It was with these confused opinions or feelings that I became a pupil of Epictetus. And at first, whatever he asserted about God, or the Gods, he made me believe it—as long as he was speaking. When he said “God,” or “Zeus,” or “Father,” or “HIM,” or “THEM,” or “Providence,” or “The[34] Divine Being,” or “The Nature of All Things,” or whatever else, he dragged me as it were to the new Name, and made me follow as a captive and do it homage8. But afterwards there came a reaction. The limbs of my mind, so to speak, became tired of being dragged. I longed for rest and found none. My homage, too, was dissipated by distraction9. When he repeated as he often did—addressing each one of us individually, and therefore (I assumed) me among the rest—“Thou carriest about God,” he seemed to say to me, “Look within thyself for Him whom thou must worship.” That was not helpful, it was the reverse of helpful—at least, to me. I felt vaguely10 then (and now as a Christian11 I know) that men have need not only to look within, but also (and much more) to look up—up to the Father in heaven with the aid of His Spirit on earth. It was due to Epictetus that at this time I—however faintly—began to feel this need.
Epictetus seemed to have no consistent view either of the unity of God or of the possibility of plural12 Gods. In Rome, we have three altars to the Goddess Febris, or Fever. Epictetus once referred to Febris in the reply of a philosopher to a tyrant13. The latter says, “I have power to cut off your head”; the former replies, “You are in the right. I quite forgot that I must pay you homage as people do to Fever and Cholera14, and erect15 an altar to you, as indeed in Rome there is an altar to Fever.” It was hardly possible to mistake the Master’s mockery of this worship. On the other hand, he was bitterly sarcastic16 against those who denied the existence of Demeter, the Koré her daughter, and Pluto17 the husband of the Koré. These deities18 our Master regarded as representing bread. “O, the gratitude,” he exclaimed, “O, the reverence19 of these creatures! Day by day they eat bread; and yet they have the face to say ‘We do not know whether there is any such a being as Demeter, or the Koré, or Pluto!’” It never seemed to occur to him that the worshippers of Febris might retort on him, “Day by day scores of people in Rome have the fever, and yet you have the face to say to us Romans, ‘I do not know whether there is any such a being as Febris or Cholera!’”
I think he never spoke20 of Poseidon, Ares, or Aphrodite, and[35] hardly ever of Apollo. Even Athene he mentioned only thrice in Arrian’s hearing (so he told me), twice speaking of her statue by Phidias, and once representing Zeus as bemoaning21 His solitude22 (according to some notion, which he ridiculed) after a universal conflagration23 of gods and men and things, “Miserable me! I have neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Apollo!” It was for Zeus alone, as God, that our Teacher reserved his devotion. And for Him he displayed a passionate24 enthusiasm, the absolute sincerity25 of which it never entered into my mind to question; nor do I question it now. Under this God he served as a soldier, or lived as a citizen. To this God he testified as a witness that others might believe and worship. In this view of human life—as being a testimony26 to God—his teaching was most convincing to me, even when I felt, as I always did, that something was wanting in any conception of God that regarded Him as ever being “alone.”
Now I pass to another matter, not of great interest to me at the time, but of great importance to me in its results, because it led to my first knowledge—that could be called knowledge—of the followers27 of the Lord Jesus Christ. It arose from a passage in the lecture I described in my last chapter. Epictetus was speaking about “the whole frame of things” as being a kind of fluid, in which the thrill of one portion affects all the rest, and about God and the Guardian28 D?mon as feeling our every motion and thought. He concluded by calling on us to take an oath—a military oath, or sacramentum, as we call it in Latin—such as soldiers take to the Emperor. “They,” he said, “taking on themselves the life of service for pay, swear to prefer above all things the safety of C?sar. You, who have been counted worthy29 of such vast gifts, will you not likewise swear, and, after taking your oath, abide30 by it? And what shall the oath be? Never to disobey, never to accuse, never to find fault with any of the gifts that have been given by Him; never to do reluctantly, never to suffer reluctantly, anything that may be necessary. This oath is like theirs—after a fashion. The soldiers of C?sar swear not to prefer another to him; God’s soldiers swear to prefer themselves to everything.”
[36]
On me this came somewhat as bathos. But it was a frequent paradox31 with him; and of course, in one sense, it was not a paradox but common sense. What he meant by bidding us “prefer ourselves” was “prefer virtue,” which he always described as each man’s true “profit.” Everyone, he said, must prefer his own “profit” to everything else, even to father, brothers, children, wife. Zeus Himself—so he taught—prefers His own “profit”—which consists in being Father of all. Take away this thin veil of apparent egotism, and the oath might be described as an oath to live and die for righteousness, for the Logos or Word of God within us, and, thus, for God Himself. But why, I thought, disguise loyalty32 under the mask of self-seeking? This notion of a military oath taken to God, and at the same time to oneself—and an oath, so to speak, of negative allegiance, not to do this or that—did not inspire me with the same enthusiasm as the more positive doctrine33 and the picture of the wandering Cynic going about the world and actively34 doing good and destroying evil.
