of its students, and (because it is impossible) for making hypocrites out of those who claim to follow it. Chapter 13 oﬀers some replies to those criticisms. To summarize: (Page 30)

experience. ey try to respond to temptations and hardships in about the way they might if they were experiencing them for the thousandth time; the recommended Stoic reaction to most things is the natural reaction of the veteran. is way of looking at Stoicism makes it less otherworldly. e philosophy can be considered an eﬀort to help us toward the state of mind we might reach on our own with more time, rather than as an eﬀort to make us less human. Looking at Stoicism this way also makes clear that the practicing Stoic isn’t unfeeling or uncaring. e Stoic responds to the suﬀering of others like a good doctor who has seen it all before: with activity and compassion, though probably without much emotion. (Page 31)

an example by the Stoics is best viewed as an ideal. It is meant to provide a direction rather than a destination. is shouldn’t be alarming. Many philosophical and religious traditions call on their aspirants to work toward an ideal that nobody quite attains. e question is not whether anyone gets to the end. It is whether we are helped by trying. (Page 31)

what Stoicism is for. Its purpose is to help those who use it, not to give them a basis for judgment of others. e exhortations of Stoic teachers sometimes create a diﬀerent impression, but explaining Stoicism and practicing Stoicism are diﬀerent activities. Stoicism may have to be taught if it is to be learned, but the practice of it involves thinking and acting, not preaching. If Stoicism inspires claims of hypocrisy against its students, the students are probably bad Stoics – not because their actions are impure, but because they are talking too much. (Page 31)

react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us. We will see the Stoics develop that idea in the pages to come, but this expres (Page 34)

troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to eliminate now. (Page 34)

all involve three stages rather than two: not just an event and a reaction, but an event, then a judgment or opinion about it, and then a reaction (to the judgment or opinion). Our task is to notice the middle step, to understand its frequent irrationality, and to control it through the patient use of reason. is chapter starts with the noticing. Later chapters will talk about the (Page 34)

ugh our beliefs, opinions, and thinking about it – in a word, through our judgments – and that they are up to us. For many students of Stoic philoso (Page 34)

n strictly to the mind. Suppose someone insults you. e insult is meaningless apart from what you make of it. If you are bothered, it must be because you care: a judgment. Instead you could decide not to care, and that would be the end of the insult for you. All irritations can be viewed the same way – the noisy neighbor, the bad weather, the traﬃc jam. If you are riled up by these things, you are riled up by the judgments you make about them: that they are bad, that they are important, that one should get riled up about them. e events don’t force you to think any of this; only you can do it. e same then goes for bigger setbacks, and for desires, fears, and all the rest of our mental events. We always feel as though we react to things in the world; in fact we react to things in ourselves. And sometimes changing ourselves will be more eﬀective and sensible than trying to change the world. When we feel physical pain or pleasure, the role of the mind i (Page 35)

attitudes, responses, conditioned ht between all the forms that our judgments can take – conscious chemical opinions, unconscious predispositions, genetic tendencies, and so on – and how some of those can be changed more easily than others. ey do make a few such acknowledgments. e Stoics say that some reactions have a physical basis we can’t control. (See Chapter 9, Section 1.) And Seneca concedes that we are born with some temperamental features that can’t be changed. (See Chapter 10, Section 10.) But our ordinary reactions to things – our reactions at rest – are viewed mostly just as ours to control with practice. Anyone can see how diﬃcult this idea would be to carry out in full; just think of your own strongest likes and dislikes, and how hard it would be to reverse them with any amount of thinking. But fortunately, and importantly, Stoicism doesn’t care what our tastes are, and doesn’t call for reversal of our aversions and desires. It calls for detachment from them. at isn’t easy, either, but it is far more oen feasible. We may consider i (Page 36)

the world – our reactions, fears, desires, all of it – is not produced by the world. It is produced by what the Stoics call our judgments, or opinions. (Page 37)

back to opinion; it is according to opinion that we suﬀer. Each man is as wretched as he has convinced himself he is. (Page 37)

seems right to feel downcast and in low spirits. Joy is a recent opinion of a present good, in response to which it seems right to be elated. Fear is an opinion of an impending evil that seems unbearable. Lust is an opinion about a good to come – that it would be better if it were already here. (Page 37)

Opinion. What is discord, disagreement, blame, accusation, impiety, foolishness? All these are opinions and nothing else. (Page 38)

opinions about those things. For example, death is nothing terrible; for if it were, it would have seemed so even to Socrates. Rather, the opinion that death is terrible – that is the terrible thing. So when we are impeded or upset or aggrieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves – that is, our opinions. (Page 38)

riches, glory, and health have only as much beauty and pleasure as is attributed to them by their possessor. Each of us is as well or badly oﬀ as we believe. e happy are those who think they are, not those who are thought to be so by others; and in this way alone, belief makes itself real and true. Opinion We Have of em (1580) (Page 39)

understand the workings of the mind and where our reactions come from. It is that. But Stoicism diﬀers from some other philosophical traditions because it is an activity, not just a theory. If we view the idea of this chapter in that way, it is an instruction to take more responsibility than usual for one’s thinking – to treat how we talk to ourselves as a choice. If distress is caused by our thoughts about things rather than by the things themselves, we should try dropping those thoughts and using new ones. at claim may sound so elementary, or perhaps so (Page 39)

– to notice the irrationality that drives much of what we say to ourselves and to replace it with something wiser. Sometimes this is indeed easier said than done, or even impossible. But (Page 40)

away. Take away “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away. (Page 40)

by the thoughts or subtler judgments that we have about them. ey seek to show this, rst, by asking us to look at ourselves more carefully. Some of our reactions, when viewed in a dispassionate mood, seem obviously to be the results of our own sensitivities. (Page 41)

hard and beyond endurance. We forget what a torment it is to many of us just to abstain from wine or be made to get up at daybreak. ese things are not essentially diﬃcult. It is we who are so and slack. (Page 43)

abstinence from wine a torment to the drunkard, frugality a torment to the extravagant, and exercise a torment to the delicate and the idle; and so it is with all the rest. ings are not that diﬃcult or painful in themselves. Our weakness and cowardice make them so. Opinion We Have of em (1580) (Page 43)

gments. What we are used to seeing others do, and what we are used to doing or feeling ourselves, can make anything seem normal or strange, inevitable or a matter of choice. And those forces tend to do their work invisibly. Once we take in a custom or habit, the judgments they produce feel as though they are strictly our own, not anything that was implanted and could be diﬀerent. e spell of familiarity must be broken, and this is best done by looking at the great range of responses to the same things that have come to seem natural to people in diﬀerent conditions. (Page 45)

for the (Page 45)

his ight from the enemy, had drunk some water which was muddy and fouled by cadavers, he declared that he had never drunk anything more pleasant; the fact was, he had never drunk before when he was thirsty…. Compare [to those who use moderation] those you see sweating and belching, being overfed like fatted oxen; then will you perceive that they who pursue pleasure most attain it least, and that the pleasure of eating lies in having an appetite, not in being glutted. (Page 46)

producing our experience. An appetite can be considered an example of such a judgment if judgm (Page 46)

ow not – is part of Stoic practice. (Cultivation is called for in cases like the one Seneca describes above, as when learning how to take satisfaction from simple and natural pleasures.) All this is an example of the reorientation the Stoics recommend in general: spending less energy on getting or avoiding (Page 46)

we think might aﬀect this. We will come back to these points in later chapters. (Page 47)

changing all the food that it receives, turns every sort of sustenance into a source of pain, so, in the case of the perverse mind, whatever you entrust to it becomes to it a burden and a source of disaster and wretchedness. (Page 48)

it plays in turning objects (Page 49)

practice of Stoi (Page 50)

are of our own making, even if they don’t seem that way, and that we underrate our power to rid ourselves of the ones that serve us poorly. We can end the chapter with some reections on the fundamental nature of t (Page 50)

how Stoic philosophy came into being in general, and also of how it might begin for anyone who studies it. We see others talking or thinking or acting diﬀerently than we would, or diﬀerently than we had imagined anyone might – the disagreement to which Epictetus refers. is causes us to take our contrary thoughts and customs less for granted, and to see them as more dependent on choice and circumstance than we had supposed (the rejection and distrust of mere opinion). We are led to look harder at our own thinking, and to seek a more true and accurate basis for it – the acquisition of the balance and ruler. e result may not be our old opinion or the alternative that surprised us; it may be a perspective that accounts for both and in some way elevates our understanding. Run through that cycle a thousand times and you might reasonably end (Page 51)

t our experience of everything is, and that it is up to us to a greater extent than we usually know. e work of philosophy is to take responsibility for our own thinking, and in so doing to liberate ourselves from the attachments and misjudgments that otherwise dictate our experience. Two more ways to (Page 51)

mind – that they all arise from judgments based on opinion, and by choice – let there be an end to this discussion. Besides, now that the boundaries of good and evil have been discovered so far as they are discoverable by man, we ought to realize that nothing can be hoped from philosophy greater or more useful than what we have been discussing for the last four days. For besides instilling a proper contempt for death, and making pain bearable, we have added the calming of grief, as great as any evil known to mankind…. For there is one cure for grief and other ills, and it is the same. ey are all matters of opinion, and taken up voluntarily because it seems right to do so. is error, as the root of all evils, philosophy promises to eradicate utterly. Let us therefore devote ourselves to its cultivation and submit to being cured; for so long as these evils possess us, not only can we not be happy, we cannot even be right in our minds. (Page 52)

how we misjudge them, and the ways that they tend to enslave us. An “external” can be dened as something outside ourselves or outside our power. Later chapters will talk about specic examples, such as money, fame, and ca (Page 53)

chment. is has consequences, rst, for the decisions and developments that one spends energy fussing about. If Stoics are distinguished by one policy as an everyday matter, it is a refusal to worry about things beyond their control or to otherwise get worked up about them. Detachment also means not letting happiness depend on getting or avoiding externals – wealth, for example, or the good opinion of others. Now a qualication: of course everyone will ha (Page 53)

rnals just mentioned and many others. e Stoic would rather have wealth than not have it, and would prefer to do without adversity. But we have to distinguish between preferences and attachments. e diﬀerence between them can be seen most easily by comparing how you feel when they aren’t satised. Imagine wanting one thing more than another and not getting it, but not being too upset as a result. at sort of wish is what we might call a (mere) preference. Having what you prefer is pleasing, and not having it is a disappointment, but it’s no threat to your equanimity. And the same can be said when something happens that you would have preferred not happen. It is just spilled milk, and Stoics try to look at all things they can’t control in roughly that way. An attachment is diﬀerent because it makes your happiness depend on the object of it. It pushes and pulls you. is distinction will be discussed more in later chapters. For now, we can (Page 53)

e seeing them accurately. Externals fool us, or we fool ourselves about them. Stoicism oﬀers some ways to get past those deceits, as by taking a literal view of an external that seems exciting or scary, or by breaking it down into parts that one can see more clearly than the whole. Stoics look this way at objects but also at people, whose reputation or wealth (or lack thereof) can cloud our judgments of them. e Stoic tries to see things as they are. e (Page 54)

belongs rst to Epictet (Page 54)

our opinions, desires, aversions, and, in short, whatever is our own doing. ings not up to us are our bodies, possessions, reputations, oﬃces, or, in short, whatever is not our own doing. (Page 54)

has not made his happiness depend on things not in his power. He will be troubled and unsure of himself so long as it is the hope of (Page 55)

if his hopes have never disappointed him. (Page 56)

what we call goo (Page 57)

other than a good and an evil mind. (Page 57)

in turn leads them to a life led for the benet of the whole – that is, for others. More immediately it means avoiding vices such as greed, dishonesty, and excess. ose are viewed as errors that result from attachment to externals, and from treatment of externals as themselves good and evil. So dropping those attachments, in the way our authors have just suggested, is regarded by the Stoic as an essential rst step toward virtue. Said diﬀerently, things in the world are (as the Stoics sometimes put it) “indiﬀerent.” We turn them to good or evil with our choices. (Page 57)

