The teachings of the first chapter can be linked to the teachings of this one. The first chapter was about things that are up to us. This chapter is about things that are not up to us. To say it a little more fully: Chapter 1 showed the claim that we are affected by our judgments about events, not by events themselves. We therefore have more control than we think over what we experience. This chapter is the other side of the coin. We attach ourselves to externals that we imagine we can control but really can’t, and deceive ourselves about them routinely – habits that make us unhappy and unfree. So in effect these first chapters suggest a reversal. We waste our energy on things that aren’t up to us, and are barely conscious of the things that are up to us. Stoicism is the effort to turn that around and to move one’s center of gravity to a more useful location.
1. Things not up to us. The Stoics all have their specialties. This chapter belongs first to Epictetus, whose most constant refrain was the urgency of renouncing desires and fears that depend on externals.
There are things up to us and things not up to us. Things up to us are our opinions, desires, aversions, and, in short, whatever is our own doing. Things not up to us are our bodies, possessions, reputations, offices, or, in short, whatever is not our own doing.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 1
There is only one road to happiness – let this rule be at hand morning, noon, and night: stay detached from things that are not up to you.
Epictetus, Discourses 4.4.39
Man’s perplexity is all about externals; his impotence about externals. What will I do? how will it take place? how will it turn out? Let this not happen, or that! These are all the cries of people worried about things that aren’t up to them. For who says, “How can I avoid agreeing to what is false? How can I not turn away from what is true?” If there is anyone whose nature is so fine that he is anxious about those things, I’ll just remind him – “Why are you distressed? Rest assured, it’s up to you.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.10.1
What do we admire? Externals. What do we spend our energies on? Externals. Is it any wonder, then, that we are in fear and distress? How else could it be, when we regard the events that are coming as evil? We can’t fail to be afraid, we can’t fail to be distressed. Then we say, “Lord God, let me not be distressed.” Moron, don’t you have hands? Didn’t God make them for you? So are you going to sit down and pray that your nose will stop running? Better to wipe your nose and stop praying. What, then – has he given you nothing to help with your situation? Hasn’t he given you endurance, hasn’t he given you greatness of spirit, hasn’t he given you courage?
Epictetus, Discourses 2.16.11–14
An aside for those who share my interest in the etymology of insults: “moron” comes from Greek, where the word (transliterated into English) was “mōros.” It was an adjective, but Epictetus uses it as a noun, as one might do in English by saying “Now listen, stupid – ” Returning to our theme, via Seneca:
A man reaches the heights if he knows what makes him joyful, if he 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 anything that spurs him on – even if it is not difficult to get, and even if his hopes have never disappointed him.
Seneca, Epistles 23.2
Marcus Aurelius:
Consider those things outside your control that you regard as good or bad. When the bad things happen, or the good ones don’t, you inevitably will blame the gods and hate the people responsible (or who are suspected of it). We do great injustice through our disputes about these things. But if we judge as good and bad only what is in our power, there is no occasion left to accuse God or take a fighting stance toward men.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.41
Some related comments:
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them.
Montaigne, Of Presumption (1580)
The fountain of content must spring up in the mind…. He, who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing, but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.
Johnson, The Rambler no. 6 (1750)
The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed. In other words, his center of gravity is not in himself; it is constantly changing its place, with every wish and whim.
Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)
2. Good and evil. The Stoic analysis of externals implies an adjustment of what we call good and evil. The Stoics hold that those properties lie only in what is up to us – our use of judgment, as discussed in Chapter 1. Things and events, then, aren’t good or evil. Our minds are.
Let us say that the happy man is he who recognizes no good and evil other than a good and an evil mind.
Seneca, On the Happy Life 4.2
Where is the good? In our choices. Where is the evil? In our choices. Where is neither of them? In those things we do not choose.
Epictetus, Discourses 2.16.1
The meaning of good and evil to the Stoic will become clearer in the course of the book. Generally the Stoics identify the good with the rightful use of reason, which in turn leads them to a life led for the benefit of the whole – that is, for others. More immediately it means avoiding vices such as greed, dishonesty, and excess. Those 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 first 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.
“Is health good, and disease evil?” No, you can do better than that. “What then?” To use health well is good, to use it badly is evil.
Epictetus, Discourses 3.20.4
We speak of a “sunny” room when the same room is perfectly dark at night. Day fills it with light; night takes it away. So it is with those things we term “indifferent” or “middle,” such as riches, strength, beauty, reputation, sovereignty – or their opposites: death, exile, ill-heath, pain, and all the others that we find more or less terrifying. It is wickedness or virtue that gives them the name of good or evil. By itself a lump of metal is neither hot nor cold: thrown into the furnace it gets hot, put back in the water it is cold.
Seneca, Epistles 82.14
This position allows Seneca an answer to the old question of why bad things happen to good people: they don’t. Genuinely bad things occur only in the mind, and the mind of the good person is free from them.
“But why does God sometimes allow evil to befall good men?” 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. The 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.
Seneca, On Providence 6.1
Marcus Aurelius turned that idea around and made it a test: nothing is good or evil if it can happen as easily to a good person as a bad one.
Both death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, wealth