[Gutenberg 871] • The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, with the Hymn of Cleanthes

THE GOLDEN SAYINGS OF EPICTETUS - 1912 - PREFACE THIS little volunle aims at presenting the fruit of Epictetus-what are, for us, his best and most penetrating things-in such a shape as nlay most commend then1 to English readers. That these noble utterances deserve all that the resource and beauty of the English Tongue can do to give them a worthy setting, will hardly be questioned. And to selection in general the sayings of Epictetus lend themselves with singular facility. Addressed to a mixed and shifting auditory, they naturally recur again and again to the same topics, which are developed and dwelt upon with the full and easy insistence of a conversational method, ignoring rather than despising the artificial aids of style and arrangement. Now selecting his weapons from the well - stocked but somewhat antique armoury of Stoic dogma, now drawing upon his own extensive funds of shrewd observation and genial common sense, Epictetus is indeed rarely uninteresting-for the life and earnestness of the man shine through his handling even of the driest matterbut unequal, and that in the most marked degree, he certainly is. Some of the loftiest utterances of what we may call applied philosophy are embedded in the Discourses among passages possessing little merit beyond that of homely sincerity, even if they are not rendered repellent to lay readers by the prevalence of much thorny technical terminology. If Wordsworth, in the judgment of Matthew Arnold, gained much by being disencumbered of his superfluous literary baggage, a similar process is not unlikely to benefit Epictetus. Of the sayings, again, some actually gain when separated from a context which is either out of harmony, or whichweakens the effect by repetition and over-developn ent. The existence of the Manual shows that even in antiquity the added strength gained by selection was prized. And although this latter work is on the whole niuch better known to the public than the Discourses, it seemed well to draw upon all the extant recorded sayings of Epictetus for contribution to the present volume of which, however, it will be seen that the Discourses furnish by far the largest portion. Of the principle on which the selection has been made, it may suffice to say that my aim has been not to produce merely a collection of representative passages, so that this book might be simply to reverse Miltons phrase Epictetus himself writ small, but rather to gather what fruit seemed best in itself and most fitted to ally itself naturally with modern habits of thought. Before considering in detail what definite characteristics of Epictetus we may glean - from Arrians transcript of his Lectures, it nlay be well to give a glance at the milieu in which his work was accomplished, as well as at ...