Assuredly he does not. Evil of every sort he keeps far from them – shameful acts and crimes, evil counsel and schemes for greed, blind lust and avarice intent on another’s goods. e good man himself he protects and delivers. Does anyone require of God that he should also guard the good man’s luggage? No, the good man himself relieves God of this concern; he despises externals. (Page 58)

spoke of dependence (Page 59)

ilosophy thus is a way to liberation. Epictetus regarded volition, or will, as one’s true self, and as the only part of (Page 59)

another to ambition, and all are slaves to fear. I will name you an exconsul who is slave to a little old woman, a millionaire who is slave to a serving-maid; I will show you youths of the noblest birth in serfdom to pantomime players! No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed. (Page 61)

to a single Stoic aim: letting g (Page 61)

regard every toy as a thing of value, who prefer a necklace bought for a few pennies to their own parents or their brothers. What, then, as Aristo says, is the diﬀerence between us and them, except that we elders go crazy over paintings and sculpture, making our folly more expensive? (Page 62)

general enough to discuss here (more specic advice will come in later chapters). First is the practice of adding nothing when an external presents itself. As soon as an event happens, we are quick to assign it a meaning. It is tagged as good news or bad news, as a reason for excitement or outrage, and so on. Or we give it a place in a story that we tell ourselves, long-running or new. en we react to those labels and narratives and imaginings. Stoicism regards this process as a trap. e assignments of value or meaning that we attach to things are usually half-conscious, borrowed from convention, and false or unhelpful. ey nevertheless determine how we feel and what we think and do next. So the Stoics say that our thinking should be slowed down, and imagination should be viewed with distrust – not imagination in its creative capacity, but imagination as “the enemy of men, the father of all terrors,” as Joseph Conrad once called it. When confronted with a report or (Page 62)

additions are made with care. (Page 63)

Suppose it is reported that a certain person is saying terrible things about you. is much is reported; but it is not reported that you have been hurt. I see that my child is sick. I see that much; but that he is in danger, I do not see. So always stay with rst appearances, and add nothing from within yourself – nothing happens to you. Or rather add something, but do it like someone who knows of all that happens in the world. (Page 63)

already known to us, and that we have trouble seeing clearly because they are covered already with conventional meanings. One has to chip away at the romance or horror or other story that has been overlaid onto the thing, and to distinguish between what it is and what it is called. is is really a variation of the process shown a moment ago: seeing things as they are, not as we have been told they are, or as everyone pretends they are, or as we tell ourselves they are. But rather than adding nothing, one takes oﬀ what is already there. A favorit (Page 64)

t have, whether of desirability or the reverse. (Page 64)

simplest and co (Page 65)

honors is really great. Why then does he seem great? Because you are measuring the pedestal along with the man. A dwarf is not tall, though he stands on a mountain; a Colossus will maintain its size even when standing in a well. is is the error under which we labor, (Page 65)

trappings in which he is adorned. (Page 66)

let him lay aside his wealth and his titles; let him present himself in his undershirt. Is his body healthy, active, and able to perform its functions? What sort of soul does he have? Is it beautiful and capable, and fortunate enough to have all of its parts intact? Is the soul rich in what is its own or rich in what it has borrowed? Has luck had nothing to do with it? Can it face the drawing of swords without inching? Is it indiﬀerent between a death by the expiration of breath or the slitting of the throat? Is it calm, unustered, and content? is is what we must see; that is how the great diﬀerences between us should be judged. (Page 66)

any apparent problem or (Page 67)

rospect is whether it is up to them. If not, they don’t agonize about it, because it wouldn’t help if they did. Stoics therefore are very attentive to the diﬀerence between things within and beyond their control. (Page 67)

skill; in which, however, there was a mixture of chance, or of what is vulgarly understood to be chance…. If we placed our happiness in winning the stake, we placed it in what depended upon causes (Page 68)

ourselves to perpetual fear and uneasiness, and frequently to grievous and mortifying disappointments. If we placed it in playing well, in playing fairly, in playing wisely and skillfully; in the propriety of our own conduct in short; we placed it in what, by proper discipline, education, and attention, might be altogether in our own power, and under our own direction. Our happiness was perfectly secure, and beyond the reach of fortune. (Page 69)

mind and think about. One is that things in the world do not touch your spirit, but stand quietly external to it; that which disturbs us comes only from the opinions within us. Second, everything you see changes in a moment and will soon be gone. Keep in mind always how many of these changes you have already seen. e world is constant change; your life lies in your opinion. (Page 70)

ion. One is analytical: using reason to take apart an external and show its true nature. e other is intuitive: looking at the world from a point of view that can produce an automatic change in how we see it. Viewing a problem, an adversary, or oneself from a certain perspective – seeing it from far away, or as part of a bigger picture – can sometimes detach us from an appetite or fear without need for analysis. e Stoics use both methods through (Page 70)

ection. Externals are taken up and scrutinized one by one. Time and space can be treated this way, for example, and receive some Stoic dissection in this chapter. To (Page 70)

live feels signicant. e Stoic regards those impressions as mistakes. ey arise because our ordinary perspective on the world, the one we use by default, is misleading. We look out from inside and see things in terms of ourselves; we are forgetful or unconscious of how puny and brief our allotments are. e Stoics rectify this by pointing out the facts about the scale of our existence and our mortality. But the ideas in this chapter are al (Page 71)

oic means to induce a felt sense of humility and attraction to virtue. e method can be called intuitive because it isn’t a matter of argument. I (Page 71)

two of our Stoic instructors were among th (Page 71)

Stoic; and that generally, as a theoretical philosopher, but still more as a Stoic philosopher, he might be supposed incapable of descending from these airy altitudes of speculation to the true needs, inrmities, and capacities of human nature. Yet strange it is, that he, of all the good emperors, was the most thoroughly human and practical. (Page 72)

seems a (Page 72)

compare what we call a human lifetime to that immensity. You will see how tiny a thing it is that we wish for and seek to prolong. (Page 72)

might count up a hundred and ten years for each; but when you turn your mind toward the whole of time, the diﬀerence between the shortest and the longest life will be nothing – if, having examined the intervals, you compare the time each has lived with the time he has not lived. (Page 73)

scale we (Page 73)

measured by the universe, we may regard as a mere dot. Our life (Page 73)

time, because the measure of eternity is greater than that of the world; the world recreates itself over and over within the bounds of time. (Page 74)

small. To this (Page 74)

Marcus Aurelius: (Page 74)

former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come aer. (Page 74)

his past life: “e whole human race, both that which is and that which is to be, is condemned to die. As for the cities that ever held sway over the world – and those that have been the splendid ornaments of empires not their own – someday people will ask where they were…. So why should I be angry or feel sorrow if I precede the fate common to all things by a tiny interval of time?” (Page 75)

destruction of cities with equilibrium. ey stand but to fall! A common doom awaits them – whether by the explosion of some internal force, and blasts that are violent so long as their exit is blocked … or whether age, from which nothing is safe, will wear them down bit by bit; or whether severity of climate will drive their people away, and neglect will destroy what they have abandoned. All the ways their fate may arrive would be tedious to relate. But this one thing I know: all works of mortals are doomed to mortality. We live in the midst of things destined to die. (Page 75)

er than the forces of creation. works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid. (Page 76)

countermeasure against (Page 78)

aer tomorrow at the latest, you wouldn’t consider the choice between those days important unless you were very small-minded; for how much diﬀerence is there? Likewise, the diﬀerence between dying at a great age and dying tomorrow you should consider no great thing. (Page 78)

microscope, (Page 79)

of things tha (Page 80)

g them of their power to provoke attachment. (Page 80)

you have seen many times before. Look up and down, in short, and you will nd the same things that the histories are lled with – ancient histories, histories of the intervening years, histories of our times – and that ll the cities and the houses of today. Nothing is new; everything is both familiar and short-lived. (Page 80)

regimes. You can also see future events in advance; they will be of entirely the same kind, for it is impossible to depart from the pattern of what is happening now. It follows that to have observed human life for forty years is the same as for ten thousand. For what more are you going to see? (Page 80)

day and an age, whatever the days or events that may come, then it can look out from the heights and laugh as it reects on the succession of the ages. (Page 81)

brought home at once (Page 81)

e intended eﬀect is to help us naturally reach some of the familiar Stoic conclusions, such as the repetitive character of human life and the perishability of it. (Page 81)

ceremonies, and every sort of voyage in storm and calm, and the disputes between those being born, living together, and dying. ink (Page 81)

aer you, and that is being lived now in other countries; think of how many don’t know your name at all, how many will quickly forget it, how many who – perhaps praising you now – will soon be nding fault. Realize that being remembered has no value, nor does your reputation, nor anything else at all. (Page 82)

part by one’s ability to read the ideas in this chapter and come away in better humor rather than worse, and with greater purpose rather than less. Some would regard Marcus Aurelius as a notably poor motivational speaker. For the Stoic he is among the only kind tolerable. (Page 83)

death gets their attention at length. Stoics consider death hard to see accurately, and they nd the usual attitude toward it irrational; what death is like is unknown to anyone, but it appears to be a painless state that leaves us no worse oﬀ than we were before we were born. ey also view death as similar to other changes that are familiar to all, and (Page 84)

other arguments as well to drain the terror from mo (Page 84)

most important of all philosophical achievements, and the gain of an important liberty. But Stoicism treats death as more than just an (Page 84)

mething to which we overreact. Mortality is the dening feature of our existence; Stoics want the imminence of it to inform their daily lives. e fact that we will soon be gone can induce some of the same changes in mindset as the perspectives considered in the previous chapter. Meditation on death is thus used by the Stoic to stimulate humility, fearlessness, moderation, and other virtues. (Page 84)

analyze the or (Page 84)

have an appearance of evil; for a love of self is implanted in us, and a desire for existence and survival, and a dread of disintegration. Death seems to rob us of many good things and to remove us from all we have come to know. And there is another element that estranges us from death: we are already familiar with the present, but are ignorant of the future into which we will go, and we shrink from the unknown…. Even if death is something indiﬀerent, then, it is nevertheless a thing that cannot be easily ignored. (Page 85)

death…. Condence should therefore be our attitude toward death, and caution should be our attitude toward the fear of it. But now we have the opposite: toward death, avoidance; toward our opinions about it, carelessness, indiﬀerence, and neglect. (Page 85)

Stoic as one of the cen (Page 86)

ee from many other fears as well; for death is the master fear that lies behind them. From Seneca: (Page 86)

power, and certainly beyond it. What terrors have prisons and bonds and bars for him? (Page 86)

worry about it. No good thing makes its possessor happy unless his mind is prepared for its loss; and nothing is easier to let go of than that which, once gone, cannot be missed. (Page 86)

Damindas that the Spartans would suﬀer greatly if they did not get back into Philip’s good graces. “Coward,” he replied; “what can people suﬀer who do not fear death?” Agis was similarly asked how people could live in freedom; to which he replied, “By holding death in contempt.” (Page 87)

other externals: us (Page 87)

when one is not; for it is thinking one knows what one does not know. For no one knows whether death be not even the greatest of all blessings to man, but they fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. (Page 88)

death itself is not. (Page 88)

so diﬀerent from others we (Page 89)

matter into other forms. (Page 90)

which the universe now needs. For you also came into existence not when you chose, but when the world had need of you. (Page 90)

contemplate its similarity to our posi (Page 90)

myself have for a long time tested death.” “When?” you ask. Before I was born…. Unless I am mistaken, my dear Lucilius, we go astray in thinking that death follows, when it has both preceded and will follow. Whatever condition existed before our birth, was death. For what does it matter whether you do not begin at all, or whether you end, when the result in either case is non-existence? (Page 91)

before they were born. Just as there was nothing either good or bad for us before we were born, so neither will there be aer the end. And just as things before us were nothing to us, so neither will things aer us be anything to us. (Page 91)

Just as our birth brought us the birth of all things, so will our death be the death of them all. And so to be sorry we will not be alive a hundred years from now is as foolish as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago. (Page 91)

points to creatures with weak understa (Page 92)

death. It is most shameful if reason cannot give us the same peace of mind to which they are led by their simplicity. (Page 92)

storm. To those near him who were most frightened, he pointed to a hog that was there and that was not in the least concerned, and sought to encourage them by its example. Do we dare to say that the gi of reason, of which we speak so highly and which we think (Page 92)

a source of torment? What good is knowledge if it causes us to lose the peace of mind and the calm we would enjoy without it, and leaves us in a condition worse than that of Pyrrho’s hog? Opinion We Have of em (1580) (Page 93)

a reason not to fear death: the (Page 93)

even the most accomplished of them; I hesitate to say it, but a man can scarcely bear even himself. In such darkness and lth, then – in such a constantly changing ow of substance and of time, of motion (Page 93)

pursuing, I cannot conceive. (Page 94)

inevitable. (Page 94)

removing illusions about it. One is (Page 94)

ventuality in the distance. e Stoics attack that impression in several ways. First, they view death as a continuous process rather than an event. We all are dying; each day that passes is an increment of mortality. (Page 94)

knows the worth of each day, who understands that they are dying daily? For we are mistaken when we see death ahead of us; the greater part of it has happened already. Whatever of our life is behind us is in death’s hands. (Page 94)

degrees. We die every day. For every day a little of our life is taken from us; even when we are growing, our life is on the wane. We lose our childhood, then our boyhood, and then our youth. Right up to yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death. It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that has owed out already. (Page 95)

terror. e option become (Page 95)

