Ch. 26
Concerning those who are in dread of want.
Are not you ashamed to be more fearful and
mean-spirited than fugitive slaves? To what
estates, to what servants, do they trust, when they run
away and leave their masters? Do they not, after
carrying off a little with them for the first days, travel
over land and sea, contriving first one, then another,
method of getting food? And what fugitive ever died
of hunger? But you tremble, and lie awake at night,
for fear you should want necessaries. Foolish man !
are you so blind? Do not you see the way whither
the want of necessaries leads?
"Why, whither does it lead?"
Whither a fever or a falling stone may lead, --to
death. Have you not, then, often said this to your
companions? Have you not read, have you not
written, many things on this point? And how often
have you arrogantly boasted that you are undisturbed
by fears of death !
"Ay; but my family, too, will perish with hunger."
What then? Does their hunger lead any other way
than yours? Is there not the same descent, the
same state below? Will you not, then, in every want
and necessity, look with confidence there, where even
the most rich and powerful, and kings and tyrants
themselves, must descend? You indeed may descend
hungry, perhaps, and they full of indigestion and
drunkenness. For have you often seen a beggar who
did not live to old age, nay, to extreme old age?
Chilled by day and night, lying on the ground, and
eating only what is barely necessary, they yet seem
almost to become incapable of dying. But cannot
you write? Cannot you keep a school? Cannot you
be a watchman at somebody's door?
"But it is shameful to come to this necessity."
First, therefore, learn what things are shameful, and
then claim to be a philosopher; but at present do
not suffer even another to call you so. Is that shameful to you which is not your own act; of which you
are not the cause; which has happened to you by
accident, like a fever or the headache? If your
parents were poor, or left others their heirs, or, though
living, do not assist you, are these things shameful for
you? Is this what you have learned from the philosophers? Have you never heard that what is shameful is blamable; and what is blamable must be
something which deserves to be blamed? Whom do
you blame for an action not his own, which he has
not himself performed? Did you, then, make your
father such as he is; or is it in your power to mend
him? Is that permitted you? What, then; must you
desire what is not permitted, and when you fail of it
be ashamed? Are you thus accustomed, even when
you are studying philosophy, to depend on others,
and to hope nothing from yourself? Sigh, then, and
groan, and eat in fear that you shall have no food
to-morrow. Tremble, lest your servants should rob
you, or run away from you, or die. Thus live on
forever, whoever you are, who have applied yourself
to philosophy in name only, and as much as in you
lies have disgraced its principles, by showing that
they are unprofitable and useless to those who profess
them. You have never made constancy, tranquillity,
and serenity the object of your desires; have sought
no teacher for this knowledge, but many for mere
syllogisms. You have never, by yourself, confronted
some delusive semblance with, " Can I bear this, or
can I not bear it? What remains for me to do?"
But, as if all your affairs went safe and well, you have
aimed only-to secure yourself in your present possessions. What are they? Cowardice, baseness, worldliness, desires unaccomplished, unavailing aversions.
These are the things which you have been laboring
to secure. Ought you not first to have acquired
something by the use of reason, and then to have
provided security for that? Whom did you ever see
building a series of battlements without placing them
upon a wall? And what porter is ever set where
there is no door? But you study! Can you show me
what you study?
" Not to be shaken by sophistry."
