The Practicing Stoic. Ward Farnsworth

of the mind and the role it plays in turning objects and events into an experience felt by the self. We don’t have good literal language for describing that role; the mechanisms of the mind aren’t visible to us in a way that allows for exact depiction. So as we just saw, the Stoics resort at times to figurative comparisons and analogies that make their ideas easier to see. Some further examples:

      Like a bowl of water, so is the soul; like the light falling on the water, so are the impressions the soul receives. When the water is disturbed, the light also seems to be disturbed; yet it is not disturbed.

      Epictetus, Discourses 3.4.20

      It takes greatness of mind to judge great matters; otherwise they will seem to have defects that in truth belong to us. In the same way, certain objects that are perfectly straight will, when sunk in water, appear to the onlooker as bent or broken off. It is not so much what you see but how you see it that matters. When it comes to perceiving reality, our minds are in a fog.

      Seneca, Epistles 71.24

      From Plutarch:

      Clothes seem to warm us, but not by throwing off heat themselves; for in itself every garment is cold, which is why people who are hot or have fevers frequently are constantly changing clothes. Rather, the clothes that wrap us keep in the heat that is thrown off by the body and don’t allow it to be dissipated. A somewhat similar case is the idea that deceives the mass of mankind – that if they could live in big houses, and get together enough slaves and money, they would have a happy life. But a happy and cheerful life does not come from without. On the contrary, a man adds the pleasure and gratification to the things that surround him, his temperament being, as it were, the source of his feelings.

      Plutarch, On Virtue and Vice 1 (100b–100c)

      6. Implications. This chapter has introduced the most basic idea in the practice of Stoicism: that our reactions to all things 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 reflections on the fundamental nature of this point. From Epictetus:

      Behold the beginning of philosophy! – perception of men’s disagreement with one another, and a search for the origin of the disagreement; rejection and distrust of mere opinion, and inquiry to see whether an opinion is right or wrong; and the discovery of some standard for judgment – just as to deal with weights we discovered the balance, or for straight and crooked things, the ruler.

      Epictetus, Discourses 2.11.13

      Epictetus’s description, taken broadly, can indeed be viewed as an account of 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. This 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. The 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 with the principle discussed in this chapter.

      We have reviewed some specific examples of that cycle, but the point goes beyond any particular case. It isn’t that our reaction to this or that is created by our own minds. It’s that our experience of everything is, and that it is up to us to a greater extent than we usually know. The 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 summarize the point of this chapter:

      Pay attention to your impressions, watch over them without sleeping, for what you guard is no small thing: self-respect and fidelity and self-possession, a mind free from emotion, pain, fear, disturbance – in a word, freedom.

      Epictetus, Discourses 4.3.7

      It seems to me that in this whole doctrine about mental disturbances, one thing sums up the matter: that they are all in our power, that they are all taken on as a matter of judgment, that they are all voluntary. This error, then, must be uprooted, this opinion stripped away; and just as things must be made tolerable in circumstances we regard as evil, so too in good ones, those things thought to be great and delightful should be taken more calmly.

      Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.31

      We can find a good closing remark for this discussion in what Cicero said to close a related discussion of his own.

      Now that we have determined the cause of these disturbances of the 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. They are all matters of opinion, and taken up voluntarily because it seems right to do so. This 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.

      Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.38

Chapter Two

      EXTERNALS

      A great share of Stoicism amounts to the study of externals: what they are, how we misjudge them, and the ways that they tend to enslave us. An “external” can be defined as something outside ourselves or outside our power. Later chapters will talk about specific examples, such as money, fame, and calamity. Before we reach those cases, though, this chapter considers two sets of Stoic teachings about externals as such.

      First, a principal aim of the Stoic is to regard externals without attachment. This has consequences, first, 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 qualification: of course everyone will have preferences about those externals just mentioned and many others. The 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. The difference between them can be seen most easily by comparing how you feel when they aren’t satisfied. Imagine wanting one thing more than another and not getting it, but not being too upset as a result. That 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. This distinction will be discussed more in later chapters. For now, we can just say that Stoics try for an equilibrium based on the quality of their thinking and their actions – one that doesn’t depend on anything beyond their control.

      The second general Stoic teaching about externals is that we have a hard time 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