, in turn, a source of courage in life. e ability to end one’s own life is therefore an important freedom. If life is intolerable, as Epictetus puts it, “the doorway out is open.” (Page 95)

love or to hate life overmuch. Even when reason advises us to make an end of it, the impulse is not to be adopted without reection or at headlong speed. e brave and wise man should not ee from life but withdraw from it. (Page 96)

create a desire to keep i (Page 97)

there, or as far away as possible – to treat the length of a life as the most important thing about it. e Stoic, to the contrary, is more concerned with the quality of life than its duration. Virtue and honor are goods not measured in time; the person who has them has lived long enough. (Page 97)

is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long. (Page 97)

well means that you cannot live long. (Page 97)

wisdom. e one who gets there has arrived, not at the farthest goal, but at the most indeed, may boldly important. at man, congratulate himself, and give thanks to the gods – and to himself along with them – and count in his reckoning with the universe the fact that he has lived. His account will be in credit: he has given it back a better life than he received. (Page 98)

because he has grey hairs or wrinkles. He has not lived long; he has existed long. For suppose you should imagine that a man had a great voyage when in fact he was caught by a erce storm as soon as he le harbor, was swept this way and that by strong winds from diﬀerent directions, and was driven along the same path in circles. He did not make a great voyage. He was greatly tossed about. (Page 98)

great achievement. An (Page 99)

chievement, and of character – perhaps the true test. (Page 99)

the reection that it is a fate commo (Page 100)

veryone. (Page 100)

has befallen us was suﬀered by all who came before and will be suﬀered by all to come; and Nature has, it seems to me, made (Page 100)

our fate might console us for its cruelty. (Page 101)

the same thing: for either they were absorbed back into the same principles that produced them, or they were scattered alike among the atoms. (Page 101)

patron, with your client? Wait a little. Behold, death comes, which will make you equals. (Page 101)

the Stoics as a resource – (Page 102)

a remedy for pride and a teacher of wisdom. ey therefore pursue a kind of closeness with death rather than distance fr (Page 102)

Stoics observe that the possibility of death is nearer than we usually imagine, a point oﬀered not to cause anxiety but to dispel it; rather than a frightening thing that advances on us, death is next to us all the time. It is best accepted as a reason to live well in the time that remains. (Page 102)

though he is not your master, every slave has the power of life and death over you. erefore I declare to you: whoever scorns his own life is master of yours. (Page 102)

cause to perish. But I place this fact in the category of solace, actually a very powerful solace, since fear without remedy is what foolish men have…. If you wish to fear nothing, consider that everything is to be feared. (Page 103)

matched by the Stoic’s (Page 103)

ward virtue without a need for argument. (Page 103)

frequent thought that life is short and that the little we have is uncertain. Whatever you are doing, be mindful of death. (Page 104)

lengthening it, or who believes that living through many consulships is a great blessing. Rehearse this thought every day, so that you may be able to peacefully give up this life to which so many clutch and cling, just as those snatched away by a rushing stream clutch and cling to briars and sharp rocks. (Page 104)

get used to it, let us have nothing on our minds more oen. At every moment let us imagine death in all of its aspects. When a horse stumbles, when a tile falls, when a pin pricks us even slightly, let us immediately turn over this thought: “What if that had been death itself?” (Page 104)

by the Stoic as a way to red (Page 105)

er comments on the latter theme from Marcus Aurelius: (Page 105)

as if it were the last, to be neither agitated nor numb, and not to pretend. (Page 105)

have lived until now. e portion that is allowed to you beyond this, live out according to nature. (Page 105)

to examine our usual thinking more closely, department by department, to see whether it squares with reason and with what we know of human nature. To simplify only a bit, Stoicism views most of our miseries as driven by the ways we relate to desires and fears about the future, and to pleasures and pains in the present. is chapter begins by considering desire – how it works and how we might handle it more rationally. We have noted that the Stoic t (Page 107)

tetus, externals; for Marcus Aurelius, perspective. On the subject of psychology, which comes to the fore in this chapter, the great Stoic specialist is Seneca the Younger. Seneca, along with others we will see, gave early recognition to many te (Page 107)

s more pleasing than the possession of it; that possession of a good and familiarity with it tend to produce indiﬀerence or disgust; that we mismeasure the value of what we have, or don’t have, by comparing it to our expectations or to the holdings of others. In sum, we talk to ourselves about our desires in ways (Page 107)

getting what we want tends (Page 108)

It makes us want more. New desires appear when other ones are spent; our (Page 108)

large as he prayed for it? (Page 108)

never come. We say that there is a succession of causes from which fate is put together. ere is likewise a succession of desires: one is born from the end of another. (Page 108)

nd no remedy in gold or silver or horses and sheep and cattle, but in casting out the source of mischief and being purged. For his ailment is not poverty, but insatiability and avarice, arising from the presence in him of a false and unreecting judgment; and unless someone removes this, like a tapeworm, from his mind, he will never cease to need superuities – that is, to want what he does not need. (Page 109)

enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a Pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing thousands laboring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnicence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly. (Page 110)

desires by reference to their un (Page 111)

pleasing as we imagined, and newer and bigger objects of them must always be sought. And because they aren’t linked to a particular need, they have no natural stopping place. (Page 111)

can limit the superuous? It is for this reason that men sink themselves in pleasures, and then cannot do without them when (Page 111)

they are most wretched – that they have reached such a pass that what was once superuous to them has become indispensable. (Page 112)

you! Assume fortune takes you far beyond a mere private income: it covers you in gold, dresses you in purple, brings you to that stage of luxury and riches at which you hide the ground under marble oors, so that you’re able not only to have wealth but to walk on it. Add statues and paintings and whatever art has devised in the service of luxury. What you will learn from these things is to long for more. Natural desires are nite; those born of false opinion have no place to stop. ere is no terminus to what is false. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but wanderings have no limit. (Page 112)

work toward a goal, w (Page 113)

ill bring; but the pursuit itself turns out to be more enjoyable than the capture of the thing pursued. (Page 113)

Are with more spirit chas (Page 113)

obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment. (Page 113)

thing tends to bring abo (Page 114)

metimes this is because nally possessing what one wanted allows its un (Page 114)

satisfy once it is possessed, not just because we see it more realistically but because possession itself changes how we feel about it. No acquisition or stimulation makes the same impression on us with long exposure. (Page 114)

familiarity? and nothing less highly once we obtain it. (Page 114)

impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust; and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to every other course of life, that its two days of happiness are the rst and the last. (Page 116)

ty to nd pleasure in whatever we already have and so drives us on to new wants. Smith nicely tied the phenomenon to a larger Stoic claim. (Page 117)

our sati (Page 117)

faction with what we have by comparing it to what others have. It is always possible to nd some who seem to be ahead of us or to have (Page 117)

torment. (Page 118)

is why we grow angry even at the gods, because some person is ahead of us, forgetting how many men there are behind us, and how huge a mass of envy follows at the back of him who envies but a few. Nevertheless such is the presumptuousness of men that, although they may have received much, they count it an injury that they might have received more. (Page 118)

the same life as themselves, but also the wealthy envy the learned, the famous the rich, advocates the sophists, and, by Heaven, free men and patricians regard with wondering admiration and envy successful comedians in the theatre and dancers and servants in the courts of kings; and by so doing they aﬀord themselves no small vexation and disturbance. (Page 119)

what someone else does, we are denitely made unhappy by envy of it. (Page 120)

seems to arise from over-rating the diﬀerence between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the diﬀerence between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. e person under the inuence of any of those (Page 120)

is oen disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. e slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. (Page 121)

remedies. e most di (Page 121)

ment from it; attachments to externals are, in general, breeding grounds for envy and other vices. Or one can perceive a desire as just another misjudgment and, if the talent for doing so has been developed, simply dismiss it. To restate the point: the principle of Chapter 1 treats the mind and its o (Page 121)

what he doesn’t have, and cheerfully enjoy what comes his way. (Page 121)

“Help me not to lust aer going to bed with her.” Another: “Help me be released from that!” You: “Help me not need to be released.” Another: “How shall I not lose my little son?” You: “How shall I not (Page 121)

happens. (Page 122)

istinctions, but diminish his desires. If you want Pythocles to have endless enjoyment, don’t add to his enjoyments, but diminish his desires. If you want to make Pythocles an old man, living his life to the full, don’t add to his years, but diminish his desires. (Page 122)

them, as just shown, is the rst line of S (Page 122)

have the opposite eﬀect. One might suppose that all comparisons to others ought to be held strictly (Page 123)

seek any consolations for poverty – the extravagance of our day having reached the point that the travel expenses of exiles are more than the inheritances of princes in former times. (Page 123)

thinks rather of those by whom he is surpassed. And these men nd it less pleasing to see many behind them than annoying to see anyone ahead of them. at is the trouble with every sort of ambition; it does not look back. (Page 124)

wisdom and justice was great, was entertaining some guests, his wife entered in a rage and upset the table; his guests were dismayed, but Pittacus said, “Every one of us has some trouble. He that has only mine is doing very well indeed.” (Page 125)

look to those who are better oﬀ. Let us measure ourselves instead by what is below. None are so miserable that they cannot nd a thousand examples to provide consolation. (Page 125)

each person should receive an equal share in the distribution, the majority would be glad to take up their own and depart. (Page 126)

desirable the goods we have (Page 127)

y try to change the way they view (Page 127)

best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn’t have them. (Page 127)

to me. (Page 127)

and feel pain when it is lost. We feel a desire for more of whatever we have, and gradually value all sorts of things more highly than they are worth. ese points can be applied to pleasure more generally: we overrate pleasures and underrate the cost of trying to gain them. Pleasure and pain are parts of a cycle; they go together, and have to be addressed together. Aer considering those ideas, this chapter will turn from war (Page 129)

why. Stoics value moderation, and they don’t view it as a compromise of pleasures. ey regard moderation, rather, as enhancing pleasures – indeed, as making the true and healthy enjoyment of them possible. A second Stoic resource is detachment. One can learn to enjoy wealth and pleasures without grasping for them, holding them too tightly when one has them, or being crushed when they are gone. ird, to continue a theme from the previous chapter, the easiest way to real wealth is by learning to be happy with less – with enough. ere is no diﬀerence, so far as contentment is (Page 129)

corrupter of the indi (Page 130)

and of social life. Money is hard to see and understand clearly; it causes us to misjudge the value of things, and it drives those who worship it into low behavior. (Page 130)

which acquisitions fail to satisfy the (Page 131)

observe that that the poor are no unhappier and no more anxious than the rich. (Page 131)

many men, not an end of troubles but a change of them.” I do not wonder. For the fault is not in one’s wealth but in the mind itself. at which had made poverty a burden to us has made riches a burden as well. It matters little whether you lay a sick man on a bed of wood or a bed of gold; wherever he be moved, he will carry his (Page 131)

set down in wealth or in poverty. e malady follows the man. (Page 132)

only that wealth fails to satisfy but that it tends to rule those who possess it and bring about its own forms of unhappiness. (Page 132)

enjoys a blessing that brings anxiety. He is always trying to add a little more. While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it. (Page 132)

to pleasure. Stoics vie (Page 133)

ys exacting a price, and as invariably alternating with some sort of loss or pain. (Page 133)

elections and crowds of supporters; another, in his mistress; another, in the idle display of culture and in literature that has no power to heal. All of them are led astray by delights that are deceptive and short-lived – like drunkenness, for example, which pays for a single hour of hilarious madness with a long-lasting sickness; or like applause and enthusiastic popularity and approval that are gained, and atoned for, at the cost of great mental disquietude. (Page 133)

pain. And you see what wretched and hateful slavery a person is in when pleasures and pains – those most capricious and tyrannical masters – take captive of him in turn. (Page 133)

to distinguish true and complete pleasures from those that are mixed and interwoven with even more pain. Most pleasures, they say, caress and embrace us only to strangle us, like the thieves the Egyptians called Philistæ. If we felt the headache before getting drunk, we (Page 133)

walks in front and hides its train. (Page 134)

pleasure by. (Page 134)

analysis of wealth a (Page 135)

tween what one has and what one wants. Most people devote themselves to enlarging the rst when they would do better to reduce the second. is is the classic Stoic inversion. (Page 135)

possess all things. e shortest way to riches is to despise riches. (Page 135)

possible. How excited you are to hear the news! And rightly so; I will lead you by a shortcut to the greatest wealth…. My dear Lucilius, not wanting something is just as good as having it. e important thing either way is the same – freedom from worry. (Page 135)

What does it matter how much you have laid up in your safe or in your warehouse, how large are your ocks or your investments, if you covet your neighbor’s property, and if you count not what you have but what remains for you to have? (Page 136)

desires and enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession; and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain, is no less an enemy to his quiet, than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony. (Page 136)

accepting one’ (Page 136)

someone should order the host to serve him sh or pastries, he (Page 136)

things they do not give us – even though there are many things they have given us. (Page 137)

even while enjoying them fully, to make it my highest prayer to God that he render me content with myself and the goods that come from within me. (Page 137)