Arrian, however, was taking down this passage about the military oath with even more than his usual earnestness and rapidity. “Did that impress you?” said I, as we left the lecture-room together. “On me it fell a little flat.” He did not answer at once. Presently, as if rousing himself from a reverie, “Forgive me,” he said, “I was thinking of something that occurred in our neighbourhood about fifteen years ago. You know I was born in Bithynia. Well, about that time, there was a great outbreak of that Jewish superstition35 of which you must often have heard in Rome, practised by the followers of Christus. They are suspected of all sorts of horrible crimes and abominations, as you know, I dare say, better than I do, being familiar with what the common people say about them in Rome. Moreover the new work just published by your Tacitus—a lover of truth if any man is—severely condemns36 them. I am bound to say our Governor did not think so badly of them as Tacitus does. Perhaps in Rome and in Nero’s time they were more savage37 and vicious than among us in Bithynia recently. However, that matters little. The question was not about their private vices or virtues38. Our Governor[37] believed them guilty of treasonable conspiracy. So he determined39 to stop it.
“Stop it he did; or, at all events, to a very great extent. But the point of interest for me is, that when these fellows were had up before our Governor—it was Caius Plinius C?cilius Secundus, an intimate friend of the Emperor Trajan—he found there was really no mischief40 at all to be apprehended41 from them. Secundus had heard something about a sacramentum, or military oath—and this is my point—which these people were in the habit of taking at their secret meetings. Naturally this convinced him at first that there must be something wrong. But, when he came to look into it, the whole thing came to no more than what I will now tell you. I am sure of my facts for I heard them from his secretary, who had a copy of his letter to the Emperor. It was to this effect, ‘They affirm that the sum total of their crime or error is, that they were wont42, on an appointed day, to meet together before daybreak and to sing an alternate chant to Christus, as to a God, and to bind44 themselves by an oath—not, as conspirators45 do, to commit some crime in common, but to avoid committing theft, robbery, adultery, fraud, breach46 of faith. This done, they break up. It is true they return to take food in common, but it is a mere47 harmless repast.’ After the Governor had gone carefully into the matter, putting a few women to the torture to get at the truth, he came to the conclusion that this so-called military oath, or sacramentum, had no harm whatever in it. The thing was merely a perverted49 superstition run wild. He very sensibly adopted the mild course of giving the poor deluded50 people a chance of denying their faith as they called it. The Emperor sanctioned his mildness. Most of them recanted. Things settled down, and promised to be very much as they were before. At least so the Governor thought. We, outside the palace, were not quite so sanguine51. But anyhow, what struck me to-day was the similarity between the military oath of these Christians52 and the military oath prescribed by our great Teacher to his Cynics.”
“But,” said I, “does it not seem to you that our military oath ought to be a positive one, namely, that we Cynics will go[38] anywhere and do anything that the General may command—and not a negative one, that we will abstain53 from grumbling54 against His orders?” Arrian replied, “As to that, I think our Master follows Socrates, who expressly says that he had indeed a daemon, or at all events a daemonic voice; but that it told him only what to avoid, not what to do.” “Surely,” replied I, “what Socrates said on his trial was, ‘How could I be fairly described as introducing new daemons when saying that a voice of God manifestly points out to me what I ought to do?’” “I do not remember that,” said my friend, “but we are near my rooms. Come in and let us look into Plato’s Apologia.”
So we went in, and Arrian took out of his book-case Plato’s account of the Speech of Socrates before the jury that condemned55 him to death. “There, Silanus,” said he, “you see I was right.” And he pointed43 to these words, “There comes to me, as you have often heard me say, a divine and daemonic something, which indeed my prosecutor56 Meletus mentioned and burlesqued57 in his written indictment58. This thing, in its commencement, dates back (I believe) from my boyhood, a kind of Voice that comes to me from time to time, and, whenever it comes, it always”—“Mark this,” said Arrian—“turns me back from doing that (whatever it may be) which I am purposing to do, but never moves me forward.”
I seemed fairly and fully48 confuted. But suddenly it occurred to me to ask my friend to let me see Xenophon’s version of the same speech. He brought it out. I was not long before I disinterred the very words that I have quoted above, “a Voice of God that manifestly points out to me what I ought to do.” And the context, too, indicated that the Voice—which he calls daemonic, or a daemonion—gave positive directions, recognised as such by his friends.