Shaken from what? Show me first what you have
in your custody; what you measure, or what you
weigh; and then accordingly show me your weights
and measures, and to what purpose you measure
that which is but dust. Ought you not to show what
makes men truly happy, what makes their affairs proceed as they wish; how we may blame no one,
accuse no one; how acquiesce in the administration
of the universe? Show me these things. " See, I do
show them," say you; "I will solve syllogisms to
you." This is but the measure, O unfortunate ! and
not the thing measured. Hence you now pay the
penalty due for neglecting philosophy. You tremble;
you lie awake; you advise with everybody, and if the
result of the advice does not please everybody, you
think that you have been ill-advised. Then you
dread hunger, as you fancy; yet it is not hunger that
you dread, but you are afraid that you will not have
some one to cook for you, some one else for a butler,
another to pull off your shoes, a fourth to dress you,
others to rub you, others to follow you; that when
you have undressed yourself in the bathing-room, and
stretched yourself out, like a man crucified, you may
be rubbed here and there; and the attendant may
stand by, and say, " Come this way; give your side;
take hold of his head; turn your shoulder;" and
that when you are returned home from the bath you
may cry out, " Does nobody bring anything to eat? "
and then, "Take away; wipe the table." This is
your dread, that you will not be able to lead the life
of a sick man. But learn the life of those in health,
-how slaves live, how laborers, how those who are
genuine philosophers; how Socrates lived, even with a
wife and children; how Diogenes; how Cleanthes, at
once studying and drawing water [for his livelihood].
If these are the things you would have, you can possess
them everywhere, and with a fearless confidence.
"In what?"
In the only thing that can be confided in; in what
is sure, incapable of being restrained or taken away,
- your own will.
But why have you contrived to make yourself so
useless and good for nothing that nobody will receive
you into his house, nobody take care of you; but
although, if any sound, useful vessel be thrown out
of doors, whoever finds it will take it up and prize it as
something gained, yet nobody will take you up, but
everybody esteem you a loss. What, cannot you so
much as perform the office of a dog or a cock? Why,
then, do you wish to live any longer if you are so
worthless? Does any good man fear that food should
fail him? It does not fail the blind; it does not fail
the lame. Shall it fail a good man? A paymaster
is always to be found for a soldier, or a laborer, or a
shoemaker, and shall one be wanting to a good man?
Is God so negligent of his own institutions, of his servants, of his witnesses, whom alone he uses for examples to the uninstructed, to show that he exists, and
that he administers the universe rightly, and doth not
neglect human affairs, and that no evil can happen
to a good man, either living or dead? What, then,
is the case, when he doth not bestow food? What
else than that, like a good general, he hath made me
a signal of retreat? I obey, I follow, speaking well
of my leader, praising his works. For I came when
it seemed good to him; and, again, when it seems
good to him, I depart; and in life it was my business
to praise God within myself and to every auditor, and
to the world. Doth he grant me but few things?
Doth he refuse me affluence? It is not his pleasure
that I should live luxuriously; for he did not grant
that even to Hercules, his own son; but another
reigned over Argos and Mycene, while he obeyed,
labored, and strove. And Eurystheus was just what
he was, - neither truly king of Argos, nor of Mycene;
not being indeed king over himself. But Hercules was
ruler and governor of the whole earth and seas; the
expeller of lawlessness and injustice; the introducer of
justice and sanctity. And this he effected naked and
alone. Again, when Ulysses was shipwrecked and
cast away, did his helpless condition at all deject him?
Did it break his spirit? No; but how did he go to
Nausicaa and her attendants, to ask those necessaries
which it seems most shameful to beg from another?
As some lion, bred in the mountains, confiding in strength. Homer, Odyssey, 6.130. H.
Confiding in what? Not in glory, or in riches, or in
dominion, but in his own strength; that is, in his
knowledge of what is within him and without him.
For this alone is what can render us free and incapable of restraint; can raise the heads of the humble,
and make them look with unaverted eyes full in the
face of the rich and of the tyrants; and this is what
philosophy bestows. But you will not even set forth
with confidence; but all trembling about such trifles
as clothes and plate. Foolish man! have you thus.
wasted your time till now?
" But what if I should be ill? "
It will then be for the best that you should be
ill.
"Who will take care of me? "
God and your friends.
" I shall lie in a hard bed."
But like a man.
" I shall not have a convenient room."
Then you will be ill in an inconvenient one.
" Who will provide food for me? "
They who provide for others too; you will be ill
like Manes.70
" But what will be the conclusion of my illness, -
any other than death?"
Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all
human evils, and of baseness and cowardice, is not
death, but rather the fear of death? Fortify yourself, therefore, against this. Hither let all your discourses, readings, exercises, tend. And then you will
know that thus alone are men made free.