“learn not to w (Page 139)

bad in themselves. But Stoicism allows that we might legitimately want some of those things – in other words, that some of them are so-called preferred indiﬀerents. is notion has sometimes been considered troublesome because a “pre (Page 139)

wants in the world. It is not realistic to eradicate all preferences about them. e Stoics understand this. (Page 139)

and when, having seen the things that everyone clutches at, or prays for, or watches over, you nd – I do not say nothing you prefer – but nothing you require. (Page 139)

gis of Fortune. He does not love riches, but would prefer them; he does not admit them to his heart, but to his house; he does not reject the riches he has, but keeps them to supply fuller material for the exercise of his virtue. (Page 140)

Stoics regard as hazardous? Detachment. is distinction was introduced at the start of the rst chapter. An attac (Page 140)

position under all circumstances. But money, if held without attachment, is unobjectionable – for the money (Page 141)

isn’t the point. e point is the health of the mind. e w (Page 141)

er the mind has been given over to it in an excessive way. e detachment of the Stoic thus can be viewed as a kind of moderation – that is, moderation in one’s relationship to externals. A good way to test such a relationship, and to know whether you have an attachment to a thing or just a preference about it, is to consider how well you would handle its loss. (Page 141)

do not forbid you to possess them, but I want to bring you to the point at which you possess them without fear. ere is only one way to achieve this: by persuading yourself that you can live happily without them, and by regarding them as always about to depart. (Page 141)

just as with other impressions – against being carried away by it. Let the thing wait for you, and give yourself some delay. en think about two times to come: the time when you will enjoy the pleasure, and the time aerwards when, having enjoyed it, you will regret it and reproach yourself. Compare this with how pleased you will be, and how you will congratulate yourself, if you don’t do it. Still, if it seems that the time is right to do the thing, just take care that the charm and pleasure and attraction of it do not overcome you; compare how much better it is to know you have won this victory against it. (Page 142)

a form of mo (Page 142)

leasure – a way to enjoy something without spoiling it, and without the costs and regrets that come with excess. Epictetus liked to show the value of moderation by using comparison (Page 142)

and bring out gs and nuts, this happens: if they ll the hand, they cannot remove it, and then they cry. Drop a few of them and you will get it out. (Page 142)

doing too much of something. It is an attitude of restraint. (Page 143)

others it manages and restores to a healthy level; nor does it ever seek to satisfy desires for their own sake. Self-control knows that the best measure of the appetites is not how much you want to take, but how much you ought to take. (Page 143)

scourge of pleasure, but the seasoning of it. (Page 143)

madness to avoid what is customary and can be purchased at no great price. Philosophy calls for plain living but not for penance; and we may perfectly well be plain and neat at the same time. is is the mean of which I approve; our life should observe a happy medium (Page 143)

men should admire it, but they should understand it also. (Page 144)

turn to Stoic ideas about (Page 144)

d; and that approach to living will appeal to many regardless of the rationale for it. More relevant to our immediate purpose (Page 144)

that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in army camps, that dash us on foreign shores. at which is enough is right at hand. (Page 144)

enjoyed. It merely should be done with moderation. But most of our energies are instead spent chasing short-lived pleasures that we invent or inate. Stoics try to align their sense of pleasure with the satisfaction of their actual needs. (Page 145)

to seek pleasure, but to make those things that are indispensable to existence look attractive to our eyes. If pleasure claims rights of its own, it is luxury. (Page 145)

they are measured; it preaches moderation, not avoidance. Its powers of resistance are for use against those pleasures that are misbegotten and unnatural. Philosophy holds that the appetites of the body should not be increased by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not to stir up hunger by overfeeding; not to stuﬀ the belly but to ll it; to avoid all enjoyments that put us in need, and all meats that bring hunger and drinks that bring thirst. (Page 146)

this they mean th (Page 146)

of living. ey also think pleasures should be viewed with wariness because they o (Page 146)

pleasures associated wit (Page 148)

erstanding and wisdom, which might be enjoyed even immoderately without fear of recoil. Stoics regard the mind as the site and the source of true happiness. (Page 148)

found by the senses; but we Stoics maintain that it is found by the understanding, and we assign it to the mind. (Page 148)

the opinion of the majority, for the habit of looking to others when thinking about what to prefer and how to act. e problem runs deep. A large share of what most people say, think (Page 151)

ity in particular and human behavior in general. ey set out to tame it. ey start by asking why we care what others say and think about us, e (Page 151)

nd things that have mass appeal. Stoicism tries instead to substitute a greater respect for one’s own opinions, and practice at valuing things for what they are rather than for what anyone else thinks about them. e other side of our topic is c (Page 151)

. One is to regard the contempt of others with contempt (or to regard the others themselves with contempt), or to welcome the contempt when it is earned by doing the right thing. Any of these responses is better than fearing the opinions of others; for once one goes down that road, there is no end to it. Anot (Page 152)

ally can accept insults in good humor by reecting that any such criticism probably understates their true faults; they are comfortable enough with self-inicted ridicule to be unconcerned when others add to it. A second recourse is to make an assessment of the criticism. If we are criticized justly, we should accept it and change (or accept it and be done). If we are criticized unjustly, the critics are mistaken and entitled to compassion. ey meant well, or at least said what seemed right and best to their limited capacities. And at any rate we all will be gone soon enough. (Page 152)

expectations as the source of (Page 152)

f our behavior and much of our imbecility. We live by imitating others, and so act out ways of life that have nothing i (Page 152)

It is a repository of error and engine of misjudgment, and a source of pressure that one must learn to resist. From Seneca: (Page 152)

according to a pattern, and, instead of arranging our lives according to reason, are led astray by convention. (Page 152)

does or thinks – by looking only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure. e part of the good man is not to peer into the character of others, but to run straight down the line without glancing to one side or the other. (Page 153)

condition of living by reference to others, it does us much more harm than good. We defraud ourselves out of what is actually useful to us in order to make appearances conform to common opinion. We care less about the real truth of our inner selves than about how we are known to the public. (Page 153)

driver of it, is the desire (Page 154)

we value the clapping of tongues, for that is the praise of the masses. (Page 154)

reputation and glory – the most useless, worthless, and counterfeit coin that circulates among us? (Page 154)

say; and nearly half the troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score; it is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that feeling of self-importance, which is so oen mortied because it is so very morbidly sensitive. (Page 155)

that the orator who is nervous has been (Page 155)

indiﬀerence to us; and in time we get really indiﬀerent to it, when we come to see how supercial and futile are most people’s thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how perverse their opinions, and how much of error there is in most of them. (Page 156)

common people you despise, when taken one by one, are of any greater consequence when taken together? (Page 157)

pleasing to the many; a proof of the worst choice is the crowd. (Page 157)

yourself like them…. If I see you much acclaimed by the populace, if your entrances are greeted by the sound of cheers and applause (as we see given to actors), if the whole state, even the women and children, sing your praises – how can I help pitying you? For I know what road one must take to gain such popularity. (Page 158)

arguing th (Page 158)

forgotten you. (Page 158)

speed with which everything is forgotten; the vast gulf of boundless time on either side of us; the emptiness of applause; the changeable, undiscriminating nature of those who seem to praise; the tiny space in which it all takes place. (Page 159)

fellow-creatures. (Page 159)

negative side that we have seen (Page 160)

replace it with greater respect for opinions of their own. Marcus Aurelius oﬀers the point as a question: why do we worry more abo (Page 160)

most of all, he gives less weight to his own opinion of himself than to the opinion of others. If a god or wise teacher should appear and order a man not to have any thought or plan in his mind that he does not instantly and loudly announce, he would not be able to stand it for even a day. Evidently we have more respect for the opinions our neighbors hold about us than we do for our own. (Page 160)

serves some good and useful purpose, for it takes you away from other work. inking about what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what someone else is saying, and what another is thinking or planning, and all things of that sort, causes you to wander away from the observance of your own governing principles. (Page 160)

ing to others or worrying about what they might think. It is an essential part of Stoic practice, which consists in the rst place, a (Page 161)

with good intentions. And if you want to be happy, pray to the gods that none of their fond desires for you may be brought to pass. ose things they wish to have heaped upon you are not really good; there is only one good, the cause and the support of a happy life – trust in oneself. (Page 161)

with how you talk to yourself. (Page 161)

task at hand: to wrestle courageously with disease. If it cannot force you to do anything, or persuade you to do anything, you are setting a distinguished example. What a wealth of material there would be for achieving honor, if we were observed in our illness! Be your own spectator; seek your own applause. (Page 161)

else for it? Praise yourself. Say: “I devoted myself to the liberal arts. Although my poverty urged me to do otherwise and tempted my (Page 161)

I turned aside to unremunerative poetry and dedicated myself to the wholesome study of philosophy….” Aer this, ask whether the things you said about yourself are true or false. If they are true, you are praised in front of a great witness, yourself. If they are false, no one is a witness to your being made a fool of. (Page 162)

and devout. Others never see you; they only guess about you by uncertain conjectures. ey do not see your nature so much as they see your artice. So do not cling to their judgments; cling to your own. (Page 162)

and are more concerned about it than about what goes on in their own consciousness, which is the thing most immediately and directly present to them. ey reverse the natural order – regarding the opinions of others as real existence and their own consciousness as something shadowy; making the derivative and secondary into the principal, and considering the picture they present to the world of more importance than their own selves. By thus trying to get a direct and immediate result out of what has no really direct or immediate existence, they fall into the kind of folly which is called vanity – the appropriate term for that which has no solid or intrinsic value. (Page 162)

view seeks to value things in the (Page 162)

social life: the irratio (Page 163)

ent, for example, that the insult matters. e judgment can be dropped or withheld. (Page 164)

indignation of the victim. (Page 164)

abuses you but by your opinion that these things are insulting. So whenever another provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion that has provoked you. (Page 164)

routinely oﬀer the solutio (Page 164)

lcoming spirit. Anything but fear will do. To begin with indiﬀerence, which is close to the dismissals seen a moment (Page 164)

you, and do not be distracted by the comments or criticisms of others. If it is the right thing to say or do, don’t disparage yourself for saying or doing it. (Page 164)

not to belittle the contempt, but to belittle (Page 166)

humiliating kind of revenge is to treat your adversary as not worth taking revenge upon. Many have taken slight injuries too deeply to heart in the course of punishing them. e great and noble are those who, like a lordly beast, listen unmoved to the barking of little dogs. (Page 166)

the antagonist. (Page 166)

who happened to come along, you would be vexed. But that you entrust your mind to whoever you happen to meet, so that if he insults you, your mind is disturbed and confounded – aren’t you ashamed of that? (Page 166)

worry about w (Page 166)

at other people think or say, where does it stop? You have made yourself vulnerable to any and all. (Page 166)

the only source from which its pleasures spring, that separates itself from all external things, avoiding the unquiet life of one who fears everybody’s laughter, everybody’s tongue. For if there is anyone who can oﬀer an insult, who cannot? (Page 167)

humility and (Page 168)

about what was said, but answer: “Evidently he didn’t know about my other faults, or he wouldn’t have spoken only of the ones he did.” (Page 168)

my bald head, my weak eyes, my thin legs, my height. How is it an insult to be told what is obvious? (Page 168)

whoever de (Page 169)

sense – one who might say: “Do I deserve these things that happen to me? If I deserve them, there is no insult; it is justice. If I don’t deserve them, let the one who does the injustice blush.” (Page 169)

have bad judgment, to people with diminished physical capacities. We tend to be forgiving of such impairments; why shouldn’t we have the same attitude toward those who insult us, or otherwise do wrong, because their understandings are defective? (Page 169)

angry with those whose footsteps falter in the dark? With the deaf, when they don’t listen to orders? With children, because – neglecting a proper attention to their duties – they watch the games and silly (Page 169)

weary because they are sick and growing old? (Page 170)

someone dumped water on him. e king’s attendants said that he should punish the man. “Ah, but he did not dump the water on me,” the king replied, “but on the man he thought I was.” When Socrates was told that people spoke ill of him, he said, “Not at all. ere is nothing in me of what they say.” (Page 171)

judgment, the Stoic meets t (Page 171)

em with empathy. is starts with the idea that (Page 171)

wants to be wrong. (Page 172)

deprived against its will of justice, self-control, kindness, and everything of the kind. It is necessary to keep this in mind always, because it will make you milder toward everyone else. (Page 172)

that he is doing what he thinks is proper. He can’t possibly be guided by what appears right to you, but only by what appears right to him. So if he sees things wrongly, he is the one who is hurt, because he is the one who has been deceived…. Starting from this reasoning, you will be mild toward whoever insults you. Say each time, “So it seemed to him.” (Page 172)

ng other intangible goods, overvaluing ourselves, and misjudging others by seeing our aws in them. e treatment of these problems next to one another isn’t inevitable. e se (Page 174)