This very important difference between Plato and Xenophon in regard to the daemon of Socrates, as described by Socrates himself, interested Arrian not a little. “Come back,” he said, “in the evening, when I shall have finished reducing my notes to writing, and let us put the two versions side by side and see how many passages we can find agreeing.” So I came back after sunset, and we sat down and went carefully through them.[39] And, as far as I remember, we could not find these two great biographers of this great man agreeing in so much as a dozen consecutive59 words in their several records of his Apologia, his only public speech. Presently—Arrian having Xenophon in his hand and I Plato—I read out the well-known words of Socrates about Anytus and Meletus, his accusers, and about their power to kill him but not to hurt him. “What,” said I, “is Xenophon’s version of this?” “He omits it altogether,” replied Arrian; “but I see, reading on, that he puts into the mouth of Socrates an entirely60 different saying about Anytus, after the condemnation61. Let me see the Plato.” Taking it from my hand, he observed, “Our Master, Epictetus, who is continually quoting these words of Plato’s, never quotes them exactly. ‘Anytus and Meletus may kill me but they cannot hurt me’—that is always his condensed version. But you see it is not Plato’s, Plato’s is much longer.”
So the conversation strayed away in a literary direction. We talked a great deal—without much knowledge, at least on my part—about oral tradition. I remarked on the possibilities in it of astonishing divergences62 and distortions of doctrine—“unless,” said I, as I rose up to go, “it happens, by good fortune, to be taken down at the time by an honest fellow like you, who loves his teacher, but loves the truth more, so that he just sets down what he hears, as he hears it.” “I do my best,” said Arrian; “but if it were not nearly midnight, I could shew you that even my best is not always good enough. I suspect that such sayings of our Master as become most current will be very variously reported a hundred years hence.”
“Good-night,” said I, and was opening the door to depart, when it flashed upon me that all this time, although we had been discussing Socrates, and assuming a resemblance between him and our Master, we had said nothing about that great doctrine in the profession of which Socrates breathed his last—prescribing a sacrifice to ?sculapius as though death were the beginning of a higher life—I mean the immortality63 of the soul. “I will not stay now,” said I, “but we have not said a word about Epictetus’s doctrine concerning the immortality of the soul; could you lend me some of your notes about it?” “He[40] seldom speaks of it,” replied my friend; “when he does, it is not always easy to distinguish between metaphor65 and not-metaphor. My notes, so far, do not quite satisfy me that I have done him justice. He is likely to touch on it in the next lecture or soon after. I should prefer you to hear for yourself what he says.”
“One more question,” said I. “Did our Master ever, in your hearing, refer to that last strange saying of Socrates, ‘We owe a cock to ?sculapius’? Sometimes it seems to me the finest epigram in all Greek literature.” “Never,” replied Arrian. “He has never mentioned it either in my hearing, or in the hearing of those whom I have asked about it. And I have asked many.”
Departing home I found myself almost at once forgetting our long literary discussion about oral tradition, in the larger and deeper question touched on in the last few minutes. Why should not Arrian have been able to “do justice” to Epictetus in this particular subject? Was it that our Teacher did not quite “do justice” to himself? Then I began to ask what Epictetus had meant precisely66 by such expressions as that men may become “fellow-banqueters” and even “fellow-rulers” with “the Gods.” “If God Himself is immortal64, how,” said I, “can ‘God’s own son’ fail to be immortal also?”
All through that night, even till near dawn, I was harassed67 with wild and wearying dreams. I travelled, wandering through wilderness68 after wilderness in quest of Socrates and nowhere finding him. Wherever I went I seemed to hear a strange monotonous69 cry that followed close behind me. Presently I heard a flapping of wings, and I knew that the sound was the crowing of the cock that was to be offered for Socrates to ?sculapius. Then it became a mocking, inarticulate, human voice striving to utter articulate speech. At last I heard distinctly, “If Zeus could have, he would have. If he could have, he would have. But he could not.”
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1
philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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sedition
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| n.煽动叛乱 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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atheistic
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| adj.无神论者的 | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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plural
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| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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Pluto
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| n.冥王星 | |
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deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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bemoaning
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| v.为（某人或某事）抱怨( bemoan的现在分词 )；悲悼；为…恸哭；哀叹 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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condemns
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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53
abstain
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| v.自制，戒绝，弃权，避免 | |
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grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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56
prosecutor
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| n.起诉人；检察官，公诉人 | |
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burlesqued
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| v.（嘲弄地）模仿，（通过模仿）取笑( burlesque的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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divergences
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| n.分叉( divergence的名词复数 )；分歧；背离；离题 | |
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immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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