Stoics talk about in this book, do not involve desire or fear or pleasure or pain. Each is a kind of misjudgment about value. S (Page 174)

ey regard the time we pour into memories, hopes, and fears to be mostly ill-spent (though not always, as we shall see). ey also regard us as unconscious of the value of time generally. We give it away lightly, and waste it with less alarm than we waste money, though time is more valuable in the end. (Page 174)

e overrate money and undervalue time, just as we overrate material goods and the approval of others while undervaluing the gains we get by forgoing them. Stoics look at many things that way. When something bad seems to happe (Page 174)

another day. But the point is also subtler: we condemn in others precisely what we det (Page 175)

we project our faults onto them. So the Stoic works hard for self-knowledge and makes unhesitant (Page 175)

will see vario (Page 175)

c analysis of our mist (Page 175)

what we have than by chasing what we don’t, and by paying attention to the present rather than by dwelling on the past and the future. Some Stoic comments on t (Page 175)

not to exist. It is always in motion, it ows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it arrives. (Page 175)

indivisible moment. Everything else has either already been lived or is uncertain. (Page 175)

always be thinking about what suﬀerings, and how many, might possibly befall you. Ask instead, in each present circumstance: “What is there about this that is unendurable and unbearable?” You will be embarrassed to answer. (Page 176)

It is only the present that makes no one wretched. (Page 176)

events. How much time remains, and what it will be like – on these counts the troubled mind is vexed with fear that cannot be explained. How shall we escape this wallowing? ere is only one way: if our life does not project forward, if it stays contained in itself. ose who worry about the future are failing to prot from the present. (Page 176)

it is the only place where actual living occurs. By spending our thoughts on the future, we fail to attend to what is happening now and so fail to live. (Page 176)

ose life is not focused on tomorrow. What harm is there in that, you ask? Innite harm. ey are not really living. ey are about to live. (Page 176)

push us toward the future; they rob us of feeling and concern for what is by distracting us with what will be, even when we will be no more. (Page 177)

entirely in the pr (Page 178)

sent, but that is a bit too strong. Stoics do not think the future should be ignored or met without planning. ey mean that we should pay attention to the present; and they mean that we should carefully make decisions about the future that belong to us, but then waste no energy wondering and worrying about what is to come. (See Chapter 2, Section 6.) As for the past, Seneca holds to the pragmatic (Page 178)

and the memory of distress in the past. e one concerns me no longer. e other concerns me not yet. (Page 178)

his enjoyment. Both the future and the past can delight us – one in anticipation, the other in memory – but one is uncertain and may not happen, while the other cannot fail to have been. What madness it is, therefore, to lose our grip on that which is the surest thing of all! (Page 178)

the bereaved to value their memories. So he does not say that recollection of the past should be avoided on principle. He discourages the recollection of the bad but encourages happy memories, for they help us. e Stoic goal is not just to see time accurately but to make good use of it – the past as well as the present. Plutarch had a similar recommendation about the benets of memory. (Page 178)

present (Page 179)

beguiles travelers, and they nd that they have reached the end of their journey before realizing that they were approaching it, just so with this unceasing and most swi journey of life, which we make at (Page 179)

preoccupied become aware of it only at the end. (Page 180)

a favorite theme: comparisons of time (Page 180)

any lack of it, but we are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner – while wealth, however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases with use – so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly. (Page 180)

among how many others do each of us distribute our lives! Men are (Page 180)

to wasting time – the one thing about which it is right to be greedy. (Page 181)

Nature has put us in possession of this one eeting and uncertain property, from which anyone who wishes can eject us. And so great is the stupidity of mortals, that when they have obtained the cheapest and most unimportant things, easily replaced, they agree to be charged for them; yet no one considers himself indebted if he has taken up our time – though this is the one thing that even a grateful debtor cannot repay. (Page 181)

and those who are asked so indulgent. Each of them is looking at the object for which the time is sought, neither of them at the time itself, as if nothing were being asked and nothing given. (Page 182)

invisible and overlooked half of an (Page 182)

staying awake. But he bought the lamp at a high price. In return he became a thief, he became untrustworthy, he became an animal. is seemed to him a good bargain! (Page 183)

whose name is famous in the Forum, do not be envious; those things are bought at the cost of one’s life. (Page 183)

fact that you have no need to hold oﬃce. If someone else is wealthy, see what you have instead. For if you have nothing instead, you are miserable; while if in place of wealth you have no need of wealth, know that you possess something more than he does, and much greater in value. (Page 183)

accustomed to do when we approach a sidewalk vendor who is selling some merchandise or other: let’s see what it will cost to get this thing we have our hearts set on. e thing for which nothing is paid oen comes at the highest price. I can show you many things whose pursuit and acquisition has cost us our freedom. We would belong to ourselves if these things did not belong to us. (Page 184)

everything else. (Page 185)

ying others, ask whether you would accept an oﬀer to pay what they did to get what they have. (Page 185)

and privilege; but if someone were to say to us, “You can have the same amount that they have for the same price,” we would not want it. For in order to have these things that they do, we must atter, we must endure insult and injury, we must give up our freedoms. (Page 185)

those involving our own qu (Page 186)

in the right way, and through the front door – is an awareness of one’s own weakness and incapacity when it comes to the most important things. (Page 186)

you must catch yourself in the wrong before you can do better. Some people boast of their faults; when they count their vices as if they were virtues, do you think they intend any remedy? erefore establish your own guilt as far as you can. Investigate yourself; play the part of the prosecutor, then of the judge, only then of the advocate. Oﬀend yourself sometimes. (Page 186)

identify a co (Page 187)

back. (Page 187)

while the blind at least ask for a guide, we wander around without one, saying “I’m not ambitious, but there’s no other way to live in (Page 187)

outlay. It’s not my fault that I’m irritable, that I haven’t yet decided on a settled way of life – that’s just my youth.” Why do we fool ourselves? Our evil is not on the outside, it is within us, it is seated in our vitals – and it is that much harder to attain health when we do not know we are sick. (Page 188)

ourselves. If we come across someone who says that we are good men, that we are wise, that we are upright, we acknowledge the accuracy of the description. We are not content with moderate praise: whatever shameless attery heaps upon us, we accept as our due. We agree with those who maintain that we are the best and wisest of all, though we know they are greatly given to lying. (Page 188)

faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others, and disposes us to resent censures lest we should confess them to be just. We are secretly conscious of defects and vices, which we hope to conceal from the public eye, and please ourselves with innumerable impostures, by which, in reality, nobody is deceived. (Page 190)

oﬀense given (Page 190)

us. If we don’t do the same things they do, we should admit that we have the capacity for it, or that we do other things as bad or worse. (Page 191)

to nd the fault most similar in yourself – such as attachment to money, or pleasure, or reputation, or whatever it might be. In seeing this, you will quickly forget your anger; it will occur to you that he was forced to act that way. For what else could he do? (Page 191)

undeserved suspicion, how many of his good services chance has clothed with the appearance of wrongdoing, how many people he once hated and learned to love, he will be able to avoid all hasty anger, particularly if as each oﬀence occurs he will rst say to himself in silence: “I myself have also been guilty of this.” But where will you nd such a fair-minded judge? (Page 191)

complaining, ambitious – why hide the universal sore in soer words? – we are all wicked. Each of us will nd inside ourselves whatever fault we rebuke in another…. And so let us be more kindly toward one another; being wicked, we live among the wicked. Only one thing can bring us peace – a compact of mutual good nature. (Page 192)

neighbors; we detest in others the defects that are more evident in us, and wonder at them with a marvelous absence of awareness and shame. (Page 192)

entional glimpse at what is ugliest within us. (Page 193)

soon feels the weight of any other, if he tries to move it; in the same way, a man can see other people’s shortcomings and vices, but he is blind to his own. is arrangement has one advantage: it turns other people into a kind of mirror, in which a man can see clearly everything that is vicious, faulty, ill-bred and loathsome in his own nature; only it is generally the old story of the dog barking at its own image; it is himself that he sees and not another dog, as he fancies. (Page 193)

feeling, humanity, sociability. (Page 194)

relationships both natural and acquired – as a pious man, a son, a brother, a father, a citizen. (Page 194)

pleasures your children bring, let your children in turn nd delight in you, and drain joy to the dregs without delay.” ese are not the words of one who is hostile to feeling. Yet the Stoics do (Page 194)

turn to the distinction in a moment) but as in favor of seeing the world accurately, living by reason, and staying detached from externals. Feelings and emotions – any inner states – are unwanted to the extent that they interfere with those aims. Sometimes they do. Someone who is furiously angry is probably no (Page 194)

unseat reason and does not involve an illusion or an attachment to any external. ose are the best measures of whether a feeling is more than a Stoic would welcome: has the happiness of whoever has the feeling come to depend on the subject of it? Does the feeling blur the vision, causing the holder of it to make misjudgments? If these questions can be answered in the negative, there is no need to disparage a state of feeling, or any similar state, on Stoic grounds. It is useful to have (Page 195)

e of convenience, I will sometimes refer to the rst state as an emotion and the second as a (mere) feeling. ere are modern denitions of “emotion” and “feeling” to which this usage (Page 195)

ong as reason is able to get them under control. ey are considered physical impulses. And he accepts that grief is inevitable aer a loss; he dismisses doubts on that point as quickly as any non-Stoic would. e Stoic’s aim, as he sees it, is to avoid making natural grief worse by talking to ourselves unhelpfully about it and taking our cues from convention. ese are humane counsels. If they would cause some to say that Seneca was an insuﬃciently pure Stoic, let us be content with the philosophy in its impure form. A (Page 195)

emotion in hum (Page 196)

reminds courage of its own mortality. And so the courageous man will frown at sad things; he will be startled by a sudden occurrence; he will feel dizzy if, standing at the brink, he looks down from the precipice. is is not fear, but a natural feeling not to be overcome by reason. (Page 196)

and imaginings when they rst surprise him. Rather, they concede that it is in his nature to react to a loud noise from the sky or from a collapsing building (for example) by turning pale and tense; and likewise for all other emotions, provided his judgment remains (Page 196)

damage or change, and that he does not give consent to his fear and pain. (Page 197)

k about them, or by the way that others encourage us to think. (Page 197)

you are unhappy, consider not what you hear them say but what you yourself feel. (Page 197)

emotion at the funeral, do I refuse to let your spirit even be touched? Not at all. It would be barbarous, not courageous, to watch the burial rites of one’s own – with the same eyes that watched them while living – and not be moved as one’s family is rst torn apart. Suppose I did forbid it: some things have rights of their own. Tears fall even from those trying to hold them back; being shed, they li the spirit. What, then, shall we do? Let us allow them to fall, but not order them to do so; let there be as much weeping as emotion may produce, not as much as imitation may demand. Let us add nothing to grief, nor enlarge it to match the example of someone else. (Page 197)

arger Stoic goal: to make reason the basis for one’s choices, actions, and sense of equilibrium, and to maintain a detachment from externals. (Page 197)

qualie (Page 198)

of mind or way of reacting to the world, then suggest rational ways to reform it. e trouble with fear, rst, is that it multiplies our problems. If somethin (Page 198)

will be bad when it arrives later, we increase its eﬀects when we pull them into the present by fearing them. Why suﬀer twice? (Page 198)

just as if the evil had already come. What it fears lest it suﬀer, it suﬀers already through fear…. What then is more insane than to be tortured by things yet to be – not to save your strength for actual suﬀering, but to summon and accelerate your wretchedness? You should put it oﬀ if you cannot be rid of it. (Page 198)

suﬀer more oen in conjecture than in reality…. We magnify our sorrow, or we imagine it, or we get ahead of it. (Page 198)

not here yet, so we can’t feel it unless we (Page 199)

before its wretchedness begins, anxious that it may forever hold on to the things that bring it pleasure. For such a mind will never be at rest, and in awaiting the future it loses sight of what it might have enjoyed in the present. e fear of losing a thing is as bad as regret at having lost it. (Page 199)

them. And there is no pain except from what you feel. (Page 199)

they begin in deance of reason, they will continue in deance of reason. It is easier to stop their beginnings than to control them once they gather force. is “moderation” is therefore deceptive and useless: we should regard it in the same light as if someone should recommend being “moderately insane” or “moderately sick.” (Page 200)

the future, most mortals exist in a fever of anxiety. (Page 200)

released from distress and fear and trouble, is in the same way released from slavery. (Page 200)

opinions about what is to come. ose (Page 200)

our fear; we do not examine into them; we tremble and retreat just (Page 200)

raised by stampeding cattle, or who are thrown into a panic by the spreading of some rumor of unknown veracity. And somehow or other it is the false report that disturbs us most. For truth has its own denite boundaries, but that which arises from uncertainty is delivered over to guesswork and the license of a mind in terror. (Page 201)

favor your own side: believe what you prefer. If fear obtains more votes, bend more the other way nevertheless and stop troubling yourself. (Page 201)

might not happen. We o (Page 201)

never come; certainly they have not come yet. Some things torment us more than they should, some before they should, some when they should not torment us at all. (Page 201)

happening now. How oen has the unexpected happened! How oen has the expected never come to pass! … Many things may intervene that will cause an impending or present danger to stop, or come to (Page 201)

means of escape; a disaster has let some men down gently; the sword has sometimes been withdrawn from the very throat; men have survived their executioners. Even ill fate has its quirks. Perhaps it will be, perhaps it will not be; meanwhile it is not. (Page 202)

realized. Maybe they ar (Page 202)

put oﬀ all worry, assume that what you fear may happen will certainly happen. Whatever the evil may be, measure it in your own mind, and estimate the amount of your fear. You will soon (Page 202)

duration. (Page 203)

them, if need be, carrying the same reason you now employ when dealing with things in the present. (Page 203)

dangers (Page 203)

by triing things that lie outside the case. An overcondent demeanor, a voice too loud, unrestrained speech, overrened attire, over-solicitous advocacy, popularity with the public – anger is (Page 203)

because it hates his lawyer; even if the truth is piled up before its very eyes, it loves error and upholds it; it refuses to be convinced, and counts persistence in what is wrongly begun to be more honorable than penitence. (Page 204)

potential was on such lavish display during his times. He writes, for example, of the wrath of Vedius Pollio. When angry with his slaves, Vedius fed them to his lampreys – a species of toothed, eel-like, bloodsucking sh that was a popular delicacy in Rome (we met them in passing in Chapter 5). e emperor Augustus was a guest when one of Vedius’s slaves was ordered to be killed in this way for breaking a crystal cup. According to Seneca, Augustus ordered that the slave’s life be spared and that Vedius’s other cups be broken in front of him. Seneca, if he were here to do so, might cite the decline in the incidence o (Page 204)

necessary role of opi (Page 204)

on, or judgment, in forming an emotion. ough anger may take on a life of its own, it begins and is supported by beliefs we hold about the subject of it. One can see this by thinking of any real case of anger and observing how (Page 204)

the factual details that support the anger aren’t wrong in the wa (Page 204)

we have been wronged. e question, however, is whether anger follows immediately from that impression and springs up without assistance from the mind, or whether it is aroused only with the mind’s cooperation. Our opinion is that it ventures nothing by itself, but acts only with the approval of the mind. For to form the impression of having received an injury and to want to avenge it, and then to couple together the two propositions that one ought not to have been wronged and that one ought to be avenged – this is not a mere impulse of the mind acting without our volition. (Page 205)

in all the evils to which you refer, there is really only one – that you are indignant and complain. (Page 205)

one does not add one’s anger to it. (Page 205)

their own control and reasoning), but our opinions of what they do. Take away those opinions – dismiss your judgment that this is something terrible – and your anger goes away as well. (Page 205)

the Stoics under (Page 206)

hateful but as ridiculous; and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For the latter, every time he went out into public, used to weep; the former used to laugh. One saw everything we do as wretchedness, the other as absurdity. ings should be made light of, and taken more easily: it is more civilized to laugh at life than to bewail it. (Page 206)

without bursting into either laughter or tears; for to be hurt by the suﬀerings of others is to be forever miserable, while to enjoy the suﬀerings of others is an inhuman pleasure. (Page 206)

to be amused by an attack rises above it and diminishes the attacker. Above all, however – and most to our point – humor can cause anger to dissolve. (Page 207)

can be turned into a game and a joke. ey say that when Socrates once received a blow on the head, he merely said that it was too bad that a man could not tell when he ought to go out wearing a helmet. What matters is not how oﬀense is given but how it is received. (Page 207)

e rst essay i (Page 208)

anger at the outset, not in order that it may pardon, but in order that it may judge. Its rst assaults are heavy; it will leave oﬀ if it waits. And do not try to destroy it all at once; attacked piecemeal, it will be conquered completely. (Page 208)

avoid anger is to avoid situa (Page 209)

nd out what has been said about them, who dig up malicious gossip even if it happened in private, are only upsetting themselves. Our interpretations can make things appear to be insults when some should be put aside, others laughed at, others forgiven. (Page 209)

banished from the mind. “is man did not give me a civil greeting; that one did not embrace me as I kissed him; that one broke oﬀ the conversation abruptly; that one did not invite me to dinner; that one tried to avoid seeing me.” Grounds for suspicion will never be lacking. But we need to be straightforward and to see things in their best light. We should believe only what is thrust under our eyes and becomes unmistakable. And every time our suspicion proves to be groundless we should blame our own credulity; this rebuke will develop the habit of being slow to believe. (Page 210)

externals, it is warranted c (Page 211)

should depend on the wickedness of others? Shall great Socrates lose the power to carry back home the same look he had when he le? If the wise man is to be angered by low deeds, if he is to be upset and unsettled by crimes, surely nothing is more woeful than the wise man’s lot; his whole life will be passed in anger and in grief. For what moment will there be when he will not see something to disapprove of ? (Page 211)

reect briey on whether (Page 212)

whether they are pacists, and too detached to care about righting wrongs. Not in the least. e Stoic disposition aﬀects the spirit in which justice is administered and in which the good is pursued, but it does not imply mild views about the substance of those things or timidity in securing them. (Page 212)

branch, and households that are a plague on the state it destroys along with wives and children; it tears down their very houses, levelling them to the ground, and exterminates the names of the enemies of liberty. All this it will do, but with no gnashing of the teeth, no violent shaking of the head, nothing that would be unseemly for a judge, whose countenance should at no time be more calm and unmoved than when delivering a weighty sentence. (Page 212)

perspective broad enough to identify virtue on both sides of a conict. (Page 213)

and seeing the world accurately. e requirements of justice are a separate matter, and one very important (Page 214)

vation to ght hard and successfully for things – to give them their all, so to speak – without caring too much about them, or (perhaps to say it better) without caring about them the wrong way? One possibility is that they cheat on their Stoicism a bit, and sometimes become more invested in externals than they say they should. We see glimpses of this from time to time in Seneca. But more satisfying answers are available as well. e good Stoic, while regarding any particular case with detachment, may have a strong commitment to ideals that allow the case to nevertheless be treated as urgent. e best doctors care intensely about their patients and will ght hard to hel (Page 214)

brave, who deny that the wise man will ever grieve. But these people, it seems to me, can never have run into this sort of misfortune; if they had, Fortune would have knocked their proud philosophy out of them and forced them to admit the truth even against their will. Reason will have accomplished enough if it removes from grief only what is both excessive and superuous; that reason should not allow grief to exist at all is neither to be hoped nor desired. Rather let reason establish a measure that will copy neither indiﬀerence nor (Page 215)

aﬀectionate, and not an unbalanced, mind. Let your tears ow, but let them also cease; let deepest sighs be drawn from your breast, but let those, too, come to an end; so rule your mind that you can win approval both from wise men and from brothers. (Page 216)

if some accident has taken them away. Bygone time belongs to us; nor is anything stored more securely than what has been. We are ungrateful for what we have already received because of our hope for what is yet to be – as if whatever is to be, if it comes to us at all, will not quickly pass over to what has already been. (Page 218)

ussed in section 8 of this chapter. ey held that every emotion amounts to a judgment. A person experiencing an emotion is agreeing to a proposition (such as “this is something to be enraged about”), and the agreement is a mistake, because it involves attachment to an external: namely, whatever the object of the emotion might be. Seneca relaxed that approach a bit, as we have seen, but the basic idea is still present in all forms of Stoicism. It is a theory, especially in its strict form, that has been criticized on many gr (Page 219)

unds. Infants and animals seem to be capable of anger and fear, for example, but the Greek Stoic view makes it hard to understand how such creatures could have any emotions at all; for they lack the mental capacity to form propositions or assent to them. ere have then been eﬀorts to save the Stoic theory from this problem by revising it a bit. e late Stoics, at least, knew that the judgments we hold can be ingrained and nonverbal, as noted in Chapter 1. Maybe animals and infants, too, can be viewed as making nonverbal evaluations of events that produce their emotions. e analysis of these and related questions by modern (Page 219)

lting the recent scholarly work of Martha Nussbaum and Margaret Graver, which discusses it all in detail. (Page 219)

troyed by its arrival. Indeed, the aim of the Stoic is something more: to accept reversal without shock and to make it grist for the creation of greater things. Nobody wants hardship in any particular case, but it is a necessary element in the formation of worthy people and worthy achievements that, in the long run, we do want. Stoics seek the value in whatever happens. Adversity resembles death in t (Page 220)

judge and a resource that might be put to use. On a Stoic view, we don’t like adversity – that’s mostly what it means for so (Page 220)

n as it is – as oen less monstrous than it looks when it rst comes, as sometimes producing important benets, and in any event as inevitable. Stoicism oﬀers a series of strategies for turning advers (Page 220)

or to learn, or to build anew; and the value of any of these responses may be greater than the cost of the adversity. Stoics also have a modest opinion of their ability to predict future events, so they are slow to assume that an apparently unwelcome development will be for the worse in the long run. Finally, the Stoics have techniques for reducing the force of adversity by t (Page 220)

this point, w (Page 221)

angers.” Not at all: he will not fear them, but he will avoid them. Caution suits him, not fear. (Page 221)

my hope is to nobly bear the wounds, the starvation, and all else that it must bring with it. I am not so mad as to want to be ill; but if I must be ill, my hope is that I do nothing immoderate or weak. It is not hardships that are desirable, but the courage by which to endure them. (Page 221)

considered a type of adversity. We can avoid them with dignity and without hatred or fear. (Page 221)

and so as best (Page 222)

things are thrown at you, others just happen by accident. Life is not a dainty aﬀair. You have started on a long road; inevitably you will stumble, you will knock into things, you will fall, you will grow weary, you will cry out “O, for Death!” – in other words, you will tell lies. You will forsake a companion in one place; you will bury one in another; elsewhere you will be afraid of one. It is through troubles of that sort that this rugged journey must be made. (Page 222)

green things” – for that is a sign that the eyes are diseased. And healthy hearing and a healthy sense of smell should be ready for all that there is to be heard and smelled…. So, too, a healthy mind should be ready for whatever may come to pass. e mind that says, “Let my children be safe,” and “Let everyone praise whatever I may do,” is an eye that seeks green things, or teeth that seek out only what is tender. (Page 222)

harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things – of diverse tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and at, sprightly and solemn. e musician who only loved some of them – what would he be able to do? He has to know how to make use of them all, and be able to mix them together. We must do the same with the good and the bad, which are of the same substance as our lives. (Page 223)

o human existence. Here we nd the closest that philosophical Stoicism comes to the modern (Page 223)

swear, as it is folly and ignorance of one’s lot to grieve because you lack something, or because something aﬀects you adversely, or to be surprised and indignant at those things that happen to the good and the bad alike – I mean deaths, funerals, inrmities, and all the other accidents besetting human life. Whatever the ways of the universe may require us to suﬀer, let us take it up with high-mindedness. is is the oath by which we are bound: to bear with the human condition, and not to be disturbed by what we do not have the power to avoid. (Page 223)

and do not rail at nature. (Page 224)

things happen as they actually happen. en your life will go well. (Page 225)

wishes nothing to be diﬀerent, either in front of him or behind him, or for all eternity. Not only must the necessary be borne, and on no account concealed – all idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity – but it must also be loved. (Page 225)

one’s wishes, as misjudg (Page 225)

he most important Stoic idea about adversity, and a theme to which all of its authors contribute, oen with metaphors. Epictetus adapted for Stoic use the caduceus, or wand, that Hermes wa (Page 225)

to further its purpose. e impediment to action becomes part of the action; the obstacle in our way becomes the way forward. (Page 226)

sick people whose bodies can endure neither heat nor cold, are elated by good fortune and depressed by adversity; and they are greatly disturbed by both, or rather by themselves in both, and not less in those circumstances called good…. But men of sense, just as bees extract honey from thyme, the most pungent and the driest of plants, oen in like manner draw from the most unfavorable circumstances something which suits them and is useful. (Page 227)

learn to extract pleasure from all places and things. Wealth will make you happy, because it will enable you to benet many; and poverty, as you will then have few things to worry about; and glory, as it will make you honored; and obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy. (Page 227)

pleasures, if you are willing to make light of evils rather than treat them as hateful. (Page 228)

life may devis (Page 228)

has equipped us for. (Page 228)

what power you have for dealing with it. If you see a good-looking boy or woman, you’ll nd that the power for such things is selfcontrol; if hard labor is at hand, you will nd endurance; if abusive language, you will nd patience. And if you make this a habit, the appearances of things will not carry you away with them. (Page 228)

adversity may be converted to (Page 228)

powerful it really is, only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of. Be assured that good men should act likewise; they should not shrink from hardships and diﬃculties, nor complain against fate; we should make the best of whatever happens and turn it to good. (Page 229)

to learn. No one is lik (Page 230)

God, like a wrestling coach, has put you up against a rough young antagonist. Why, you ask? So that you can be an Olympic champion; for this cannot be achieved without sweat. (Page 230)

good fortune because (Page 231)

nly some would be asked or able to rise to the occasion. (Page 231)

rather, “How fortunate I am, that although this has happened to me I am still unhurt, neither broken by the present nor dreading what is to come.” For something of this sort might have happened to anyone, but not everyone would remain unhurt in spite of it…. Remember then, on each occasion that might lead you to grief, to make use of this idea: “is is no misfortune; to bear it nobly, rather, is good fortune.” (Page 231)

apparent reversal must be (Page 231)

recovery produces a result that surpasse (Page 232)

n’t like, and are poor judges of what their ultimate consequences will be. Events that look bad should therefore be judged with humility and calm. (Page 232)

things have fallen in order that they might rise higher. Timagenes, no friend to the city’s happiness, used to say that res at Rome troubled him for one reason only: he knew that better buildings would rise in place of those that had burned. (Page 232)

the art of perspe (Page 233)

n the same things happen to others. (Page 233)

right away that “ese things happen.” When your own cup is broken, your reaction should obviously be the same as when the neighbor’s cup was broken. Apply the same idea to more important things. Someone else’s child has died, or his wife: there is no one who wouldn’t say, “is is our human lot.” Yet when someone’s own child dies, right away it’s “Woe to me, how wretched I am!” We have to remember how we feel when we hear the same thing about others. (Page 233)

Anticipating it c (Page 234)

bearable by long endurance, he makes bearable by long reection. We sometimes hear the inexperienced say, “I didn’t know this was in store for me.” e wise man knows that everything is in store for him. Whatever happens, he says, “I knew.” (Page 234)

have looked upon its occurrence as not impossible, and, as the saying is, prepared ourselves for it, may be this: if, before this misfortune comes, we have quietly thought over it as something which may or may not happen, the whole of its extent and range is known to us…. But if no preparation has been made to meet it, and it comes unexpectedly, the mind is in a state of terror for the moment and unable to measure the full extent of the calamity; it seems so farreaching in its eﬀects that the victim might well think there was no limit to them; in any case, its range is exaggerated. In the same way, darkness and uncertainty always increase the sense of danger. (Page 236)

advice to avoid worrying about the future (see Chapter 9, Section 4). e advice is best reconciled by holding that the rehearsals recommended above do not entail worry. Just as Seneca recommends savoring good memories and not rehashing bad ones, the Stoics encourage the rehearsal of future evils but not anxiety about them. Schopenhauer also had a s (Page 236)

entirely dissolved by (Page 237)

complaints. Pain is slight if opinion adds nothing to it. If, on the contrary, you start to encourage yourself and say, “It’s nothing, or certainly very little; let’s hold out, it will soon leave oﬀ ” – then in thinking it slight you will make it so. (Page 237)

helped by time (Page 238)

ow call adaptation, or the good and bad (Page 238)

that ought to be xed, or to good things that go unappreciated. (See Chapter 13, Section 1 for some more discussion.) But adaptation is unq (Page 238)

novelty. You can see this in the fact that, aer getting used to them, they bear more bravely the things they once had regarded as harsh. (Page 238)

detachment from them. But of course Stoicism has an aﬃrmative side as well, which many would regard as its most central and important idea: the pursuit of virtue. is topic could have come at the start of the book. It appears here inst (Page 239)

gi that sets humanity apart from animals, so the purpose of human life must be found there. Earlier chapters have shown us much of what reason means to the Stoics. (Page 239)

also as necessary for it. e happiness centrally valued by the Stoic is eudaimonia, or well-being – the good life rather than the good mood. But the Stoic believes that virtue gives rise to joy and to peace of mind as well. Virtue produces these good consequences as side eﬀects. e primary (Page 239)

and serve the greater good, and they don’t do this to make themselves happy. ey do it because it is the right and natural way to live. But doing it in that spirit, as it turns out, makes them happy. e Stoics, as we have se (Page 239)

d deal of psychological insight. Some states of mind are diﬃcult to acquire directly; they come about only as byproducts of eﬀort applied in other directions. Many have found that happiness is this way. Eﬀorts to acquire it by direct pursuit don’t work well; happiness has to be found while looking for something else. (is is a point oen rediscovered in modern times with much fanfare.) e (Page 240)

n to reason and a commitment to others – to service, to justice, to helping in the ways one can. ese are appealing values to live by whether or not they are accompanied (Page 240)

ble one than any other. But recall that putting happiness aside just in order to nd it later is cheating; happiness is not supposed to be the Stoic goal, not even covertly. e Stoic view, rather, is that one should embrace virtue for its own sake, and that doing so is necessary to get the good side eﬀects of it. e interested reader can reect and experiment. is chapter, consiste (Page 240)

Still, there are many other qualities about which you don’t have to say, “I just wasn’t born with it.” So show them those qualities that are entirely up to you: sincerity, dignity, endurance of hardship; not pleasure-seeking, not complaining of your lot, needing little; kindness and generosity; being modest, not chattering idly, but highminded. Don’t you see how many you could display immediately – having no excuse on account of lack of natural capacity or aptitude – yet you still willingly fall short? (Page 241)

eudaimonia, a word (Page 242)

maintain an even and favorable course, may be well-disposed toward itself, may be happy in contemplating its own condition, and may (Page 242)

that position, never carrying itself oﬀ and never cast down. is will be peace of mind. (Page 243)

e mind of the wise man is like the heavens beyond the moon: the sky up there is always clear…. is joy is produced only by a consciousness of the virtues. (Page 243)

some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they nd happiness by the way. (Page 244)

in other pa (Page 244)

doing it, do not hide it from others even if most of them will not approve. If it isn’t the right thing to do, then don’t do it; but if it is, why be afraid of those who will criticize you wrongly? (Page 244)

your walls protect rather than hide you – though for the most part we regard our walls as around us not so that we may live more safely but so that we may sin more privately. I’ll tell you a fact by which you can judge our conduct: you will scarcely nd anyone who could live with his door open. (Page 244)

discovered by your neighbor. (Page 245)

can play his role and act the honest man on the stage; but to be wellmanaged within, in his own breast, where everything is allowed and where everything is hidden – that is the point. e next closest thing is to be this way in your house, in your ordinary behavior, for which you are accountable to no one, and where there is nothing studied or articial. (Page 245)

which – if someone should suddenly ask, “What are you thinking about?” – he might answer this and that, frankly and without hesitation. (Page 245)

displeased even to have thoughts that I would not publish. e worst of my actions and qualities do not seem to me as vile as the vile cowardice of not daring to own them. (Page 245)

consistency. C (Page 246)

might seem as easy to be consistently bad (or wrong) as consistently virtuous. But consider the relationship between consistency and the openness of thought and action described in the previous section. True consistency would mean always thinking the same thing is right and never deviating from it. It also would mean acting and thinking the same way in all settings – in public, at home, and alone, never phony; for phoniness may accurately enough be described not only as dishonesty but as a form of inconsistency. Someone who managed to be consistent in the senses just described would, the Stoic suggests, inevitably be virtuous. (Page 246)

the whole range of human life, I can be content with this: What is wisdom? To always want the same things and reject the same things. No need to add that little qualication, “so long as what you want is right” – since one could not always be pleased with the same thing if it were not right. (Page 246)

one thing, now as another, and – worst of all, in my opinion – it does not appear as itself. Believe me, it is a great thing to act as just one person. (Page 246)

have formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the principal design of wisdom. (Page 246)

and so are worth illustrating a (Page 246)

among whom your lot has fallen, love them, and truly. (Page 247)

an act. (Page 247)

relationships both natural and acquired – as a pious man, a son, a brother, a father, a citizen. (Page 247)

in a compact of mutual assistance, not by fear, but by love of one another. (Page 247)

feeling, humanity, sociability. (Page 247)

cherish humanity. Let us not cause fear to anyone, nor danger; let us rise above losses, outrages, conicts, and taunts; let us bear our short-lived ills with magnanimity. (Page 248)

sight we should see: how pure, how astonishing in its noble calm – bright with justice and strength, with moderation and wisdom. In addition to these, thri and moderation and endurance, kindness and aﬀability, even humanity – a quality, hard as this is to believe, rarely encountered in humans – would add their own brilliance. (Page 248)

compassionate or forgiving. ese propositions are detestable on their face. ey would seem to leave no hope for human failings, but to make all transgressions lead to retribution. And if that were so, what kind of theory is it that commands us to unlearn our humanity (Page 248)

fortune? But in fact there is no school more kind and gentle, none more aﬀectionate toward humanity, none more concerned with the common good, to the point that its avowed purpose is to be of service and assistance, to have regard not only for oneself but for each and for all. (Page 249)

how to get things done, to avoiding dangers, or to knowing what is just. So the wise man will not indulge in pity, because there cannot be pity without mental suﬀering. All else that those who feel pity are inclined do, he will do gladly and with an elevated spirit; he will bring relief to another’s tears, but will not add his own. To the shipwrecked man he will give a hand; he will give shelter to the exile, and charity to those in need. (Page 249)

proper to form the good man, than those of the Stoics; and if I could for a moment cease to think that I am a Christian, I should not be (Page 249)

Zeno among the misfortunes that have befallen the human race. It carried to excess only those things in which there is atness – the contempt of pleasure and of pain. It was this sect alone that made citizens; this a n; this alone great emperors…. While the Stoics looked upo quietudes, and pleasures as vanity, they were entirely employed in laboring for the happiness of mankind, and in exercising the duties of society. It seems as if they regarded that sacred spirit, which they believed to dwell within them, as a kind of favorable providence watchful over the human race. Born for society, they all be it; with so much the less fatigue, their rewards were all within themselves. Happy by their philosophy alone, it seemed as if only the happiness of others could increase theirs. (Page 250)

interdependent, and nds in this a (Page 250)

urce of duty, aﬀection, and solace. (Page 250)

everything to his own advantage; you ought to live for the other fellow, if you want to live for yourself. (Page 250)

to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you look at yourself as one person and as part of a given whole, for the sake of the whole your turn may come to be sick, or to run risks on a sea voyage, or to be in need, perhaps to be put to death. (Page 251)

e Stoics understand themselves to have a duty of service to others, including a duty to participate in public life. Cicero’s rendition of the Stoic view: (Page 251)

his fellows, it follows from this natural disposition that the wise man should desire to engage in politics and government, and also to live in accordance with nature by taking to himself a wife and desiring to have children with her. Even the passion of love when pure is not thought incompatible with the character of the Stoic sage. (Page 251)

must.” Zeno says: “e sage will engage in public aﬀairs unless he cannot.” (Page 251)

men – many if he can; if not, a few; if not a few, those who are nearest; if not these, himself. For when he renders himself useful to others, he engages in public aﬀairs. (Page 252)

or “I am from Corinth.” Say (like Socrates), “I am a citizen of the world.” (Page 252)

It is made by assimilating them, and by thinking and acting accordingly. Stoicism is, among (Page 254)

olves time and commitment. So does progress in Stoicism. Its methods are especially challenging because the mind is the trainer a (Page 254)

one’s thin (Page 255)

throw it fodder on which to grow. As a rst step, keep quiet, and count the days on which you didn’t get angry. “I used to get angry every day, then every other day, then every third, then every fourth.” If you can quit for thirty days, make a sacrice to God. For the habit is loosened at rst, then totally destroyed. (Page 255)

Sextius used to do this. At the end of the day, when he had withdrawn to his nightly rest, he would interrogate his own mind: “Which of your wrongs did you correct today? Which fault did you resist? In what way are you better?” Anger will leave oﬀ and be more moderate, if it knows that it must each day come before a judge. Is there anything ner than this habit of searching through the entire day? … When the light has been removed and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words. (Page 255)

not the enemy of the mistaken, but corrects them; and as he goes forth each day he will think: “I will meet many who have given themselves over to wine, many who are lustful, many ungrateful, many greedy, many who are driven by the madness of ambition.” He will view all these things in as kindly a way as a physician views the sick. (Page 257)

doubleness (Page 257)

mind, and so observing oneself through the eyes of an imaginary other. Establishing an external point of view, and personifying it, is a way to see (Page 257)

that we may live as if he were watching and do everything as if he saw it…. Choose the one whose life, whose speech, whose forthright countenance, all satisfy you; then show him always to yourself as your guardian and model. We need someone, I say, against whose example our own conduct can measure itself. You can’t straighten what’s crooked without a ruler. (Page 257)

someone you can look to, someone you regard as taking part in your thoughts. e most noble thing, by far, is to live as if you were being seen by some good man who was always present, but I’m satised even with this – that you do whatever you do as if someone were watching. It’s when we’re alone that we are prompted to evil. (Page 258)

reading and (Page 258)

riting. It is both a way of life and a way of thought. Rehearsal of accurate thinking is how one practices Stoicism and how one improves at it. (Page 258)

benecial as good examples. Pythagoras says that our minds are altered when we enter a temple, see the images of the gods close at hand, and await the utterance of some oracle. And who will deny that even the most ignorant may be powerfully struck by certain sayings? Statements such as these, concise but weighty: “Nothing to excess.” “No wealth can satisfy the covetous.” “You must expect others to treat you as you treat them.” (Page 259)

chains; must I also be wailing about something? I must be banished; does anyone prevent me from leaving with a smile, cheerful and easy-going? “Reveal your secrets.” I don’t speak; this much is up to me. “en I will put you in chains.” Man, what are you saying? Me? You can chain my leg, but Zeus himself can’t overcome my will. “I’ll throw you in prison.” My poor body, you mean. “I’ll cut your head oﬀ.” When did I ever tell you that my neck was the only one that could not be severed? ese are the things philosophers should think about, should write down daily, should use as exercise. (Page 259)

and the (Page 260)

company one keeps, and how choices about them bear on philosophical progress. Perhaps the answers depend on the details. Seneca acknowledged that some locations are more suitable than others for the development of wisdom. (Page 260)

– and though he does not dislike any particular color, he thinks some of them inappropriate for one who has adopted the simple life – so there are places the wise man (or the one aiming at wisdom) will avoid, as not conducive to good living. us if he is contemplating a retreat he will never choose Canopus, though Canopus will not prevent anyone from being virtuous; and certainly not Baiæ, which has become a den of vice. (Page 260)

of the Stoics is skepticism about the importance of being in one place rather than another. ey regard life as lived in the mind more than at any physical site, and view the appetite for new locations as arising from the same source as the appetite for other new things: our sensibilities are too dull to appreciate what is around us already. (Page 260)

enough for you, what you look at every day? Could you have anything better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole world, the sea? (Page 260)

darkness to see the light, how beautiful would the heavens seem! But (Page 260)

habituation of our eyes, nor do we take the trouble to search into the principles of what is always in view; as if the novelty, rather than the importance, of things ought to excite us to investigate their causes. (Page 261)

On the val (Page 262)

give lessons in moderation; but those vices whose object is show and display will subside where no witness or onlooker remains. Who puts on the purple robe when he has no one to show it to? Who serves a single dinner on a golden plate? … No one is elegant just for their own benet, or even for a few close friends; we set out the implements of our vices in proportion to the crowd there to see them. So it is: the stimulus of all our extravagance is the complicit admirer. You will cause us not to desire things if you keep us from showing them oﬀ. Ambition and luxury and lack of restraint all need a stage: you will heal them if you are kept from view. (Page 262)

So while Stoics are very (Page 263)

friendship. (Page 263)

you yourself can improve. e process is mutual; for people learn (Page 263)

one of equal prociency. e wise man also needs to have his virtues exercised; thus in the same way that he stirs himself, he is stirred by another wise man. (Page 264)

whom we listen. (Page 264)

the tunes and the charm of the songs – and just as they get in the way of thinking, and won’t let you concentrate on serious things – so the talk of atterers and those who praise depravity sticks in the ears long aer it is heard. It is not easy to drive the agreeable sound out of your mind: it continues, and lasts, and comes back from time to time. You should therefore close your ears to evil sayings right from the start. Once they have gained an entrance and been admitted to our minds, they become more daring. (Page 265)

greedy and low; so will a swelled head, so long as you keep company with someone arrogant. You’ll never be free of cruelty if you’re sharing a tent with an executioner. e fellowship of adulterers will iname your own lusts. If you want to be stripped of your vices, you must withdraw far from vicious exemplars. e greedy man, the seducer, the cruel one, the cheat – all capable of much harm, if they should be anywhere near you – are inside you. (Page 265)

to the social (Page 265)

world at large, as when one goes out in public. is is an important issue for the Stoic, because the philosophy calls for engagement with public aﬀairs but also for resistance to popular judgments and contempt for them. e Stoic shouldn’t avoid the crowd, then, but has to maintain a careful relationship to it. Epictetus takes a benevolent view of massed humanity, comparing it to ple (Page 265)

holiday – try to enjoy it with the others. For what could be a more (Page 265)

When we see herds of horses or oxen, we are pleased; when we see a eet of many ships, we are delighted; when we see many men, who will nd it distressing? (Page 266)

the multitude. e former will leave us with a longing for the society of others, the latter for our own, and one will be the remedy for the other. Solitude will cure our aversion to the crowd; the crowd, the boredom of solitude. (Page 266)

under attack on all sides? You must either imitate or reject. Yet either way is to be avoided. Don’t become like the bad because there are many of them, nor hostile to the many because they are unlike you. (Page 266)

rather than admired. (Page 266)

unless it has been repeatedly soaked in them and boiled. In the same way, there are other systems of thought that our minds, once they have understood them, can immediately put into practice. But the system of which I am speaking, unless it goes deep, and sits for a long time, and has not just tinged the mind but dyed it, does not fulll its promises. (Page 267)

Learning should be shown, not said. Epictetus: (Page 267)

laymen about philosophical principles, but act according to them…. And if you should come upon a discussion among laymen about some philosophical principle, keep silent for the most part; for there is great danger that you will immediately vomit up what you have not digested. And when someone says to you that you know nothing, and you’re not stung by the taunt, know then that you are making headway. Sheep don’t throw up their grass to show the shepherd how much they have eaten; aer digesting the grass inside, they bear wool and milk outside. So for you, too: don’t display your learning to the uninstructed: display the actions that result from the digestion of it. (Page 267)

exhibit only what it has produced. Even if you will bear some resemblance to someone you admire and whose inuence lies deep within you, I want your resemblance to be that of a son, not a statue: a statue is a dead thing. (Page 267)

needs igniting – nothing more – to produce an impulse to discovery and a longing for the truth. Imagine that someone needing re from his neighbors, and nding there a big blazing one, just stayed warming himself until the re burned out. It’s the same if someone who comes to another man to get his thinking does not realize that he ought to strike some light of his own and kindle his own ideas, but – delighted by what he is hearing – just sits there enchanted. (Page 268)

regard pr (Page 268)

hilosophy as measured by thought and action, not by a knowledge of precepts. (Page 268)

formulations. (Page 268)

child’s mind can grasp them, when it can’t yet handle more. But for a grown man, whose progress is denite, it is disgraceful to cling to gems of rhetoric, to prop himself up with the best-known and briefest sayings, to depend on his memory: for by now he should be (Page 268)

them. (Page 269)

onceptual renements that the Romans did not nd appealing. ey thought the stakes of philosophy were too high for constant abstraction and excessive subtlety. Seneca ridiculed the idea of stirring people to heroic acts with syllogisms, including Stoic syllogisms. (Page 269)

yours – are you hurling them even against death? Do you fend oﬀ a lion with a needle? ey are sharp, these arguments you make; but there is nothing sharper than a blade of straw. Some things are made futile and useless by their very subtlety. (Page 269)

philosophy as a diversion when it is a remedy. I don’t know what (Page 269)

know that it makes no diﬀerence to me whether I know such things or not…. So why do you occupy me with the terminology of wisdom, rather than its results? Make me bolder, make me calmer, make me the equal of fortune, raise me above it. (Page 270)

interest of the Stoics in a recurring pa (Page 271)

tern of error: the tendency to overvalue what we can see at the expense of what we can’t – money more than time, or the benets of acquisition more than the hidden costs of it. Stoics look at philosophical progress the same way. If changing our habits of thought seems too hard, it is because we aren’t used to bringing the kind of commitment to the task that we do to more tangible goals. So our writers compare the challenges of philosophy to the eﬀort and hardship commonly endured for the sake of lesser causes. (Page 271)

What crowds ock to the wrestling show – it’s fake, strictly for entertainment – and what solitude surrounds the good arts! How featherbrained are the athletes whose muscles and shoulders we admire! (Page 271)

dedication. e (Page 272)

toics don’t view it as a hobby. (Page 272)

nothing that is harder to learn. e world is lled with teachers of the other arts; boys learn some of them so well that even boys can teach them. Learning how to live takes a lifetime, and – what may surprise you more – it takes a lifetime to learn how to die. (Page 273)

philosophy is hard; (Page 273)

ometimes they say it is well within reach. ey claim it takes a lifetime to learn but that one can make progress immediately. ey are, in the end, demanding optimists. We have seen the demands; let us end with the optimism. (Page 273)

we get started molding and reforming the mind before its crookedness can harden. But I don’t despair even of hard cases. ere is nothing that stubborn eﬀort and close, persistent attention will not overcome. Oak can be straightened, however much it is bent. Heat unfolds curved beams; those that grew in other shapes are fashioned into whatever our uses require. How much more easily may the mind be shaped, pliable as it is, and more yielding than any liquid! (Page 273)

us – since we were born to follow the right path – if we are willing to be improved. Nor is the road to the virtues steep and rough, as some (Page 273)

you false advice. e way to the happy life is easy. Just take the rst step, with good auspices and the help of the gods themselves. It is much more diﬃcult to do what you are doing now. (Page 274)

Epictetus: (Page 275)

not allow a wise man so much as to pity the aﬄictions of another. If thou seest thy friend in trouble, says Epictetus, thou mayst put on a look of sorrow, and condole with him, but take care that thy sorrow be not real…. For my own part, I am of opinion, compassion does not only rene and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indiﬀerence to mankind as that in which the Stoics placed their wisdom. (Page 275)

ics value compassion, detest indolence, and are committed to service to mankind – the opposite of what Addison thinks they want. But the Stoic would unhook these commitments from inner distress ove (Page 276)

any given case. For why stop with that case? ere is cause for such distress in every direction, and meanwhile it distracts from the big picture and from anything constructive one might do about it. So yes, the Stoics consider feelings of pity unhelpful to anyone; but their ai (Page 276)

understanding. (Page 276)

or unobjectionable states as feelings as distinct from emotions. e diﬀerence between feeling and emotion is important – or the diﬀerence, however it might better be worded, between those states that oust reason and those that are no threat to it and so do not trouble the Stoics. It matters because states of feeling, as so dened, may well be necessary to m (Page 277)

life we know – an eﬀort to go farther down the road of being human, not to aﬀect godliness in the way that we will see (Page 278)

would gain with more diﬃculty, but naturally enough, if we had more time. Second, the experience-based view makes the goals of Stoicism mo (Page 279)

phasized here that, with respect to emotion and adversity, Stoics want the kind of wisdom that we associate with long experience. But in certain settings they seek, in eﬀect, the attitude of the newcomer. A reminder from Chapter 12, Sec. 4: (Page 281)

some things because they are too familiar. We overreact to others because they aren’t familiar enough. In the rst case we suﬀer because we can’t see old things as a rst-timer would. In the second we suﬀer because can’t see new things as a long-timer would. e Stoic is more concerned with the second kind of mistake than the rst, but understands them both and tries to move from one point of view to another as appropriate to the situation. One can revisit many topics in this book and reinterpret them accord (Page 281)

tence, even if it need not mean what Dryden thought, is no doubt impossible. It would presumably amount to never being attached to externals and to living a life of continuous virtue. e greatest Stoic teachers were the rst to say that they hadn’t managed this, though it was not their style to say it couldn’t be done by anyone. e Stoics do urge their students and themselves to try to reach the Stoic ideal, and sometimes talk as though it is possible. ey merely add that it has never been done in fact, or almost never. (Page 284)

existing only in thought and in complete conformity with the idea of wisdom. As the idea provides a rule, so the ideal serves as an archetype for the perfect and complete determination of the copy. us the conduct of this wise and divine man serves us as a standard of action, with which we may compare and judge ourselves, which may help us to reform ourselves, although the perfection it demands can never be attained by us. (Page 286)

ments of Seneca are plain enough. For the sake of comparison, it has been aptly suggested that we imagine a gure from our own times being remembered and evaluated 2,000 years from now on the basis of contemporary accounts by an enemy and later writings of two or three historians who haven’t been born yet. e historians don’t have any recordings of the gure himself or acces (Page 289)

detachment from pleasures and aversions, not extermination of them. is is valuable to understand for its own sake, since otherwise the Stoics (Page 290)

It is rather as if we were lying in the same hospital room; I’m talking (Page 290)

to me as though I were talking to myself. I’m letting you into my private place, and am examining myself, using you as a foil. (Page 291)

or saying anything else that might be contradicted by what one does. Stoicism, at least for most who now study it, is a set of tools for thought, and a way of using them, with which some nd they can help themselves. It is something to do, not something to say. (Page 292)